Strengthening Small Farms & Mitigating Food Loss: Building Novel Technology to Capture Food Loss Data & Increase Profits for Farms

Rooted Farmers (Hanover, NH) has developed a dynamic online platform that is differentiated by its capacity to seamlessly standardize and aggregate supply across a fragmented, rural supply chain, providing broad, regional market access for small and medium-sized farmers. Rooted's platform serves farmers nationally by providing efficiency tools to producers, supporting a variety of administrative tasks and providing detailed sales data insights. Rooted has gained meaningful commercial traction following previous awards and execution on USDA-NIFA-SBIR funding, with hundreds of farmers and hubs across the country validating a significant reduction in labor hours, an increase in sales, and increased access to a network of buyers. Despite these advances, glaring industry and operational deficiencies in data surrounding on-farm food loss remain, costing farmers both time and money. These gaps result in diminished profitability and long-term viability; additionally, they compound challenges in maintaining stable local food supply across areas with limited food system resilience. Our proposed work to automate, track, and provide data insights on unsold inventory is a direct response to requests from our small farm and hub members. This funding provides Rooted the opportunity to expand its preexisting platform to provide producers visibility into unrealized reductions in sales and crop losses. This funding will enable: 1) Specification development, based on input from a representative sample of farmers from multiple regions; 2) Data model redesign and prototype development to support the automated capture of unsold inventory; and 3) Testing and validation of the data model and inventory prototype tools, including iterative improvements based on farmer feedback.?