A tool for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) management, OpenOlitor
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| License | CC Attribution 2.0 Belgium: You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor. | |
| Identifiers | 10.5446/46916 (DOI) | |
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Digital rights managementContext awarenessGroup actionPresentation of a groupBitComputer animation
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Data modelDirected setLink (knot theory)Distribution (mathematics)Pay televisionGroup actionChainFrequencyProduct (business)Decision theoryDistanceDistribution (mathematics)CASE <Informatik>Commitment schemePay televisionProcess (computing)Bus (computing)Shared memoryClosed setGame theoryMultiplication signRoundness (object)Computer animation
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Self-organizationDigital rights managementSoftwareOverhead (computing)Web 2.0Process (computing)Group actionComputer animation
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Digital rights managementSelf-organizationSoftware developerFunctional (mathematics)Projective planeOverhead (computing)Cellular automatonRow (database)Perspective (visual)WordSoftwareMultiplication signComputer animation
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Digital rights managementSelf-organizationProduct (business)Pay televisionPlanningModule (mathematics)ExplosionArchitectureServer (computing)NumberElectric currentSoftwareData modelIndependence (probability theory)Associative propertyMilitary operationDigital signalFocus (optics)Term (mathematics)Task (computing)Spectrum (functional analysis)Group actionMereologyWhiteboardSpectrum (functional analysis)Projective planeBitBeat (acoustics)Moment (mathematics)Bit rateRule of inferenceCausalityPoint (geometry)Task (computing)DatabaseRight angleGodKnowledge organizationTrailNumberProcess (computing)Endliche ModelltheorieFunctional (mathematics)Open sourceLink (knot theory)Perspective (visual)Level (video gaming)InformationGoodness of fitCommitment schemeComputer clusterSoftwareWebsiteFormal languageServer (computing)Self-organizationOrder (biology)PlanningMathematical singularityRoutingMoistureField (computer science)1 (number)View (database)Pay televisionComputer configurationBasis <Mathematik>Different (Kate Ryan album)TheoryComputer architectureScaling (geometry)AreaLine (geometry)Open setIdeal (ethics)Metropolitan area networkDivisorMultilaterationProduct (business)Flow separationFront and back endsScalabilityDigitizingEquivalence relationTraffic reportingStability theoryOcean currentMultiplication signComputer animation
15:29
Open sourcePoint cloud
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:07
So the clock is on. I'm so glad that there is that many carrot lovers here. So this, why I am Miguel Cordova, I'm gonna present to you about this tool
00:21
that we build for community-supported agriculture. So for these kind of groups, that basically just explain a little bit the context. I don't know if you are familiarized with these community-supported agriculture groups. Basically, maybe you are, you have friends,
00:42
or maybe you already joined one of them. It's these groups that you get this basket of veggies, and subscription-based, so every week you get a basket of veggies, or any other kind of product of proximity that basically is run by a group,
01:04
it's run by the group, and actually it puts close the consumers and the producers. So basically all the products should come from close farms,
01:21
and they can actually relay on each other. Basically they are all running the group together. So one of the things that are very important is that the distribution and the production is proposing this alternative model, that we are not in this big idea of big supermarkets and breaking those chains and basically distributing them
01:45
and making them smaller, that everyone gets closer to the producer and can also communicate to the producer and show them their needs. As I already mentioned, normally they are running on a subscription base, so that gives some commitment
02:03
to everyone involved in the process. So basically you cannot ask only for one week, but you need to be committed to the group for a longer period of time, and then the risk is shared, because basically, bad years, the group will take those veggies or any other kind of product.
02:22
We are talking about groups that they can distribute dairy products, fish, even meat, whatever the group decides. And so it's helping that the bad years in the production, for example, will be dissipated along the whole group members,
02:41
or the investment in case the farmer needs to get more investment or whatever. This can be always dissipated into the group. So these kind of groups are becoming quite popular. It's been already a few years that we have them all over the place. It's very difficult to estimate
03:01
how many of them are in Europe in general, because there are so many regional differences. Every different country will call them in another way. The organizations that are on top of, that are trying to organize on a higher level, they are really calling things in a different way.
03:22
But, urgency in 2015 made this an estimate of a broad number that is around the 3,000 CSA's running in Europe. This is really good. It's growing in popularity. We are getting there, you know?
03:40
We are getting to a model that is, or we are getting to improve the model that it makes those groups sustainable. But the main problem is that the organization overhead that is being created. So groups are getting bigger and bigger, you can actually imagine how it is to organize a group of 350 people with multiple delivery points,
04:03
with multiple basket types in a city every week, for example. It gets very complicated, and the overhead for volunteers is getting really a problem for this organization.
04:22
So, the idea that we had with some CSA's and some other actors, it was to create a software that could, it's this one, OpenAliter, that could actually help these groups to organize themselves, and to really use this overhead, because the tool will help them
04:41
in all the processes, right? So, yeah, as I already mentioned, yeah, it's this tool that is a web-based tool that they can use for many things. The origin of it, but we have, for example, these two guys, they were two CSA's that were actually wishing to have something like that,
05:01
because their overheads were becoming very, very big. Here, it's the developers and the organizations that they actually work more on the need, on a technical perspective, and we got some funding from some Swiss federal government in the canton.
05:21
So, that was four years ago when this project started. These were all the actors involved to build this software, and the functionalities that we are covering are all the workflows that can be interesting for this kind of organization.
05:43
So, it's managing the people, managing the subscription, making the design of the delivery plan for every week, the invoicing. We also have participation module, because in some of those groups, actually, it's required to work a number of hours.
06:01
Report creation, well, and there are many, many, many other functionalities that they are currently use, and it's helping them on these processes, right? Just a little bit of the architecture. That's the only technical part that I have here. So, the architecture in this, for this tool,
06:22
actually, we have a central server that is actually feeding on multiple front-ends and databases, so every CSA is owner of their own CSA database, and in order to reduce the cost and the manage, in order to reduce
06:47
the server cost and the server organization, actually, we actually can conglomerate a lot of CSAs with only one server. Like that, they own their own databases, but they can also share, that's the main idea,
07:03
also, of the project, I mean, to create a community of CSAs that they can help each other, the big ones, they can help the small ones, and they can get it running as fast as possible. So, the technologies behind, for the front-end, is AngularJS, and for the server is Scala.
07:25
So, the current status of this, so as I already mentioned, this project started a few years ago, and right now, we have a few groups already running with it, so we have eight CSAs in production right now
07:41
that they are using it for their daily business, right? And then we have another four onboarding CSAs that are in the process of getting all the data imported, and getting really to work only with the tool. We have, overall, more or less 15 people working
08:02
on the project on all kind of topics, because as you can imagine, this topic is a very interesting topic on the perspective that we mix the technology with people that are not very interested with technology. So, we have a lot of people making the link,
08:22
we have a lot of people working on it, which was absolutely great. It was translated already as six languages, and after this talk, I hope another two or three will come, right? And then, about the current numbers, we already deliver more than 100,000 baskets over those years, and we have three,
08:43
more than 3,000 deliveries. It's really running and making easier processes for them. So, one very big topic that we have now in our mind is how we make it sustainable, because it's quite difficult to maintain
09:02
these kind of projects, but you all know from the perspective of open source, right? So, we are actually trying to design the same kind of model that the CSA's are offering. So, basically, in a CSA, everyone is sharing risks, and every participant is trying to,
09:23
well, is requested to have a commitment. The idea here is the same. Every CSA could participate inside a bigger group, and they can share the hosting cost, the hosting work. They could share according also to their size
09:43
in a way that actually the bigger actors, they are helping and promoting the smaller actors to go a little bit, to go up and being able to organize themselves in a more efficient way, right? Yes, so, and just one of the last points
10:01
is how are we organized at the moment? This project was originally created in Switzerland for these two particular CSA's that were explaining their needs, right? But we had the contact to other people in different places, so we created this informal organization
10:23
that is open only to international. We try to meet once a year, sorry, where everyone is invited, every people that is interested is invited just to talk about the new lines and where are we moving the software and who is interested,
10:40
which models can we cover with them, all kind of talk. Then we have the official non-profit organization in Switzerland to manage all the legal aspects. We are running, we are actually hosting and running for the eight CSA's that I mentioned,
11:01
so we have an organization that is helping them to do all the hosting work. And then at the moment, Sunu's been working with us for already two, three years, promoting CSA's digitalization in Germany. And they picked up an elevator for promoting this digitalization in Germany.
11:29
So how guys do you get involved? That's a very interesting question. So basically, as I already mentioned, this project, it has a very, very interesting part,
11:43
that this really technical people working with non-technical people and trying to make it work, that it actually helps everyone. So that's, for me, it's a point that is very interesting. I never worked in a setup like that, really. Yeah, at the moment, it's becoming
12:00
quite multilingual, we are people from a few countries in Europe, and it's getting very interesting at this level. Obviously, those groups, they cannot, for them, it's a very big effort to basically onboard any kind of digital solution. So for them, their point of view is always long-term.
12:23
There is no option that they can change every three months, that's not an option. So it gives an stability to the project that is actually very interesting. And as you can imagine, the spectrum of tasks is incredible. You can really, from the field, to make more kind of promotion of the tool,
12:45
or to code, or to translate, there is all kind of tasks that needs to be done, right? And that's pretty much everything. I nailed it, two minutes. So if you have any questions, or basically you can go here,
13:11
you have a little bit of the three main websites where you can get more information, or you can write us directly, and yeah.
13:24
Yeah, openolitor, olitor, it was a farmer, right? In Latin, so it's open farmer, yes? Actually, payment itself is not supported,
13:41
but we can do the tracking of the payment. So SEPA tracking is enabled, and also the equivalent in Switzerland at the moment. Sorry, sorry again?
14:03
Yes, well actually, as I mentioned, one server can actually provide several CSAs. The idea is in case, the scalability is possible. You can, we don't promote,
14:22
we like the idea that they create kind of communities that they can support each other, but we can have a big actor that actually scale and really goes for a really big number of CSAs, yeah. Yeah? Hi, thank you.
14:42
Are you aware of the project called Air to Thailand, Sharing the Harvest, which is actually dealing with the fact that people need to find farmers, and farmers need to find people in the cities. Is that something you also do, or like, do you know of this?
15:00
I don't know them. I'm pretty sure some of our colleagues already, they are in contact with several organizations, so I wouldn't be surprised. So yeah, yeah, I'm gonna know the name later. Yeah, I come later. Yeah, yeah. There is one last there, but I don't know.
15:21
That was time off, I'm sorry. Yeah.