AquaponicsOS

"A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step."

- Laozi              

The objective of this post will be to start defining a clear scope for AquaponicsOS. To do this I will present the assumptions present both in technology and business model and then narrow down the product and how it would work. Being a first attempt, this vision will continue to evolve with experience.


Assumptions

1) Agriculture will drastically change in the next 5 to 10 years and vertical farming will play a central role in this revolution. 

2) The ability to leverage data to automate and increase efficiencies, both in vertical farming and conventional agriculture, will be a key differentiating factor.

3) Open data is better for the system as a whole.

4) The cost to sense, process and store data will continue to fall exponentially.

5) The demand for organic and eco-friendly food will continue to increase.

The Vision: 2020's

1) For certain crops, vertical farms have become cost competitive with conventional agriculture and transitioned from novelty to everyday business.

2) Vertical farms are fully automatized and rely on SaaS for everyday maintenance.

3) Agriculture has become an information business and the entire food chain has been disrupted. Leaders in the market rely on large scale testing and experimentation to tune and hack nature's cycles. Software updates are deployed on a regular basis.

4) Environmental pressure caused by an increasing population has started to decrease. There is for the first time in human history the prospect of "food abundance".

5) Non-organic food has been stigmatized  and marginalized in medium and high income sectors of society. People receive fresh organic produce at their door on a daily basis and pay for a service rather than a specific fruit or vegetable. Furthermore, there is a demand to know the exact expenditure of electricity, water and other parameters in producing different products. 

AquaponicsOS

1) Focus on aquaponic systems.

2) Default to open data and protocols, set the industry's standards. 

3) Specialize in software and AI.

4) Clients are vertical farmers.

5) Start with a simple sensor+actuator system that communicates with the cloud.

6) Offer DIY products as marketing strategy.