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Pre-proposal: AgroCognitive - An ultimate solution to bring Dash to the fields (First month)

Unstoppable said:
I'm conflicted on this pre-proposal.

It's a unique, interesting project. I think it's great. Working to get Dash flowing throughout the agriculture industry of Venezuela is also great. But does Dash really need to be funding this startup, which is not really related to Dash, other than it will be used and encouraged as a payment method?

According to your cash flow spreadsheet you plan to receive 444 dash over the next year. At the current price of $500, that is $222,000.

I'm not sure I'd vote yes for this. A three year Dash exclusivity agreement, in a contract signed with Core, would help.

But really, Dash should not become angel investors in anything and everything simply because it will be offered as a payment method.
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Dear Unstoppable ,
Thank you for sharing your doubts.

AgroCognivite has contacted DASH's CORE TEAM to sign the exclusive contract. Our business model is designed and benefits from the DASH platform and we have explained that we will only accept DASH

Technically speaking, it is true, DASH is the payment platform for AgroCognitive, as well as for any merchant today. But our project’s roadmap includes going to work with the farmer’s community and give them workshops how to use DASH in their daily basic economy, the adoption advantages and motivations to trading between them.

You think (and it's reasonable that you think so) that DASH funded our project only acts as an angel, but we believe that DASH earns a lot by reaching the root of the food's chain and extending their influence territory and adoption over time. We are only asking DASH’s Treasury to give us funds to complete AgroCognitive’s initial investment and startup covering two types of crops in 6 months, but then, we will continue investing and training for the follow two years to add more and more types of crops and achieve an international coverage. This second phase investment (not covered by DASH funding) will reach more than USD 500K that AgroCognitive could inject using their own revenues.

Many people have written to us congratulating us for our approach in providing this service with DASH, because it means inserting in the ecosystem an ideal money option for the limitations that the industry has. For example in Discord # DashNation the user @ayo_brezzy told us:
"@jesccs wow. I think I need to read again but this sounds impressive. California has huge agriculture industry and with trumps tax changes this can ease the burden on our migrant families."

We hope that with this explanation we can count on your valuable support and continuous feedback to make this project a reality
Regards,
 
What type of agriculture are we talking here? If it's the kind that takes 10 calories of oil for every calorie of food... well, Venezuela can afford the oil but it's a dirty business, not only wasteful but also leaves fertile land as barren as any desert. If this is promoting the use of artificial fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, etc. on fertile land that's never needed them before then totally against. Folks desperately need feeding but if the price is reliance on artificial products to keep eating in the future then the price is too high.
 
stan.distortion said:
What type of agriculture are we talking here? If it's the kind that takes 10 calories of oil for every calorie of food... well, Venezuela can afford the oil but it's a dirty business, not only wasteful but also leaves fertile land as barren as any desert. If this is promoting the use of artificial fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, etc. on fertile land that's never needed them before then totally against. Folks desperately need feeding but if the price is reliance on artificial products to keep eating in the future then the price is too high.
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Hi stan.distortion,

We really love your comment because it is directed just where the AgroCognitive project wants to go!

Precision Agriculture seeks to be efficient in terms of supplies (fertilizers, herbicides, etc.) and protect the environment, but this requires large investments in sensors and specialized devices that the common farmer (especially in Venezuela) can not invest.
The common agro-industrial's techniques pour large amount of chemicals into the environment by dispersion (by airplanes, machines, etc.) because it treats the field in a massive way. AgroCognitive is just going to provide analytics for the farmer to know specifically which group of plants are sick or badly nourished and apply with precision the remediation (for example aply magnesium in 2 mt2 instead of the whole field) as well as it will be integrated with the weather channel, AgroCognitive can tell them when to do it to ensure, for example, it does not rain the next day and these supplies will be drained and reach rivers or lakes.

That's why AgroCognitive won People's Choice award as "the solution will change people life in future".

Thanks a lot for your support!
 
Hi there, greetings from Caracas Venezuela. I LOVE this pre-proposal; your idea is very original and you're also trying to help the Agro-industry in Venezuela, which is experimenting lots of issues right now. It's an innovative method of supporting and bringing new responses to the crisis of agricultural needs in our country. Also, I like that you're willing to improve your pre-proposal by taking into account the different suggestions, recommendations and opinions made by many members that are following this thread.

Keep up the good work guys! Congratulations!

If you want to check out our proposal, this is the link: https://www.dashcentral.org/p/DASH-YOUTH-VENEZUELA-LECTURES

Cheers!
 
Showny M. Azar Raheb said:
Hi there, greetings from Caracas Venezuela. I LOVE this pre-proposal; your idea is very original and you're also trying to help the Agro-industry in Venezuela, which is experimenting lots of issues right now. It's an innovative method of supporting and bringing new responses to the crisis of agricultural needs in our country. Also, I like that you're willing to improve your pre-proposal by taking into account the different suggestions, recommendations and opinions made by many members that are following this thread.

Keep up the good work guys! Congratulations!

If you want to check out our proposal, this is the link: https://www.dashcentral.org/p/DASH-YOUTH-VENEZUELA-LECTURES

Cheers!
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Thank you Showny for support AgroCognitive project! We're all part this changing wave!
 
TheSingleton said:
Do I understand it correctly that after this proposal is funded you will be self-sufficent?

Also, it would probably a good idea to talk with Core about an agreement for you to use exclusively Dash for a period of time after going live.
Click to expand...

Hi TheSingleton,
We're proud to announce you AgroCognitive already have reached out to Dash Core to arrange an exclusivity agreement. Right now Das Core team is checking with the lawyers on the process to create this exclusivity agreement.
Thank you again for your support
 
Unstoppable said:
I'm conflicted on this pre-proposal.

It's a unique, interesting project. I think it's great. Working to get Dash flowing throughout the agriculture industry of Venezuela is also great. But does Dash really need to be funding this startup, which is not really related to Dash, other than it will be used and encouraged as a payment method?

According to your cash flow spreadsheet you plan to receive 444 dash over the next year. At the current price of $500, that is $222,000.

I'm not sure I'd vote yes for this. A three year Dash exclusivity agreement, in a contract signed with Core, would help.

But really, Dash should not become angel investors in anything and everything simply because it will be offered as a payment method.
Click to expand...
Hi Unstoppable,

We're proud to announce you AgroCognitive already have reached out to Dash Core to arrange an exclusivity agreement. Right now Das Core team is checking with the lawyers on the process to create this exclusivity agreement.
Thank you again for your support
 
jesccs said:
Hi Unstoppable,

We're proud to announce you AgroCognitive already have reached out to Dash Core to arrange an exclusivity agreement. Right now Das Core team is checking with the lawyers on the process to create this exclusivity agreement.
Thank you again for your support
Click to expand...

Excellent! This will make a lot of MNOs happy. I wish you much success.
 
Hello, it seems an original and interesting idea. I agree with @AlejandroE and @ andrade92 that the MNOs will surely want to see the specific benefits for DASH, so it would be great to write it here and my personal recommendation is that you include a video to explain the process you plan to implement, it would be easier and faster to understand. I would like to see a "market study" about what farmers think of this. Greetings and success; and if I can help something as an expert in the legal area for cryptocurrency, I'm here to support a professional team of Venezuelans.
 
CarlosTrujillo said:
Hello, it seems an original and interesting idea. I agree with @AlejandroE and @ andrade92 that the MNOs will surely want to see the specific benefits for DASH, so it would be great to write it here and my personal recommendation is that you include a video to explain the process you plan to implement, it would be easier and faster to understand. I would like to see a "market study" about what farmers think of this. Greetings and success; and if I can help something as an expert in the legal area for cryptocurrency, I'm here to support a professional team of Venezuelans.
Click to expand...
Hi Carlos!
Thank you for your valuable feedback!

AgroCognitive is certainly a very broad project, and placing all the data that justifies its feasibility is dense, we agree with you, and we are working on a summary video that will be ready in a few days.

A market study was conducted and was the input for the elaboration of the projected cash flow where it can be confirmed that there is a market to make this project profitable. Although in this first phase (in which we are requesting DASH funds injection) we are only going to train AgroCognitive for 2 crops, the potential for growth with the addition of more crops is huge both in Venezuela and in the rest of LATAM. For example, only in Venezuela we have, for example, for 2018 the official statistics of hectares planted with 3 essential crops are:
  • Coffee: 550,000
  • Sugar: 700,000
  • Corn: 980,000
The AgroCognitve's team has met with farmer's associations of sugarcane and coffee and we project that once the commercial phase of the service has been started (month 4), we can cover in 12 months more than 10% of the cultivated areas of both crops, which guarantees a gross income for services of at least 1.5 million USD (only in Venezuela and fully traded in DASH). This without adding that in month 7 we will continue training AgroCognitive to analyze more crops (corn, sorghum, cocoa, etc).

Thank you very much for your professional offer, we would love a collaboration you about legal and we about technological areas, you can write to us at [email protected] and we make the contact.
 
CarlosTrujillo said:
Hello, it seems an original and interesting idea. I agree with @AlejandroE and @ andrade92 that the MNOs will surely want to see the specific benefits for DASH, so it would be great to write it here and my personal recommendation is that you include a video to explain the process you plan to implement, it would be easier and faster to understand. I would like to see a "market study" about what farmers think of this. Greetings and success; and if I can help something as an expert in the legal area for cryptocurrency, I'm here to support a professional team of Venezuelans.
Click to expand...
Hi Carlos,

We already updated AgroCognitive post and new videos are available. Enjoy and thanks you again
Regards
 
Good morning AgroCognitive. It is really satisfying to see such a well developed and thorough proposal, dealing with an area such as agriculture is not an easy task but it's easy to realize how much you have struggled to come up with this idea.

Given that in our country, Venezuela, farmers usually are not familiarized with this kind of technology and tend to reject them when they see it's too complicated to use it, I would suggest you to include interactive participation during the talks you will offer, as well as comparing the use of Dash with the traditional system (for which is easy to note the great advantages of Dash) and maybe some kind of tracing on its use in order for them to get used to Dash. Further than that, I think your idea is amazing and I wish the greatest success in this, have an excellent week!
 
Jesus Gimenez said:
Good morning AgroCognitive. It is really satisfying to see such a well developed and thorough proposal, dealing with an area such as agriculture is not an easy task but it's easy to realize how much you have struggled to come up with this idea.

Given that in our country, Venezuela, farmers usually are not familiarized with this kind of technology and tend to reject them when they see it's too complicated to use it, I would suggest you to include interactive participation during the talks you will offer, as well as comparing the use of Dash with the traditional system (for which is easy to note the great advantages of Dash) and maybe some kind of tracing on its use in order for them to get used to Dash. Further than that, I think your idea is amazing and I wish the greatest success in this, have an excellent week!
Click to expand...
Thank you Jesus for your enthusiastic comment!

Throughout the process of identifying the real opportunity of AgroCognitive (not only in Venezuela also in other territories), we talked with many farmers from different sectors. They are very aware of the challenges that await them to make their crops a productive and competitive activity. Some of them have visited / called us, and others farmer's associations who want AgroCognitive to be trained into their crops. So, we are 100% confidents rejects will not occurs.

The technological alliance with DASH network is the right answer to the concerns of our future clients about how to pay for the service. DASH technology offers the perfect fit for AgroCognitive commercial model and AgroCognitive give to DASH network a great opportunity to consolidate their adoption.

Yes! We have included in our deployment activities, education and training workshops for farmers and their community (it includes DASH HELP VENEZUELA support) to grant the right adoption and start.

Thank you for your support.
 
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Dear @jesccs ,
A few questions:
The contract of exclusion is for how long and it starts to run from what conditions? Not only in how long, but also with which concomitant triggering elements.
When will Dash start being used?
Do you plan to put a means of control of transactions isu of your activity, in order to have a view?
How many unique users are there in this segment?
What % of the market do you expect to get?
Let's say you take 1% of the market, that's how many users?
How many daily transactions per user do you expect to have?
What will be the amount per transaction considered?
If I have understood correctly you will be the first to do this in your country, knowing that these solutions already exist in other countries, what will happen if an existing company comes to set up in your country, having already everything closely to be used?
Why shouldn't we rather finance a company already mastering this technology to just implement Dash?
Why would an existing company in this sector want to use Dash for its business instead of currency?

Thx
 
How do the farmers buy their inputs in dash?

Do they have access to the infrastructure necessary to transact Dash- mobile phones and data?

How educated are these farmers?
 
JOL said:
Dear @jesccs ,
A few questions:
The contract of exclusion is for how long and it starts to run from what conditions? Not only in how long, but also with which concomitant triggering elements.
When will Dash start being used?
Do you plan to put a means of control of transactions isu of your activity, in order to have a view?
How many unique users are there in this segment?
What % of the market do you expect to get?
Let's say you take 1% of the market, that's how many users?
How many daily transactions per user do you expect to have?
What will be the amount per transaction considered?
If I have understood correctly you will be the first to do this in your country, knowing that these solutions already exist in other countries, what will happen if an existing company comes to set up in your country, having already everything closely to be used?
Why shouldn't we rather finance a company already mastering this technology to just implement Dash?
Why would an existing company in this sector want to use Dash for its business instead of currency?

Thx
Click to expand...
Dear JOL,

Thank you very much for your interest in our project, we are excited about your questions and we will gladly answer each of them in great detail:
  • DASH Exclusivity: The contract of exclusivity that we are processing with Dash Core Group is for 3 years, starting from the date AgroCognitive begins go live phase.
  • When will start:
    • If our proposal pass in this April cycle, the project would start in May. According to our plan, the technical integration with Dash, modeling of the user interface, predictive modeling and cognitive training will take 3 months for the first crop. So, by August, we would do the commercial launch.
    • Dash as our platform for payments and trade within the AgroCognitive ecosystem would begin to be used in August 2018
  • Monitoring our results: We have considered how to show the results to the community, AgroCognitive will generate a dashboard with monthly usage, could be online to anybody consumption. However, it is important to keep in mind that AgroCognitive seeks to create an impact at the root of the food chain and encourage the adoption of DASH in the field economy. The transactions that begin to occur between farmers and supplier vendors are beyond our control, we can only report to Dash community how many people have downloaded the wallet and received the dash bonus to our training and workshops.
  • Market questions
    • For the two crops with which we intend to start, in Venezuela there is a total cultivated area of 1,200,000 hectares, almost half is in the hands of agribusiness companies and government. Both types of customers (agribusiness & farmers) are our business target. We have previous agreements with some agribusiness companies and we could be monitoring an area of 250,000 hectares. With individual farmers we project 8% in the first year, which would add 50,000 for a total of 300,000 hectares being analyzed by AgroCognitive (for the first year, only in Venezuela). In this term, we estimate about 4,000 users and around 50,000 payment transactions with DASH
    • We have commercial partners in Central America, Ecuador, Peru and Chile with whom we would enter into commercial operation by the second year.
    • AgroCognitive services will not be used everyday on a crop, it is done once or twice a month. It depends on the type of crop, the drone's flight height must be adjusted for each crop type and before the photographic taking process. In general, the billing unit of the service is a picture, and each one can cover 1 hectare, which will be invoiced at a rate of approximately 2 USD (does not include the drone rental service). For our target market, we estimate 2,100 services per month (invoiced to be pay only in DASH). The average price of each invoice depends on the crop area of each client (ranging from 50 hectares and above)
  • Competitors: In Venezuela (and mainly in LATAM) there is no company offering a service of the analytical scope of AgroCognitive and based on a machine learning engine. There are companies that have custom-made monitoring solutions for crops such as corn or wheat and for specific seeds vendors (Monsanto, Syngenta, etc) but only provide crops monitoring and diagnosis, do not offer recommendations for remediation nor predictive analytics of yields. The advantage of having as a AI engine, a machine learning, is that we can train AgroCognitive in more crops with a very low investment, which gives us a great capacity to open new markets, something that others can’t do right now without having to invest a lot of money. Competitors could come, of course, but we see some obstacles they would have: its high fees and the minimum operating conditions they need (infrastructure, networks, sensors), put them out of the reach of even agribusiness companies in our country and in other LATAM territories. We have some potencial customers in outside Venezuela that has said to us they prefer to wait for AgroCognitive to go out to the market instead of investing a lot of money to monitor their crops, with us they only have to contract the service, because we are a 100% cloud solution.
  • Why AgroCognitive and not other player?
    • We have more than 10 years doing descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics. We know the business, and we have gained recognition in the use of machine learning technology. This project was not created a couple of months ago, it has 2 years of research, validation with experts, testing and prototyping, and has been awarded by LATAM’s organization and jury. We believe that we have the technical credentials to make it real, the reputation and organizational structure to Dash Community believe in us. Our company is small but not borned with this project or because a Dash injection's motivation; we exist 13 years ago.
    • Maybe you should rather finance a big player in agribusiness and feel more confidence, we are humble and understand that, but surely it will cost at least 4 or 5 times more than us, and the final cost for farmer will be equally high and impossible to them (this companies are also sensor and high technology suppliers providers, they want to sell them). Where DASH adoption will be more successful ? in the pocket of people (farmers) or in the hand of big companies?
  • Why DASH?
    • For AgroCognitive, DASH is the key to access and enable our business model. In Venezuela there is no access to USD for the payment of technology (only government have access to it), but there are exchange platforms (funded by DASH) that will allow customers to exchange their bolivars (our currency) for DASH, without intermediaries or abusive commissions.
    • But this is not the only thing, it is the agility with which the customer can access the results of their monitoring. Once they send your payment in DASH, the unlock PIN is confirmed and sent to you to access your analytics. Anybody want to wait for a bank transfer in USD, check them online (that's someone should do, so there will bring labor costs there) and authorize the unlocking PIN.
    • Our business is in cloud with incredibly low operating costs, and we want to provide the technology for our customer pay just for the service they will receive, not for old economy’s bureaucracy and intermediaries. It is the past, we look for the future!
Please JOL let us know if each question was answered to your satisfaction and if you share or not our vision.
Regards and happy day
 
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jeremy54 said:
How do the farmers buy their inputs in dash?

Do they have access to the infrastructure necessary to transact Dash- mobile phones and data?

How educated are these farmers?
Click to expand...
Hi Jeremy! thank you for your interest in AgroCognitive. Very good questions, next our answers:

How customers will access DASH
In Venezuela, two exchange platforms have been developed (CryptoLifeX and Colibit, both funded by DASH) that will allow farmers to change their bolivars (our local currency) quickly and easily to DASH. We have had some preliminary technical meets with CrytoLifex in order to implement a direct integration between they and us, so we want to do payment process even easier for customers

Do future customer have access to the internet?
This question was one of the factors that most disturbed us when we were designing this project: does it exist Internet access in the fields?
According to official reports, the country has a coverage of 61% of internet access by a ISP or cell phone carrier, however 90% of the fertile land for growing food is on the axis of the northern center of the country, where people can have a coverage of almost 70% which is very good for our business, you can see the link attached with an CONATEL's infographic (regulatory agency for telecommunications)
http://www.conatel.gob.ve/penetracion-de-internet-en-venezuela-supera-61/151117_laminainternet2/
In conversations with some farmers' cooperatives (aggregations of farmers from a region or a crop type) they told us that they are very organized for access to data (including mobile) and they could even buy it own drone so they do not have to pay the rent of one. So if we believe that this would not be a barrier to AgroCognitive at regions we want to start (Aragua, Portuguesa, Guarico, Azoategui, Miranda, Cojedes)

Education level
Farmers know how to work the land and it is probably knowledge that is inherited from generation to generation. But they have also received education from the Venezuelan government learn read and write (according to the UN report, Venezuela is a country with the lowest levels of illiteracy in the region). They also currently use the internet to do banking transactions, pay suppliers and receive payments for their products. So asking them to access the AgroCognitive service portal will not mean a change or resistance.

We have include in our implementación and go live rodmap, training in the use of AgroCognitive and DASH as Digital Cash, teaching them how to use the wallet and how to make payments between them. We also count with the support of DASH HELP VENEZUELA team to help us in this great work

Thank you for reading about us
Regards
 
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