I am a python developer involved with several groups in the Netherlands looking for ways to nibble at the monopolies of supermarkets and setting up more direct relations between farmers and consumers.
When looking at farmOS, it perfectly support farmers in managing their farm, but I feel one step could be added to bring consumers on board and I would like to know if you are already investigating that.
When crops are harvested, they result in products. These products can move in different directions (simplified, please comment):
they can be moved to a reserved spot/stock when a farmer has contracts with other stakeholders in the supply chain (bakery, supermarket, slaughterhouse).
they can be moved to input for other processes that are local to the farm, for instance; making chutney, jam or cheese and butter (dairy).
They can be made available as āavailable stockā for free agents to pick up and distribute or for consumers to buy directly at the farm (milk-automat, small shop)
I would like to know if development is already underway to facilitate this step or not. And if you think this would be a valuable addition; to assign products to stock(s) that can then (f.i. via the API) be broadcasted to attract surplus to be available outside of the regular supplychain that most farmers use (a.i. existing relations/contracts) of course taking into account that amounts are reserved and that the stock will decline when products are sold.
I am open for any suggestions and idea and would like to find out if the community at large would like to put effort in making products available.
This is not included in farmOS ācoreā, but it can be added by anyone who wants to experiment with it. Combined with the core Inventory module, this allows capturing of products, product types, and tracking inventory levels over time. So the ādata storageā of a lot of what you described is in place.
The next step is to build more UI/UX tooling in farmOS to make it easier to enter/maintain that data. I think that is the biggest hurdle to adoption (and is true of ALL data, not just product inventory). That is the mountain we are always climbing: making it easier for farmers.
Another idea I had a while back was general mechanism to support āasset transformationsā. For example, it is currently possible to create a āPlantā asset that represents your tomato plants. And it is possible to create a āProductā asset that represents harvests/boxed tomatoes ready for sale, linked to the āPlantā asset as a parent. But there isnāt any UI/UX tooling to help facilitate those transformations. You basically have to create the records manually to represent what you want. I think there is a lot of potential for next steps there!
I would love to hear what others in the community think of these ideas.
That work was also funded, and @paul121 is and will be working on more. Iām hopeful that when we complete this work, sharing our the product list will be a lot easier to do!
