Starter kit

Zero hunger

Use this starter kit to build applications to address the real-world challenge of global hunger. These expert-validated tools and resources will help you jump-start your own solution for the 2021 Call for Code Global Challenge by addressing food security, improving nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture. 

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Overview The idea The architecture Resources

Overview 

What is the problem?

Approximately 9 percent of the global population is suffering from hunger. And, much of the world’s food is grown by small-scale, independent farms and distributed through local community cooperatives who sell the surplus produce. The co-ops are a central point for quality control, deliveries, and enabling food commodity markets. However, these co-ops face a myriad of logistical challenges to get the right food to the right places with minimal time and cost.

How can technology solve the problem?

By bringing the paper ledgers of food co-ops online, communities can harness data insights from their environment for better crop resilience and overall yield for sustainable food production systems. More crops mean better access to food for the community.

Special thanks to our partner, Intuit, who contributed to the starter kits and are providing design thinking tools.
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The idea

To improve access to nutritious food in local communities, especially those suffering from acute hunger, co-operative systems can be digitized and enhanced. By aggregating and analyzing market, transportation, demand, horticultural, and environmental data, co-ops can optimize productivity, reduce overhead, and decrease volatility in the supply chain of the farming communities.

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The architecture

Embedded architectural diagram
  1. The user uses their non-smartphone device camera to capture a photo of their product yield for quality testing and analysis.
  2. The user sends a camera image and/or a text message through their non-smartphone device MMS/SMS service.
  3. The image and/or message is redirected to the Twilio Programmable Messaging service or to the Telstra Programmable Messaging service for users located in Australia.
  4. The Twilio Programmable Messaging service or Telstra Programmable Messaging service will forward the message to the Node-RED app hosted on IBM Cloud.
  5. The Node-RED app interacts with the IBM Cloud Pak for Data AI/ML service to get the response.
  6. IBM Cloud Object Storage is provisioned to receive the images and/or message data.
  7. The image and/or message data is added to the available IBM Cloud Object Storage.
  8. The IBM Cloud Pak for Data AI/ML service does the necessary computations and returns a response.
  9. The Node-RED app processes the response, converts it to a user-readable format, and forwards it to the digital co-operative management system app UI (Optional: to Twilio or Telstra).
  10. The response is received by the digital co-operative management system app UI.
  11. The co-op admin is able to view the response via the digital co-operative management system app UI.
  12. (Optional: The Twilio or Telstra Programmable Messaging service forwards the response as a reply message to the User through their messaging APIs.)
  13. (Optional: The user receives the reply message as a response from the IBM Cloud Pak for Data AI/ML service through their non-smartphone device MMS/SMS service.)

Resources 

Kit producers

Our creators of this starter kit along with their bios:

Next steps

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Clean water and sanitation

Responsible production and green consumption