Project: Agriculture DAO in emerging and tier markets

Governance and Coordination
1

Happy Sunday everyone!

The project

Our organization is working on creating a decentralized social dynamic that financially incentivize its actors to allow anyone, anywhere to have access to the required knowledge, coaching and financing to run a profitable farming business, focusing on emerging and third world markets.

We are starting with greenhouse farming in Latin America, since this farming business model can be replicated in many countries without changing many parameters.

The utopian vision we are walking toward is one where people can propose a farming business model, it gets audited by the organization and then teached to other operators of the organization all around the world.

The scaling solution is that once an operator is successful, he can also become a business coach and teach the business model he operates to other operators around the world or in his country and earn a fraction of what they produce.

The organization owns the lands and infrastructures.

We want to either use a DeFi protocol like goldfinch.finance to finance our farms, or make our own and offer a yield in exchange of capital.

The governance model

Right now, we are at a very early stage. We are designing the first version of the decentralized governance system and are thinking of how it might evolve in the future.

Honestly, we would love to have your ideas on how we could make the first version of the governance system.

Which tools should we use, or should we build our own?

We know that in the future, every farm of the organization might have its own governance system, within the larger DAO.

Long term list of actors might look like this:
-Organization
-Farm operators
-Business coach
-Land and construction auditors
-Operators auditors
-Token holders

We think of allowing individuals selected by the organization to be actors to hold weight in the governing system, but don’t want the power to be transferable or sellable on the market. Also, we want them to be able to interact in the same DAO votes than the token holders that bought on the free market.

This project is all about creating as much positive value in the world as possible.

We surely want to push for environmentally sustainable and financially competitive agriculture business models.

Here’s my contact if you have ideas/questions or want to know more about it:
Twitter @Sunnypizza213
Email cabin11@ulaval.ca

Kind regards,

Sunnypizza213

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2

Welcome to the forum and thank you for sharing your project. I’m a little unclear if you are proposing this as a project to collaborate on or if you are looking for some feedback on your project. Would you be willing to clarify that a little more for us?

3

Hello!

Thank you.

I would like to have an idea of how you see the first version of the DAO and which tools or open source code, if any, we could inspire ourselves of.

We want to incrementally add processes/ layers on top of what will be built in the beginning to set upfront expectation about the functioning of the organization.

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4

I’m in the process of creating a DAO with a friend, we thought a lot about how to make the token mechanisms work for our project’s mission. In our case we wanted to maximize both the novelty and quality of submissions that were being received so we used two separate tokenized voting systems, the first to nominate and the second to curate.

In terms of resources, there are a bunch of DAO templates which cover almost all use cases. First step for us was creating a shared treasury with Gnosis Safe, from there we would probably create a Aragon or SyndicateDAO site.

I would really think long and hard about what you want the DAO to create, what you want to maximize for and think about and how a token might best fit into that. Try to look at similar projects and how they solved similar issues and whether those solutions worked or failed and why.

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5

Okay. Thank you for sharing. We will definitely think about that and look at the tools you shared.

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There are several websites that list DAOs and DAO tools that might be of interest to you:

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Great, thank you so much!

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Hi @Sunnypizza213 I’m generally very interested in DAOs to support sustainable farming. This is a model to be disrupted here in the US. I’m not exactly sure what it looks like in Canada, but I would be interested to know the similarities and differences since the DAO appears like it will be functioning regionally.

What is the problem you’re trying to solve? Is there a lack of education around innovative and sustainable business models in ag? Who are you teaching this to? Existing farmers? Or eco-preneurs? Why do you need to own the land to educate and teach?

You should check out CityDAO (and a few other DAOs that have purchased land). This does not go how you think it would and, honestly, I would advise against it. Even the best co-ops have trouble with the legal and financial implications of fractionalized land ownership. You may start to get into US securities law here too, depending on how you want to issue co-ownership. If everyone in your DAO will be based in Canada, you may have an easier time, but if you’re interested in hosting folks in the US, you’ll have to wade into the waters of securities law (again, depending on how you’re fractionalizing ownership, which ultimately goes back to your governance :slight_smile: ).

Hope that helps a bit!

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9

Happy Friday @valeriespina !!

Great to read your thoughts and insights!

Our primary focus is to allow farmers to have access to knowledge, coaching and financing in a profitable manner to make the DAO self-sufficient. Then, surely, we want to implement either through incentives and/or techniques or other elements, the orientation toward sustainable practices.

We want to emphasize in emerging and tier markets; Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. Starting in Ecuador and Latin America.

The issue in these markets is, as you said, education but also access to financing. Education about the latest and most efficient agriculture techniques and financial education. Also, many do not have bank account: 1.7 billion according to world bank. Providing financial services can be impactful. Farmers are usually from rural areas, which are poorer and less developed, aka where crypto can bring a lot of value.

For now, there are two possibilities we consider on the medium to long term: owning and not owning the land. We haven’t thought in dept about it, but what I assumed is that by owning it there must be a centralized part of the DAO (unfortunately) that has veto since it is intertwined with laws, especially in multiple jurisdictions at once. In that case also, the DAO would get his financing through an app like goldfinch.finance or make our its liquidity pools to self-finance.

We are testing right now a traditional greenhouse business model in Ecuador with an experienced farmer. The numbers are exciting in terms of passive investment returns. That would give the protocol the freedom to offer a high yield on the liquidity pools backed by a commodity, tomatoes, for now.

Also, definitely, the side of it that is of law, and everything is very important and will be investigated.

Thank you for your kind recommendations. Will definitely go check those projects

If you are willing let’s discuss about DAO structure.

Kind regards,

Sunnypizza213

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