The environmental cost of our logistics, pesticides and plastic pollution, among others, are accelerating the shift of water cycles around the globe. As a result, rain patterns are changing at accelerated rates, leading us to unknown scenarios. This fact highlights the urgency of a new type of distributed agriculture with low environmental footprint and enhanced use of allocated resources, by new designs and ongoing analysis of production data.

Global Warming is forcing us to find new farming methods

Aquaponics is a proven technique with thousands of years of history that has been picking up in adoption recently because its low environmental footprint inherent efficiencies and healthy products. Even on its simplest form, aquaponics replicates the nature by growing fish and vegetables providing huge efficiencies related to land and water use, removing the need of pesticides and antibiotics. An aquaponic system creates a symbiotic relationship between all the organisms within the system and is always aiming to reach its homeostasis.

There are plenty of projects that have automated aquaponics systems with sensors and control mechanisms. However, there has not been a consistent and simple way to share reliable data regarding the performance of these systems, neither a feasible micro-payments alternative to purchase the end products directly from small producers.

Ayni physical model

Ayni means “to help” in quechua; our PoC aims to help small farmers to discover the benefits Aquaponics and IOTA by developing an automated system integrated with the tangle. Thanks to IOTA, Ayni can be used to manage the growth of vegetables and fish, sell produced goods through friction-less micro-payments with production data and without intermediaries, to sell performance data at the data marketplace (https://data.iota.org), and optimize the growth process of vegetables and fish.

Ayni Logical Model

IOTA is an innovative open-source protocol specifically designed for the Internet of Things (IoT) that facilitates the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) economy, by securing data transfer and enabling fee-less real-time micro-payments.

This project is being developed by students and engineers from Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Lima, Peru and Grande Prairie Regional College, Alberta, Canada.