Crop | Devpost

Inspiration

Confirming the Volatility: Farmers do often face volatile prices, and this is largely due to a combination of systemic market dynamics and structural disadvantages:

Market Power Imbalance: Large agribusiness corporations (retailers, distributors, or wholesalers) often dictate prices, especially in commodity markets. Farmers are price takers, not price makers.

Perishability: Many crops are highly perishable, which forces farmers to accept lower prices just to move product before spoilage.

Lack of Storage & Transport: Without reliable storage or access to timely logistics, farmers are often forced to sell at low prices, especially during peak harvest periods.

Middlemen Chains: In many markets, there are multiple layers of intermediaries, each taking a cut, leaving the farmer with little bargaining power.

So yes, corporations (and other intermediaries) often exploit this situation to their advantage, leading to income insecurity for farmers.

What it does

Crop is a React Native marketplace app that lets users buy and sell crops. What makes it unique is our built-in pricing engine that automatically suggests fair market prices for each crop based on a variety of factors, helping buyers and sellers avoid exploitation and guesswork.

How we built it

We used:

React Native + Expo Router for cross-platform UI
Firebase for authentication, Firestore as our database, and Cloud Storage for image uploads
Custom Pricing Algorithm that dynamically suggests crop prices
Context API to manage a persistent shopping cart
Real-time chat features between buyers and sellers