A FarmBlock Technology Initiative · McCartney's Concentric Company
Offline-first precision agriculture for urban micro-farms.
AgriMesh is a network of autonomous robotic micro-farm nodes — each capable of sensing, deciding, and acting without Internet. Built for food deserts, schools, and community farms where broadband is unreliable and staffing is limited.
The Problem
"When connectivity fails, cloud-dependent monitoring and analytics can degrade exactly when reliability matters most."
Urban food deserts and under-resourced community agriculture programs face a practical constraint that most precision-ag systems assume away: intermittent connectivity, uneven staffing, and limited capacity to monitor dispersed sites.
AgriMesh is designed for the opposite assumption: intermittent backhaul is normal, and micro-farm nodes must continue operating safely and usefully without it.
1 in 5
Miami-Dade residents face food insecurity
40%
of urban land sits underused or vacant
0%
broadband required for AgriMesh node operation
20%+
target water savings vs. rule-based baseline
NSF SBIR Phase I
Objective A
Each AgriMesh Node autonomously manages irrigation and safety checks when connectivity is lost — no cloud dependency required. The sensor-to-actuation pipeline runs entirely on-device.
Success Metrics
≥95% successful actuation events over a 30-day continuous trial
≥98% telemetry data captured and stored locally
Verified safe failover (e-stop, irrigation limits) under outage scenarios
Objective B
A self-healing neighborhood mesh connects multiple farm nodes, sharing telemetry and commands across dispersed sites — even when Internet backhaul is intermittent or absent.
Success Metrics
p95 command latency ≤250 ms across 2 hops
≥97% node reachability uptime over 30 days
Network reconvergence ≤60 seconds after node failure
Objective C
Edge AI modules run directly on each node — optimizing irrigation schedules and detecting sensor or valve faults without sending data to the cloud.
Success Metrics
≥20% water savings vs. rule-based baseline
≤5% yield difference vs. baseline
Anomaly detection: ≥90% precision / ≥80% recall on injected faults
Market Opportunity
AgriMesh's value proposition is clear: reduced labor per bed, improved yield stability, reduced water use, and fleet-level visibility across dispersed micro-sites. Competing solutions assume broadband and centralized compute. AgriMesh does not.
Municipal / Public Health Programs
City-run urban farm programs and community garden initiatives seeking reduced labor and guaranteed uptime.
School Districts / CTE Programs
STEM and Career & Technical Education programs that need reliable, low-maintenance farm infrastructure.
Nonprofits / CDCs
Community development corporations and food-access nonprofits managing dispersed micro-farm sites.
Housing Authorities
Public housing garden initiatives requiring automated, low-staffing food production at scale.
Business Model
Node kits (robot + sensors + mesh hardware) and installation. Estimated ~$8K–$10K in materials per node.
Cloud dashboard, analytics, updates, and support per node. Target pricing: $300–$600/node/month, validated through Phase I customer interviews.
Training, curriculum materials for schools and community programs, and maintenance contracts.
Illustrative 3-year payback model: ~$10K node cost + installation, $400/month subscription → break-even at ~Month 25. Phase I refines these figures with market feedback from ~20 buyer interviews.
AgriMesh · NSF SBIR Phase I · Miami-Dade County
We are actively seeking pilot site partners, letters of commitment from school districts and municipal programs, and research collaborators. Phase I buyer interviews are open.