Bio terra
2022
Bio terra is a service that transforms agricultural waste into a biofertilizer that is more efficient than common compost, in order to improve soil quality of crops and provide productive autonomy for farmers.
Biotechnology
Branding
User research
UI
Conserva homepage
My role
This was an interdisciplinary project with three chemical engineers and another designer. I was the lead product designer. I also was in charge of the UI and i collaborated with Natalia Hernández, product designer, in the branding and design thinking processes. During the development of this project we had to do user research, field work and use design thinking for creating a solution to the excessive use of imported fertilizers in the agricultural industry.
Andrea Arias
Eduardo Vidal
Natalia Hernández
Paula Andrea Rojas Guerrero
Olasky Gamarra
Problem
1.5 tons of fertilizers are used each year in Colombia and close to 100% of them are imported. This, along with external factors such as wars and dollar exchange rates, have made prices to fluctuate a lot, rising significantly. On the other hand, the excessive use of chemical fertilizers deteriorate the soil quality as it decreases its biological activity and losses organic matter from the substrate, putting the country's food security at risk.
Research question
This made us ask ourselves:
Is important to mention that we understood better soil quality as: the ability of the soil to sustain biological productivity, maintain environmental quality, and promote the health of plants and animals.
How can we improve soil quality without using imported chemical fertilizers?
Community
Buenos Aires farm
Villeta, Colombia
Coffee has been grown on Buenos Aires farm in Villeta for 11 years. Currently there are about 16 hectares planted with coffee trees of three different varieties: Castillo, Caturra and Geisha. This represents about 45,000 coffee plants, which produce about 120 loads of coffee per year and 20 tons of dry coffee cherries (agriculture waste) per year.
For the user research, we decided to work with the coffee farm owned by the family of one of the group members.
Technologies
After evaluating potential technologies to improve soil quality, such as composting, biochar, and anaerobic digestion, and understanding the needs of the farm, we decided to focus on how we could enhance the composting process to make it more efficient and more attractive to users who typically buy imported chemical fertilizers.research, we decided to work with the coffee farm owned by the family of one of the group members.
Solution
We created a service that offers a more efficient compost using Bioaugmentation in a lab. This allows increasing the population of a certain type of bacteria found on the coffee residue of the farm, promoting the degradation of organic matter.
Insights
After doing scientific and user research we realized:
Microorganisms in composting aid in the utilization and availability of nutrients.
There is a perception that the process of composting is less effective and more labor-intensive.
Composting provides the opportunity for farms to sell their organic waste.
The process should require equal or less effort than the traditional method.
The solution should not involve more monetary investment than the current one.
Users want more convenient ways to apply fertilizers:
Ease of loading and transport
Minimization of the physical effort of application
Results in the crop (quality and quantity)
Lab process for bioaugmentation
We collected coffee residues from the farm and pour them into a liquid medium to ferment it.
In a solid culture medium selective for cellulose-degrading bacteria we spread one milliliter of the ferment. We let it grow for two days.
We selected the most efficient cellulose-degrading bacteria by identifying the largest diameter with transparent color in the medium.
Due to lack of time we had to leave our lab experimentation until the inoculum phase. However, we created a service model to speculate how this could work once we have our Bioaugmented Compost.