Designing a Better Farm-to-Market – MDE Students Design AI Tools to Promote Local Agriculture

Darren Chin (MDE ’25) and Akhil Dayal (MDE ’25) both grew up surrounded by farms – Chin in Edmonton, Alberta, Dayal in the greater Oakland area. As the two were gameplanning their Independent Design Engineering Project for the Master in Design Engineering program, which is co-run by the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Harvard Graduate School of Design, they decided to focus on a product that would suit the specific needs of small businesses and mom-and-pop shops. Returning to their roots, they decided local farms would be an ideal sector to try to make an impact.

“We both came from work environments that taught us about big companies, but the skills that small businesses need to thrive are different, and such an interesting system to really unravel,” Chin said. “When we thought about what kinds of small businesses are facing the most difficulties, we realized that small farms face the challenges of both small businesses and the agricultural sector. So we decided to really dig into that.”

Digging into the world of local farms ultimately led them to found Terra, an artificial intelligence-based platform that streamlines and eases many of the administrative tasks of farming, such as taxes and product sales. It also enables easy crop and market analysis, helping farms identify the best crops to focus on in any given season. Terra has already been tested with two farming collectives: Ho’ola Farms in Hawaii, and the Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming in the Hudson River Valley region of New York.

Read the full article by Matt Goisman here: https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2025/05/designing-better-farm-market