Post-Harvest Storage Monitoring

Mission Alignment

In the United States, an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the food supply is wasted, and loss at the farm and storage level is a meaningful contributor for small farms specifically. Preventing even a modest share of that loss is a food-security gain without growing a single additional calorie — and it reuses the same sensor hardware built for field monitoring rather than requiring a whole new platform.

Problem Statement

Small farms with on-site cold storage, root cellars, or grain bins mostly lack affordable monitoring for temperature, humidity, spoilage-risk atmosphere, and power-outage detection. Loss from spoilage, pests, or improper storage conditions is common and often invisible until the damage is already done.

Scope Boundary

In Scope

• Storage-environment sensor nodes — an indoor, enclosed variant of the field sensor hardware
• Power-outage and backup-battery alerting
• Spoilage-risk alert logic layered onto the shared data platform

Out of Scope

• The core field sensor hardware and data platform themselves — this solution is primarily a new application of the existing shared base, plus a few storage-specific sensors and alert rules

Product Components

Storage Sensor Node

• Reuses the field sensor node's core electronics in an indoor-rated variant
• Adds CO2 sensing for modified-atmosphere spoilage risk in enclosed storage
• Adds power-loss detection with battery backup so an outage triggers an alert rather than going unnoticed

Alert Logic

• Threshold- and duration-based spoilage risk scoring specific to storage type — grain bin moisture and heat versus cold-storage temperature excursion

Phased Milestones

1. Identify one or two pilot storage use cases with a co-operator farm, based on what that farm actually has on site
2. Adapt the field sensor node for indoor, enclosed use and add CO2 and power-loss sensing
3. Build spoilage-risk alert rules validated against known agronomic and food-safety thresholds
4. Field pilot across one full storage season, measuring any prevented loss event

Open Research Questions

• What documented temperature, humidity, and CO2 thresholds and timeframes predict spoilage or mycotoxin risk for common small-farm storage types, and what do USDA and extension literature say about them?
• What is the real magnitude of preventable farm-level post-harvest loss for small and regenerative farms specifically, as opposed to global aggregate food-waste statistics?

Success Metrics

• At least one documented prevented-loss event during a pilot season, directly attributable to an alert from the system
• The large majority of storage-node hardware reused directly from the field sensor platform, validating the shared-hardware strategy