r/PrecisionAg

Hi everyone, I'm working on a 30-day research project where I need to detect nitrate and ORP in my soil, but I cannot afford anything that's too out of my budget (150 - 200 USD). For ORP, I've found the Aquasol ORP meter or the HM Digital ORP-200 which seem to be the only available handheld meters I can get, though for Nitrate I'm pretty stumped.

I've read that you could use a distilled water and soil extract for an Aquarium test for Nitrate, but I wanted something that was accurate enough for credible research. I would really appreciate any suggestions regarding Nitrate and ORP tests that could be done at home.

Been building Agrum AI since November. It’s a conversational farm assistant. You talk to it, it logs everything from conversation into structured records that you can view, gives you a morning briefing, answers farm questions, identifies disease from photos.

Yesterday I lost a competition. One of the judges said I was pitching it wrong. That I should focus on the documentation angle. That the real value is giving farmers a verified farm record for the first time, not the AI features.

I’ve been so focused on the ‘removing guesswork’ angle that I never stopped to think if documentation was actually the stronger pitch.

What do you think? Is farm record keeping actually a pain point for smallholder farmers? Or do farmers not care about records until they need a loan and get rejected?

Genuinely trying to figure out if I’m solving the right problem the wrong way or just solving the wrong problem entirely