Grand Rapids — City High Middle School junior Krishna Mano wanted to build connections between farmers and consumers — so he developed an app to do exactly that.
Its name is Krishi, a digital “market” designed to help farmers move crops and limit waste, and to improve consumers’ access to fresh, locally grown food.
Though the app is still in the pilot stage, the framework for Krishi is in place and already showing promise. It was recently selected by U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten as the winning entry in the Congressional App Challenge for Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District.
“The app Krishi stood out because it helps directly connect our hard-working West Michigan farmers with consumers to ensure fresh, local produce is easily accessible,” Scholten told SNN. “This app is a creative, real-world solution that benefits our economy and reduces food waste.”
The Krishi app started out as a project for the International Baccalaureate Middle-Years program at City. To cap off the program in their 10th-grade year, I.B. students are asked to write an essay about something they’re passionate about.
“For my project, I knew I wanted to do something with technology that could also have an impact on my community,” Krishna said.
He said farming was a natural focal point; Krishna’s parents came to the U.S. from India, where others in his family own and operate a farm purchased by his great-grandparents in the 1930s. The farm is a beloved spot for Krishna and his family when they visit India, and the subject of agriculture is close to his heart.
“Krishna’s connection to the agricultural community is a great example of how innovation that’s rooted in personal experience can be meaningful,” Scholten said.
The Road to Krishi
With a general topic in mind, Krishna visited the Fulton Street Market and chatted with local vendors about the challenges they face when trying to sell their produce.
“A vast majority of them said that their main concern was that they couldn’t sell their produce in time, before it perished away,” Krishna said. “A few local farms that I’ve gone to since I was little told me that 20% to 40% of their produce ends up getting wasted. … So I felt a need to make the situation easier for them.
“Having an online option, like a digital farmers market, (would make) it easier for consumers to get their produce and for farmers to sell all of it.”
His original plan was to write about how such an app might work; but Krishna, who’s been learning to code for years, soon realized he’d rather build it than just talk about it.
‘I wanted to do something with technology that could also have an impact on my community.’
— junior Krishna Mano
“At first I wasn’t sure if my project would be a full-blown app or just a general idea of what the app could look like,” he said. “A few months after we started the project, I was like, ‘OK, this could actually become an application.’”
So he got to work, coding and programming both the front and back ends of the app himself.
“The front end is everything that the user sees — it’s the buttons you click on, the logos you see, the forms and their listings. And then the back end is where all of that data is stored,” Krishna said. “Once I got comfortable with the interface the user would see, I created these data storage centers online … and then I just built it up from there, giving each button functionality, giving a place for the data to be stored, things like that.”
Krishi allows farmers, consumers and even delivery drivers to connect. By creating accounts with the service, farmers gain the ability to advertise and sell the produce, customers can peruse the offerings and order what they want, and drivers can take on delivery tasks as they would with Uber Eats or Doordash.
The name, Krishi, means “agriculture” in Sanskrit and Hindi. It’s also a “nice play on words,” Krishna said, with its similarity to his name.
Krishna completed the earliest version of the app in February 2024. Throughout that spring and summer, he made updates based on feedback from teachers, farmers and friends. He submitted it to the Congressional App Challenge in September, and in December, he received word that he’d won.
The app is fully functional, and a small group of farmers and consumers are already using it as Krishna continues to pilot test it and work out the kinks before taking the app to the general public. He hopes to do that soon, possibly this summer, though it may take longer.
Once it’s finished, Krishna hopes to make it available in the App Store and on Google Play.
Solving Problems
Krishna’s success in the Congressional App Challenge earned him a trip to Washington, D.C. in early April, where he met with hundreds of other budding programers and demonstrated his app for representatives from tech companies like Apple, Google, Meta and more. During the two-day event, he and his fellow winners also heard from keynote speakers including U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
He called the trip “probably one of the greatest experiences of my life.”
Krishna said this experience has taught him about the power everyone has to make a difference, if they put in the effort.
“We all have the ability to solve problems as long as we’re willing to think critically enough about them and find the root of the issue and use our personal experiences, and the shared experiences of other people, to solve them,” he said.
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