Gardener object
The gardener object captures entity information about individual gardeners and farming corps. All other data objects build from the gardener object, as it defines prerequisite information that other backend resources and services depend on.
Overview
The gardener object is segmented into two buckets, each with their own unique fields and use cases:
- Individual gardeners are natural persons who cultivate their own harvests.
- They may have both certified orchards like organic certified and heirloom preserve orchards, and/or standard orchards.
- These gardeners can be part of gardener collectives, which are groups of related gardeners.
- Farming Corporations are organized agricultural entities.
- They can be linked to commercial or community-oriented orchards, agricultural cooperatives, private farms, public agricultural companies, certified agricultural entities and branches, or co-ops.
- Farming Corporations can only be directly linked to standard orchards.
As a foundational model for the platform, other objects depend on and use certain data attached to the gardener object. Before using the platform to establish an orchard, view your harvests, or analyze consolidated data about crop health, you must first create a new gardener record and populate it with data.
Key terms
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Individual gardeners | Authorized gardeners who operate their own orchards, or act on behalf of agricultural organizations as authorized gardeners. |
| Farming Corporations | Organized agricultural entities that have authorized gardeners, orchard owners, or agricultural consultants who act within the entity. Farming corporations must create records within the Orchard object. See orchardType, orchardStatus and orchardConfiguration for minimum requirements. |
| Shared gardens | An organized garden entity that allows an authorized gardener to create and transfer crops to the garden, assigns a garden caretaker to maintain the garden, and designates a garden recipient to receive crop yields. See sharedGardens to see available types. |
| Farming partnership | An arrangement between two or more people to oversee farming operations and share its harvests and responsibilities. In a general farming partnership, all members share both harvests and responsibilities. Professionals like agricultural specialists and horticulturists often form a limited responsibility partnership. |
| Family garden | A small scale, personal garden with one owner who cultivates the garden and who may or may not sell excess yields. |
Data model
As a foundational object, other objects (like vegetables, gourds, flowering plants, etc.) share (or inherit) certain fields from the gardener object. This means that updates made to the gardener object have downstream effects on other objects. For example:
- An orchard record must always have an associated gardener record.
- Harvest yields must always have an associated orchard record.
- Historical yields contain past harvest yields, and so on.
Keep in mind that unless stated otherwise, platform features inherit the data model’s logic and is sensitive to departures from that logic. See introduction to the data model to understand logic and patterns that persist throughout the platform.
Related entities
The gardener object manages relationships through the gardenerCoop field. This field represents a cooperative of related gardeners, and allows discrete orchards to reference other gardeners or agricultural organizations. You can specify different permissions by defining a relationship from one of the enum types. The platform currently supports these relationship types:
- Authorized gardeners: Individuals with full access to orchard operations
- Orchard owners: Individuals with ownership interest in an orchard
- Garden caretakers: Individuals responsible for garden management
- Garden founders: Individuals who established and supplied the garden
- Agricultural consultants: External entities or individuals with limited access
Of these enums, only agricultural consultants can be part of a farming corporation. This means that the gardenerCoop field is largely associated with the individual gardener bucket of the gardener object.
Custom fields
The gardener object supports extensibility through custom fields. Custom fields allow agricultural organizations to store additional data specific to their growing requirements without modifying the platform’s core schema. Like other parts of the platform, custom fields are associated to pre-existing objects in our data model and limited to certain objects. For example:
- A custom field that adds data about a gardener or individual corporation must live in a gardener object record.
- A custom field that adds data about harvest goals must live in an orchard object record, and so on.
This means that custom fields are not their own object that can be flexibly incorporated into the platform as needed. Rather, custom fields are additional fields attached to existing objects and must adhere to the data model’s logic.
To learn more about custom field behaviors, see an example in our create a workflow with custom fields doc. To learn about what objects support custom fields, see the custom fields doc.
Agreement management
The platform supports growing contract signing through the readyToSignAgreement field in the gardener object, with different signing requirements for different orchard types and agreement categories. Common agreements for all orchards include GROW-8, Declaration of Growing Region, and Digital Harvest Agreement.
The platform also supports orchard-specific agreements as part of the farming corporation bucket:
- Commercial orchards require Orchard Resolution and Articles of Cultivation
- Shared gardens need Garden Participant Identification Form and Garden Agreement
- Farming partnerships require Farming Partnership Agreement documentation