Mission and trust

Infrastructure for collective learning about soil.

OpenSoil connects practical field experience, scientific methods, structured records, and open tools so people can understand what worked, where, how it was measured, and whether it can be repeated.

Why OpenSoil

The missing story is how soil changes

Soil information is scattered across laboratory reports, spreadsheets, photographs, microscopes, notebooks, farm records, research papers, and personal experience.

Most records describe a place at one point in time. OpenSoil is designed around the sequence: initial conditions, intervention, follow-up, crop and soil response, economics, persistence, and review.

Turn scattered soil observations into shared, usable knowledge about what works, where it works, why it works, and whether it keeps working.

Founding team

Two programmers carrying a farm legacy forward

Brothers Christopher and James Jenkins grew up on the family farm. OpenSoil brings together what they learned there with their experience building software, managing businesses, and making decisions under real financial constraints.

Co-founder · Backend engineering

Christopher Jenkins

Chris is a backend developer who has helped build the OpenSoil website and is shaping the reliable technical foundation the larger platform will need. He brings a long-term engineering mindset to systems that must protect data, preserve methods, and keep working as the community grows.

He is also a family man who enjoys time outdoors. Growing up on the farm gives his technical work a practical center: software should reduce friction, respect people's time, and remain maintainable instead of becoming another burden.

Backend systemsDependable softwareFarm perspectiveFamily and outdoors

Co-founder · Vision and farm operations

James Jenkins

James is the product visionary behind OpenSoil. His curiosity about soil science led to a simple question: how can complex chemistry and mathematics be distilled into connected ideas that help a grower move from a soil result to a better field decision?

He spent four years managing the financial side of a coffee shop and now manages finances for the family farm. That experience keeps the vision grounded. Increasing yield means little if input costs erase the gain, and no recommendation is useful if it loses sight of cash flow, crop rotations, seed selection, risk, and the realities of running a business.

James wants OpenSoil to help farmers find their true north: improve incrementally, plan ahead, strengthen the soil, and leave farms and ranches that the next generation can inherit without being overwhelmed by missing records or preventable complexity.

Soil curiosityFarm economicsPlain-language ideasNext-generation stewardship

Shared foundation

OpenSoil is being built from the belief that good software and good stewardship have something important in common: both preserve context, make the next decision clearer, and leave a stronger foundation for whoever comes next.

Product principles

Trust is part of the data model

Open participation becomes useful evidence when sources, context, methods, permissions, and uncertainty stay visible.

Scientific transparency

Show where data came from, how it was measured, calculations, assumptions, uncertainty, review, and method version.

Local relevance

Compare by region, climate, soil, crop, irrigation, pH, salinity, management, and time period.

Progressive disclosure

Lead with plain language while keeping technical fields, methods, raw sources, and code available.

Honest evidence

Support positive, negative, conflicting, failed, and inconclusive outcomes—not only success stories.

Farmer ownership

Let contributors keep records private, group-shared, anonymized, public, or scheduled for later release.

AI as assistant

Label AI output, expose sources, and never replace scientific judgment, expert review, or user responsibility.

Four connected layers

One knowledge loop, not four disconnected products

Community

Questions, answers, discussion, expert review, and collaboration.

Records

Fields, tests, observations, treatments, images, costs, and outcomes.

Evidence

Case studies, comparisons, methods, confidence, and limitations.

Intelligence

Statistics, scientific search, reproducible analysis, and labeled AI assistance.

Data ownership

Open knowledge without forced exposure

A farmer should not have to publish exact locations, financial records, clients, or proprietary practices to benefit from the platform.

1. You retain ownership
Original data remains yours.
2. You choose visibility
Private, invited, group, anonymized, public, or future release.
3. Public data has a license
Reuse permissions are explicit.
4. Contributors receive credit
Stable versions support citation.
5. Changes are versioned
Corrections and withdrawals remain understandable.
6. AI use is disclosed
Training and assistance policies are visible.

AI policy

Useful assistance, visible limits

AI may help

Summarize reports
Normalize units
Extract PDF tables
Suggest missing metadata
Find similar projects
Explain scientific terms
Generate draft charts
Flag unsupported claims

AI must not

Invent measurements
Hide uncertainty
Replace laboratory testing
Treat correlation as causation
Endorse products without evidence
Present claims as settled science
Silently rewrite source data
Replace accountable review

Practical roadmap

Build the learning loop in stages

Each phase should become genuinely useful before the platform claims the next layer.

1
Community foundation
Accounts, profiles, structured questions, answers, tags, search, moderation, saved posts, and notifications.
Current product focus
2
Field records
Fields, gardens, crops, seasons, tests, treatments, images, notes, costs, yields, and privacy.
3
Project timelines
Baselines, interventions, follow-up, control plots, repeated trials, and case-study generation.
4
Analysis
Normalization, comparisons, statistical summaries, maps, R and Python reports, and exports.
5
AI assistance
Source-linked extraction, summaries, missing-context checks, similar cases, and follow-up suggestions.
6
Open research network
Multi-farm trials, research groups, public protocols, open APIs, citations, partnerships, and independent replication.

Core features remain free

Help build an evidence system the soil community can trust.

Choose a contribution path