OFFLINE-FIRST · AGRITECH PLATFORM

Fefifo Field & Crop Operations

A Malaysia-based AgriTech platform built for farmers and agronomy teams to manage crop planning, harvest cycles, tasks, and field operations—reliably, even in rural environments with inconsistent connectivity.

Environment
Rural-first
Architecture
Offline-first
Personas
Multi-role

The Core Problem

Agricultural operations have real structural constraints. Internet connectivity is limited at the farm level, communication between field teams and management is fragmented, and tracking tasks, expenses, and crop cycles is often manual. Decision-makers lack operational visibility when they need it most.

The real challenge was not building an app—it was designing a system that could operate reliably without constant connectivity, and then synchronize safely across multiple stakeholders.

  • Limited or inconsistent internet connectivity in rural environments
  • Fragmented communication between field teams and management
  • Manual tracking of tasks, expenses, and crop/harvest cycles
  • Lack of operational visibility for planning and decision-making
Key takeaway

Offline-first is not a UI feature. It’s a data consistency and trust problem—especially when multiple users sync at different times.

Our Role

Architecture
Backend & API design
Offline-first
Data sync framework
Operations
Enterprise web back office
Ownership
Deployment, monitoring, stability

What We Built

Offline-first Field App

An offline-capable mobile experience for farm-level execution—capturing tasks, crop activity, and field operations without requiring continuous internet access.

Robust Synchronization Layer

A deferred sync system to reconcile offline farm entries with the cloud backend—handling retries, conflicts, and multi-user scenarios without silent data corruption.

Enterprise Back Office

A web back office for centralized planning, monitoring, and operational control—supporting agronomy teams and management with visibility across farms and crop cycles.

System Components

Mobile
React Native (Offline-first)
Web
React Back Office
Backend
Node.js (Koa) REST APIs
Data / Infra
MongoDB · Redis · AWS EC2

How we approached it

  • Designed offline-first mobile workflows using local persistence and deferred synchronization
  • Built a data sync layer to reconcile farm-level entries with the cloud backend safely
  • Implemented role-based workflows for farmers, supervisors, and management teams
  • Designed a large, structured API surface to support rapid feature evolution without breaking field operations

Outcome

Digitized Field-to-Management Loop

  • Replaced fragmented manual tracking with structured operational workflows
  • Enabled reliable task and field activity capture at farm level
  • Improved operational visibility for agronomy and management teams

Offline-Resilient Execution

  • Field operations continue even under poor or absent connectivity
  • Conflict handling and consistency preserved in multi-user sync scenarios
  • Sync designed for retries and partial failure without data loss

Scalable Foundation for Expansion

  • Architecture designed for regional expansion beyond pilot deployments
  • Backend enabled rapid integration of new capabilities without breaking field workflows
  • Analytics-ready data pipelines for crop and productivity insights

What Made This Hard

This system was designed around field realities first—not ideal network conditions. Farms don’t have predictable connectivity, and multiple stakeholders often change data asynchronously. The platform had to stay correct even when the world around it was not.

Connectivity is Unreliable by Default

Rural internet is intermittent, slow, and unpredictable. The system needed to support partial connectivity, deferred syncing, and safe retries as normal behavior—not edge cases.

Multi-user Sync Conflicts

Field teams and management often update overlapping records at different times. Conflict handling and data consistency had to be designed intentionally to prevent silent corruption.

Agriculture is Cyclical and Operational

Crop planning, harvest cycles, and task execution span weeks and months. The system needed structured workflows that match how farming operations actually run—not generic task lists.

Long-term Ownership

The platform required stable uptime, monitoring, and continuous evolution. We treated deployment, observability, and performance stability as core deliverables—not post-launch extras.

Ready to build systems you can trust?

If your operations depend on field execution, offline-first reliability, or multi-stakeholder coordination, we can help you design and own the system end-to-end.

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