Day one, in public — what GroundYield is and is not
This project is one day old as a public stack: domain, GitHub identity, website, and open documents landed in the same window. That belongs at the top — not in a footnote.
GroundYield is an attempt at a modular smallholder farm pilot near Vilanculos, Inhambane Province, Mozambique, with costs, yields, and failures published openly. Operator: Jacques Theron. Self-funded. No legal entity yet. No local partner named on the accountability page, because none has agreed in public.
Scars first (not a blank CV)
I am not a tourist in Vilanculos. I previously farmed at scale here (own operation ~3,500 ha; larger partnership/Toro-era context), then left after COVID-era costs and bad choices — operator-disclosed loss order ~ZAR 10 million. I do not claim those hectares today. Day job: HSE shutdowns, Anabeeb, KSA. Return focus: Rumbacaca — listen first.
Full story: LESSONS_MZ.md · Risks: RISK_AND_GAPS.md. GroundYield is the opposite bet: small modular units, open costs, public failures.
What exists
- Public site and repo: charter, integrity rules, Portuguese page, offline field pack
- Public unit registry with count 0: units.html
- Cost bands labeled as planning — not field quotes
- Season 1 scale/yield figures: design aims, not results
What does not exist
- Land access secured
- Farmers enrolled
- Enrolled agronomy rates gated (G5-A); L1 demos only
- Independent auditor or NGO co-signer
- Disclosed multi-month runway figure (stop scenario is described; dollars still a gap)
Why publish before the trip
Most projects write measurement rules after the first good photo. We are trying the opposite: anti-fraud and data rules first, so inventing wins has something public to collide with.
- Baseline before impact claims
- Truth marks: fact / estimate / hearsay
- No silent rewrites — dated corrections
- Dual evidence before headline yield claims
- Unit counts only from the registry
Full policy: INTEGRITY.md
Adversarial review (what it got right)
Day-one critique: docs ahead of ground contact; self-referential trust; targets before feasibility; early “shipped” claims briefly outran live HTTP 200s; agronomy drafts must not go live without review; households must not be enrolled into silent abandonment.
Those points were substantially right. Deploy is healthy now (production equals
main). Strategy risk remains: more markdown does not create a pilot.
AI disclosure
Much of the documentation and site work was AI-assisted (including tools such as Grok), under my direction. I am accountable for what is published. If the prose looks machine-helped, it often was. Concealment would be worse. The test is honest stage and numbers — and public corrections when we fail.
What we are asking for
Not money in this post.
- Serious local introductions near Vilanculos (with consent)
- An agronomist to review WhatsApp drafts before any farmer is messaged
- Written quotes for irrigation and inputs
- Critical readers of UNIT, ECONOMICS, INTEGRITY
team@groundyield.org · GitHub issues
Start here
| Link | Why |
|---|---|
| Home | Status + start paths |
| White paper | Living thesis |
| Docs library | Full map |
| Unit registry | Count = 0 |
| LESSONS_MZ | Prior scars |
| X thread copy | Ready to post |
| OUTREACH.md | How we promote |
If this only produces documents, we failed — and we should say so. If it produces data, that data will be public either way. Pressure-test us.
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