Benefits of Farmfoody.org

Benefits to Farmers

Attention Virginia Farmers: your farm may already be on the site. Contact us to access it.

Help with marketing. We offer assistance in quickly building a circle of friends around your farm through our database tools.

We understand how difficult it is for a small, independent or family farm to survive in today’s agricultural landscape. Our website takes a different approach to solving the problems of communication farmers face and is intended to help the independent farmer manage relations with customers and promote the farm through a novel means: social networking. Our site was designed with locality and maps as a vital part of our visitor's daily activity. To define features for our site, we identified four areas in which the small farmer can benefit from a social network.

The farmer lacks time to spend on marketing

Your farm home page represents your farm to the world. It is easy to update through filling out a simple form and update appears immediately online. When other members of Farm Foody become friends of your farm, your announcements automatically reach them through their home pages. There is no need for the farmer to maintain mailing lists or update web pages.

The farmer must focus on farming, not managing a website

We have taken pains to make every feature of our website simple, clear and easy to use. Update your information in minutes to appear immediately on your home page.

The farmer does not have time to answer customer’s questions

In the next phase of our website, we will be adding a Frequently Asked Questions system to the features available to farmers. The FAQ has proved to be extremely useful on Davenport’s farm at reducing the number of questions he receives about his products.

The farmer finds it difficult to communicate with customers

With only telephone, roadside signs and advertisements in local papers, it can be difficult for the farmer to quickly communicate changes to customers. When the strawberry patch runs out, how do you let customers know quickly and easily that the patch is closed? With bulletins that appear on their personal page! It is easy to post bulletins advising users of new products and events at your farm (they work a bit like classified ads).

We believe the social network benefits farmers as customers become “friends” of the farm, which enables the farmer to immediately communicate with their best customers through a bulletin system. Visitors and other members of the site explore connections between farms made by friends. As in life, they find farms by “word of mouth,” by where their friends go. Friends show support for the farm they chose to associate themselves with, becoming an advocates for the farm.

Locality is also important. Our site was designed with locality and mapping as a vital part of daily activity. We recognize most customers of farms selling directly to customers will be local to the farm, perhaps part of a “100 mile” eat local and fresh movement. We recognize that most farms selling successfully to customers will be clustered around major urban centers. Locality is built in to our site, thanks to Google Maps.

We believe the social network has the possibility of bringing farmers and people together in a way that restores the balance that existed in small towns across America, where farmers and their customers lived and worked in close proximity. Our site is not just a searchable catalog of farms offering fresh, local produce, but the realization of a vision for a completely new way of interacting with independent farmers and supporting sustainable agriculture. We believe the social network can help the small farm survive and thrive in a big agriculture world.

We encourage farmers to register, since we are more than a catalog of local farms, but offer many interactive features, such as bulletins from farms, maps and you can become friends with farms and other users.

Help with marketing. For a small fee, we offer assistance in quickly building a circle of friends around your farm through our database tools. The following is testimony from Pablo Teodoro: 

From: Market Manager
Date: August 19, 2008 9:58:33 AM EDT
To: Tom Davenport
Subject: Re: farm foody and blanket friends request
Dear Tom,

It's my pleasure to let you know that Nokesville Farmers'
Market now has 136 foody friends on FarmFoody.org. This is
important because this is at least 100 more friends than
we had before Steve Knoblock performed his internal friends
request which cast a wide net for us with no effort on our
part and at a modest cost. As a farmer, you know that our
purest commodity is time. It was taking a goodly bit of
time to send invitations to Foodys one at a time. Steve
was able to invite 300 in short order. The approvals
continue to come in even after several weeks.

I want to thank you first for FarmFoody.org and the
important service you are providing farmers and consumers
by making a way for them to connect freely, safely, and
purposefully. Secondly, thank you for suggesting Steve's
mass friends request service. It has made the process
virtually effortless and fast. As you know, I am now
sending at least one bulletin to our FarmFoody customers
each week that entices to our Market. So lastly, thanks
for helping to make the Nokesville Farmers' Market
a continuing success!

Gratefully,

Pablo

Pablo Teodoro
Market Manager
Nokesville Farmers' Market
Always Fresh, Always Local
(703) 794-7057
Open-Air Market from June through October Every Saturday 8 AM - Noon
Farm & Community-Fresh Produce & Goods
http://www.farmfoody.org/profile/show/277.html

Benefits to Foodys

We wanted to create a site that was more than a catalog of farms people to come once and a while when looking for a local farm, but to create a place where they enjoy coming to, can participate in the life of the farm and engage in activities. Our purpose is to enable people to be connected to the farm in a meaningful way.

What can you do as a 'foody?'