Farm Profitability

Internet, meet farming.

You can find just about anything on the internet nowadays.  And if a few startups have their way, you’ll soon be able to find fresh farming products direct from small, local farms as well.

FarmsReach, a Bay area company, offers members a suite of mobile applications that restaurants and farms can use, which will help to create an online food marketplace that networks farms with restaurants.  This would obviously be a big boon to increasing farm profitability.

Food might be in the process of undergoing a transition similar to the one that swept through air travel, classified ads, and many more industries.

The current system does a really good job of concealing how and who grows food.  Farmers therefore find that they have a hard time showcasing their value-added products, especially in the face of the billion dollar dominance that Sysco, the leading American food distributor, currently holds with restaurants.  The choices that restaurants currently have are few; either use  Sysco’s online system or call local farms directly.  Due to the ease of ordering online and the speed and reliability that it affords, only the pickiest of chefs are opting for option number two.

Farmsreach knows that ordering online is fast, easy and reliable and they aim to bring those very qualities to the local farming industry.   In their model, farmers with smartphones could quickly snap photos of their produce, upload them into “virtual stalls” and restaurants could then browse through the vegetables online, picking exactly what they wanted.  It’s a farmer’s market with a welcome, high-tech twist.

More and more, demanding consumers have shown a keen interest in buying locally or knowing where their product comes from.

Sharing FarmsReach’s vision, other startups are getting information into consumers’ hands.   Squash and Vine, a feature-rich social network (much like Facebook) is being created by a trio of University of Berkeley’s Information School students to help network farms, retailers and food consumers.   As well, a group of Santa Cruz activists created Local Harvest, a service for finding small farms.  Local Harvest now reaches four million people, and is the largest website directly connecting producers with local food consumers.   Squash and Vine’s founders aren’t looking to replace the currently food distribution infrastructure – they do, however, want to simplify the process for farmers and consumers.   Their mission is to combine the social networking aspects of Facebook with some of the ideals that created Local Harvest.

Though the above mentioned grassroot startups have had humble beginnings, their combined efforts have the power to very well revolutionize the industry.  If harnessed properly, these interwebs might transform the food web altogether.   With a tweaked food distribution systems, consumers would certainly have a lot to gain, as will the wealth of  local farmers that are looking to increase their farm profitability margins.