Farming Faces & Web Tools

      Posted On: October 18, 2011

Buy Local blogs and websites abound these days,
offering interesting content and ideas that appeal to the foodie movement.  A unique and useful (and free!) tool was recently introduced to FMC that stands apart from the rest of the food focused resources out there.  Small Farm Central’s ‘ Farming Faces‘ is a web tool that was created with the farmers in mind.  Throughout Farming Faces’ development, creator Simon Huntley prioritized connecting the farmer with their customer base, and showing the customers who is growing their food.  So, what is Farming Faces?

At first glance, it looks like a farmers market newsfeed with updates by farmers.  Each farmer/vendor in a market is given a profile page.  A google map is created with the profile information, giving a visual of the geographic distribution of farmers and vendors.  The farmers market is able to imbed the map into their preexisting website and can also link to their Farming Faces newsfeed page.

So, how likely is it that a newsfeed will get updated by farmers and vendors that are already stretched for time?  Of course, it will vary.  Conveniently, the farmers profile can be linked to their Facebook page and Local Harvest.  So, updates only need to happen in one place.

Each farmer gets only one profile page, so if they attend multiple markets, there is no need to have multiple profiles. Comparing this to other available tools, it is unique to see that the farmers are kept front and center.  Farmers and managers are encouraged to put the farmers face as their profile picture, keeping shoppers connected with the source of their food.  Of course, often farmers attend multiple markets in one day and aren’t actually selling at every market and they choose to feature a photo of their products.

The Farming Faces map is worth at least a thousand words to customers.  Other tools are popping up too.  A new website, FarmersMarket.com, is in the works and to get people jazzed for the launch, they are holding a photo contest that benefits FMC!  They are looking for the best squash/pumpkin photo and for every submission, Farmersmarket.com is giving $1 to FMC.  So, Get Your Squash On and enter lots of photos!