FarmBucks

Description

By John Robb:

"Here's a quick glimpse of the future of food, and it's a good future.

When you and I buy local food, we typically have two options.

We can buy them at a farmer's market or we can buy them as a weekly delivery through a CSA (community supported farm).

From my perspective, both methods have flaws. The market is too dynamic (risky for the micro farmer) and a subscription is too rigid (too little flexibility for the customer).

Optimally, it would be great if there was a program that had the benefits of both approaches. The flexibility of the market and the shared support of the subscription.

That's where an innovation from a local farm called "Fat Moon" comes in. They've created a program called FarmBucks. FarmerBucks allows customers buy a year's worth of purchases before the season at a discount to market prices.

That support allows the farmer to cut out extremely expensive financial and retail middlemen to purchase seed and labor for the growing season (note that this similar to what is going on with Kickstarter and the development of new products). The farmer then brings the variety of different vegetables produced to a local farmers market to sell.

The supporter/customer then has the flexibility to select when to purchase food (they can skip a week) and what to purchase.

This sounds like an interesting innovation. Combine this with software from places like Buckybox, which allows customers and farmers to act like a dynamic community, and we're getting closer to a resilient solution." (http://www.resilientcommunities.com)