Know Your Farmer

As part of the national initiative to reconnect communities with their producers, the USDA has created Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, a program providing producer resources and support for rural development. This $65million initiative aims to "begin a national conversation to help develop local and regional food systems and spur economic opportunity." The site has been active since mid-September 2009, and has a great list of resources, including grant/program information. See Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack's video on YouTube.

In my opinion, however, there seems to be a lack of follow-through and substance as far as site development is concerned; I can't speak for the program itself, but the site appears to have a lot of room for content. For example, the section titled "Ideas and Stories" is 'Coming Soon,' and it seems that most of the sections are missing the 'interactive' element necessary to engage the user. Besides the local farmers market search feature (provided through USDA AMS), which I found to be helpful, there are no real action items to get people involved in the process of 'connecting' with their local farmer. I would like to see more state-specific resources and media, maybe some tips for eating local and getting your children involved in agriculture, and a well-updated news reel that pertains to relevant agricultural news (the current news feed on the site is pretty weak as it refers to news within the scope of the USDA only). The site does a pretty good job of promoting awareness in regards to local food systems, healthy eating and natural resources conservation, but falls short on making the connection between the goals of the initiative and the average user (who will most likely not be applying for grants or awards). Those resources already exist on the USDA's site...I thought this site was designed for the general public.

And finally, what really gets me, is the failure of the site to support their key tagline: "Every Family Needs a Farmer, Do You Know Yours?" Well, for many people, the answer is 'no,' and the conversation stops there. I think that here they should link up with some sort of local farm search service, like MarketMaker. In fact, I think I'll make the suggestion