This is way cool.

http://www.localharvest.org /

http://www.herald-democrat.com/articles/20...

>>>snip
One of those ideas is Local Harvest. The idea marries the high-tech world of the Internet with a sense of community agriculture. It’s part of a growing trend of consumers seeking foods that are fresher, produced with fewer chemicals. The local harvest concept helps farmers cut costs and capture a larger portion of the food dollar. It also keeps food dollars at home.

Localharvest.org has a search engine that finds local food producers within a certain radius of a zip code. A search brings a list of producers with descriptions of the crops and other products a farm or ranch offers. Grayson, Fannin and Collin county shoppers can find local sources of products including chickens, turkeys, lamb, beef, goats, pork, almost any seasonal vegetable and herb, honey and mushrooms and food-based products like goat milk soap and lavender sachets.

Local Harvest also promotes another concept: Community supported agriculture. Some of the local producers participate in CSA as well. In this plan, consumers pay an up-front cost, and some producers charge an additional fee throughout the growing season. Some spread out all the costs across the growing season.

This gives farmers money to buy seed and for other planting expenses and guarantees participants a portion of the harvest. They share the risk and bounty. The advantages are cheaper, fresher food in good years and less pollution from crop transit. The disadvantages are that the share is a portion of what’s harvested that week and the crops could fail.