Local food is food that is produced within a short distance of where it is consumed, often accompanied by a social structure and supply chain different from the large-scale supermarket system.
Community-supported agriculture or cropsharing is a system that connects the producer and consumers within the food system more closely by allowing the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of a certain farm or group of farms. It is an alternative socioeconomic model of agriculture and food distribution that allows the producer and consumer to share the risks of farming. The model is a subcategory of civic agriculture that has an overarching goal of strengthening a sense of community through local markets.
A farmers' market is a physical retail marketplace intended to sell foods directly by farmers to consumers. Farmers' markets may be indoors or outdoors and typically consist of booths, tables or stands where farmers sell their produce, live animals and plants, and sometimes prepared foods and beverages. Farmers' markets exist in many countries worldwide and reflect the local culture and economy. The size of the market may be just a few stalls or it may be as large as several city blocks. Due to their nature, they tend to be less rigidly regulated than retail produce shops.
Delivery is the process of transporting goods from a source location to a predefined destination. Cargo is primarily delivered via roads and railroads on land, shipping lanes on the sea, and airline networks in the air. Certain types of goods may be delivered via specialized networks, such as pipelines for liquid goods, power grids for electrical power and computer networks such as the Internet or broadcast networks for electronic information. Car transport is a particular subgroup; a related variant is Autorack, which involves transport of autos by railroads.
A market garden is the relatively small-scale production of fruits, vegetables and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold directly to consumers and restaurants. The diversity of crops grown on a small area of land, typically from under one acre to a few acres, or sometimes in greenhouses, distinguishes it from other types of farming. A market garden is sometimes called a truck farm.
A food cooperative or food co-op is a food distribution outlet organized as a cooperative, rather than a private or public company. Food cooperatives are usually consumer cooperatives, where the decisions regarding the production and distribution of its food are chosen by its members. Like all cooperatives, food cooperatives are often based on the 7 Rochdale Principles, and they typically offer natural foods. Since decisions about how to run a cooperative are not made by outside shareholders, cooperatives often exhibit a higher degree of social responsibility than their corporate analogues.
The Food Project is a non-profit organization that employs teenagers on farms in Lincoln, Roxbury and the North Shore of Massachusetts. It focuses on community improvement and outreach, and education about health, leadership, charity, and sustainable agriculture. The youth are recruited from urban areas of Boston, Lynn, and surrounding suburbs to plant and harvest crops for sale at Farmers' Markets and CSAs, and donation to local hunger-relief organizations and homeless shelters. The program emphasizes community building and fosters good work ethic, providing a good foundation for future employment.
Équiterre is a Canadian non-profit and non-governmental organization, operating in Quebec. It manages a community-supported agriculture system of farms and consumers, including households and institutions.
An online grocer is either a brick-and-mortar supermarket or grocery store that allows online ordering, or a standalone e-commerce service that includes grocery items. There is usually a delivery charge for this service. Online grocery delivery services are available throughout Europe, Asia and North America, mostly in urban centres. The online ordering is done through e-commerce websites or mobile apps.
The term food system is describes the interconnected systems and processes that influence nutrition, food, health, community development and agriculture. A food system includes all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population: growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, distribution and disposal of food and food-related items. It also includes the inputs needed and outputs generated at each of these steps. A food system operates within and is influenced by social, political, economic, and environmental contexts. It also requires human resources that provide labor, research and education. Food systems are either conventional or alternative according to their model of food lifespan from origin to plate.
A community-supported fishery (CSF) is an alternative business model for selling fresh, locally sourced seafood. CSF programs, modeled after increasingly popular community-supported agriculture programs, offer members weekly shares of fresh seafood for a pre-paid membership fee. The first CSF program was started in Port Clyde, Maine, in 2007, and similar CSF programs have since been started across the United States and in Europe. Community supported fisheries aim to promote a positive relationship between fishermen, consumers, and the ocean by providing high-quality, locally caught seafood to members. CSF programs began as a method to help marine ecosystems recover from the effects of overfishing while maintaining a thriving fishing community.
A You-Pick ("U-Pick") or Pick-Your-Own (PYO) farm operation is a type of farm gate direct marketing (farm-to-table) strategy where the emphasis is on customers doing the harvesting themselves. A PYO farm might be preferred by people who like to select fresh, high quality, vine-ripened produce themselves at lower prices.
A foodshed is the geographic region that produces the food for a particular population. The term is used to describe a region of food flows, from the area where it is produced, to the place where it is consumed, including: the land it grows on, the route it travels, the markets it passes through, and the tables it ends up on. "Foodshed" is described as a "socio-geographic space: human activity embedded in the natural integument of a particular place." A foodshed is analogous to a watershed in that foodsheds outline the flow of food feeding a particular population, whereas watersheds outline the flow of water draining to a particular location. Through drawing from the conceptual ideas of the watershed, foodsheds are perceived as hybrid social and natural constructs.
Phat Beets Produce is an American food justice collective focusing on food justice in North Oakland, California, started by Max Cadji and Bret Brenner in 2007. Their programs include weekly farmer's markets, free produce stands, youth gardens, community supported agriculture programs, food and social justice workshops, and previously, a kitchen and cafe cooperative. Cadji helps residents have access to nutritious food by coordinating between farmers, institutions, and low-income communities to utilize empty land for urban gardening.
Freight Farms is a Boston-based agriculture technology company and was the first to manufacture and sell "container farms": hydroponic farming systems retrofitted inside intermodal freight containers. Freight Farms also develops farmhand, a hydroponic farm management and automation software platform, and the largest connected network of hydroponic farmers in the world. The company has installed more than 200 farms around the world, on behalf of individuals, entrepreneurs, educational and corporate campuses, and soil farmers.
Retail food delivery is a courier service in which a restaurant, store, or independent food-delivery company delivers food to a customer. An order is typically made either through a restaurant or grocer's website or mobile app, or through a food ordering company. The delivered items can include entrees, sides, drinks, desserts, or grocery items and are typically delivered in boxes or bags. The delivery person will normally drive a car, but in bigger cities where homes and restaurants are closer together, they may use bikes or motorized scooters. Recently, we have also seen the use of autonomous vehicles by companies like Starship Technologies, currently available in the USA and the UK to complete deliveries.
Shi Yan is a farmer and founder of the first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm in China.
Market Wagon is an online ordering and delivery service for ordering produce, meat, dairy, and prepared foods from local farmers and artisan food producers. It was founded in Indianapolis in 2016 and as of 2021 had multiple delivery hubs throughout the midwest and Tennessee.
Crowd Cow is an American online meat delivery marketplace. It connects fisheries and ranchers who raise livestock with consumers who want to buy meat.
