This is great. Is there something similar for finding local farms regardless of race?
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“Can” cost less is doing a lot of work there. I would guess it would mildly annoy people in power, but TBH this isn’t a way to save money. If it really was, it would be common practice already.
There are lots of people who frequent local / smaller farms for things like access to organic foods / rarer crops / community support, but I’ve never known it to be cheaper than the industrial produce one can get at your nearest supermarket. Supermarkets clobbered local guys for a reason and pricing was a huge part of that.
Lots of deadlinks and farming alliances with mission statements.
Not a lot of links to buy food from farmers.
Sadly and unsurprisingly, nothing near me. On the bright side, we do have a farmer’s market so I’ll just continue to patron that and say that if you have one near you, definitely check them out!
Region 5; Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin. Why are Ohio and Wisconsin grouped with the same link?
I imagine for the same reason Iowa and Nebraska are on the same page. https://blackfarmersindex.com/reg-7-iowa-and-nebraska
Wisconsin and Nebraska have such a small list that they’d be a waste of a page, I guess.
Well, only 2 within reasonable distance. One only sells microgreen kits. The other appears to be a supplier for restaurants, etc.
I zipped them an email to ask about private sales. But, definitely nothing on their website about sales and shipping to the public.
Finding a farm close where you want is made unnecessarily difficult by the site’s interface. The grouping of states in regions is a hindrance and once you get to your state, the farms can’t be sorted other than by their name, so you have to look through every single one of them to find the farms close to you.
Great idea, terrible execution.
But probably not a difficult fix. Websites can be updated.
People who produce bad design like that, are often resistant to change.
Or they’re inexperienced and don’t know any better.
Or they might welcome assistance from someone who knows how to do it, since their expertise is in farming and they don’t have a lot of money for web design. Such assistance could possibly qualify as a tax-deductible donation.
As a software developer making enterprise software, that simply isn’t true.
I have been responsible for making some pretty poor design choices and UX flows. I was never resistant to change and more just needed someone to say hey bro that’s dumb, I don’t why don’t we do it like this.
Now I know how to do X and won’t make the same mistakes again.
I’ve worked in IT for over 30 years. I have come across a lot of people who design terrible UIs and get all pissy when you suggest any improvements. I didn’t in any way want to imply that everybody is like that.
Thanks for coming back to reply. First I want to say that the downvotes you’ve received have been unnecessary imo and I think I should have added that my original comment was in my experience and purely anecdotal.
I guess it all depends on the person and whether they see constructive criticism as… well constructive or whether they see it as a slight against them. Like in any industry really.
Cmd-F or Ctrl-F to search for cities. It’s imperfect, but I found seven hits for my city instantly. I could search neighboring cities and towns the same way.
To add to this comment, it’s not hard to find any of this information. “States grouped into areas” scroll to find your state, or again ctrl+f. “Hard to find cities” thankfully living in my area and being somewhat familiar with said area I can scroll down the list and find farmers in my general area. Short of putting in my address and searching for ‘closest to’ which I hate anyway, this isn’t as bad an interface as op suggests.
I’m still going to say it’s just not great design; it presents you a large map that is not interactable in any way, then below that are bits of that map again with ordinary hyperlinks below for each state and/or region. Just let people click on the first map, or just ditch it entirely.
Once you’ve clicked on a state, you get a list of paragraph format entries sorted in the most useless way: alphabetically by business name.
Who is this website for?
It’s for the creator of the website, so they can virtue signal while producing something of dubious quality. Most of these farms are already discover-able on better, more comprehensive indexes.
at least you have something my state doesn’t even have anything lmao, it goes to a boilerplate page that gives little info
My state (big ag state) has a whopping 3 and 2 of those are hemp. The one that isn’t just hemp doesn’t have an area listed, just the state.
I mean I’m glad there are any… but yeah, not a super great resource for some areas lol
I would really like an Imperfect Foods replacement. Originally, IF was scratch and dent ugly veggies on discount with some consignment items. Post covid, prices crept up and then you had to pick and choose to get a deal, but you could still get a good box for under $40 every 2 wks that also included things like farro and yogurt. Misfit Marketplace bought them out and it took on a Whole Foods by mail vibe. Double to triple the regular grocery store prices. It would be $80+/week for the same box content which is galling. And it’s not the groceries, it’s MM. Who is paying $3 for 1 cucumber? $4 for 2 apples? $8 for a single pound of grapes or a pint of blueberries?
New potential produce sources are most welcome.
I had to drop Imperfect Food as well from the same problems. It was just more expensive than I needed. I haven’t found a replacement yet unfortunately. We are now just buying food as needed. I have been interested in a CSA but haven’t done it yet
Thank you! I did not know that. Last news that I heard about black farmers was about then getting screwed by massive ag conglomerates.
How is this not racist? If there were a service where you could choose to buy directly from white farmers peoples would lose their minds
Because, on average, black people are more economically disadvantaged than white people.
Choosing to explicitly buy from black farmers will, on average, tend to support those with the least financial means out of the general population of farmers, whereas choosing to explicitly buy from white farmers will, on average, tend to support those who are already more financially advantaged.
One side is directly choosing to help those most likely to be economically disadvantaged, the other would be explicitly ignoring those with the least means in order to help those who already have the most, thus the situations are not quite comparable.
I personally would prefer an index that directly assessed farmers based on overall wealth to determine who you should buy from, but because that’s extraordinarily difficult to constantly update & maintain, verify, etc, it can just be easier to divide among racial lines since that still tends to produce a grouping that is relatively similar.
If the concern is economic disadvantages, shouldn’t the selectivity be based on income and net worth instead of skin color? Maybe selling products from poor and independent farmers. A portion of every race is economically disadvantaged.
Edit: I really appreciate your response. I think you described the issue really well.
Well why do you think it is? Genuinely curious
Because racism is the discrimination of someone based on their ethnicity. If you are choosing one person over another due solely to their ethnicity, isn’t that discrimination? Shouldn’t people be judged not by the color of their skin? Explicitly advertising that you are selective solely based on race is racism.
I have seen this discussion happen over and over again and a big part of the misunderstanding is some people in the US have the definition of racism also involving power and some don’t. If your definition is the former, it’s what allows people to say “Fuck white people” isn’t racist with a straight face. Before you ask someone if something is racist, ask them what they think racism is. It will save a lot of time and aggravation for everyone.
This is a remedial question, but that doesn’t make it a bad question. It is a hard problem to solve, and calling an advantage based on race somehow not racist does sound paradoxical at first glance. It’s important to be able to entertain the explanation without outright assuming you’re being attacked by a bunch of obtuse racists.
Hopefully we agree that:
- black americans are at a statistically significant socioeconomic disadvantage compared to white americans, both historically and to this day, and
- this is a direct result of a history of systematic disadvantages specifically targeting them based on their race
Let’s pretend the second bullet point has been solved, that systemic racism is over and done, and we’ve established a perfectly equal union. Even if that’s the case, we are left with the first bullet point as an ongoing problem. The challenge is now, how do you undo the very apparent damage that our history of racism caused, without specifically giving advantages to that group based on their race? And the short answer to a very complex question is: you can’t.
So the US government instituted “Affirmative Action” the goal of which was to deliberately give a targeted advantage to people who have had a history of targeted disadvantages in this country. This catches you up to roughly the 1960s.
But in the last 40 years or so, we continue to see lower class areas of the US disproportionately filled with black americans, and we also see widening wealth inequality affecting virtually everyone. So naturally we also see an increase of non-black people asking the same question as you: “I’m having a hard time too, why are they getting an advantage based on their race? That’s racism!”
The solution was to tax the rich, reduce wealth inequality, and continue to normalize disproportionate demographics. Instead, the wealthy used populism to hijack the republican party, and convince white americans that the minorities recieving these benefits were their enemy. And after 40ish years of pushing this narrative, they succeeded.
With the republican takeover of the federal govt, we can be virtually assured that any ongoing attempts to normalize these unfair demographics will be abandoned, at least at the federal level.
But it’s still a problem, just now one for the people and the states to solve. If you want to support black-owned farmers in an attempt to help pull historically disadvantaged groups out of poverty, you can. If not, that’s fine, just at least please vote for legislation that intends to reduce wealth inequality. (Note that history has exactly two ways of reducing wealth inequality: high taxes on the rich, or war. The question isn’t whether wealth will get redistributed, it’s how).
Tl; dr Yeah, it’s an advantage based on race to solve a problem caused by a history of disadvantages based on race.
Lol. Lmao.
So every “farm” in my region is actually a community plot you can rent space in or a non profit outreach…no farms to purchase from.
I don’t think this reads as what it was probably intended initially…
Thanks so much for this! I don’t mind scrolling and clicking either.
+1 for this, it isn’t that hard to do a little scrolling and if you really need it, use in-page searching and choose a city or town within your state.
Im pretty happy to get an locally grown products. Im lucky though as we have lots of farmers markets and its not hard to sign up for a monthly box.
Here in Germany we have similar projects, but it seems the producers/farmers often have absolutely no idea how to anticipate or meet the demand of their customers.
Like, I’m very aware that farming is a seasonal business, you can’t really grow much salad during the German winter without a greenhouse. Perfectly fine. What is not fine is dumping basically your entire salad harvest for that season in a 4 week window onto paying customers.
You’ll get 8 salad heads per week for a month or two, almost inevitably throwing or giving most of it away, and then you’ll get 5 kilos of some roots for the next 3 months.
Monthly box subscriptions have always been that though. You’re getting whatever they can’t shift.
It sorta works this way here. They try their best but there will be a lot of kale. They have this thing were you have some ability to substitute as well
So no asian farms, no spanish farms, no middle eastern farms?
Why just black farms? Doesn’t this lend itself to the trope of black people being farmhands?
There ya go, you can make a site for each of those. Use promo code ImATroll for 0% off.
Black farmers in the US have a particular history, what with chattel slavery and independent black farmers in particular being targeted for hostile takeovers and anti-competitive behavior from racists running big AG conglomerates in ways that other ethnic and cultural groups in the US have not faced.
We must stay divided or we might notice that we’re losing the class war.
Owning a farm is not in any way the same as being farmhands.
