Let’s say you want to run a micro-farm as a business.
You have the land. You have the know-how to grow crops or raise livestock in a smart way. You have the work-ethic to operate a farm.
You’ll quickly learn that starting a micro-farm isn’t only about growing things. It’s about running, in many cases, a local delivery business.
The good news is that there are creative people working on solutions, particularly software solutions, to make running a local farming business easier.
Why software? It can do lots of the bureaucratic and managerial grunt work required to run a business. In short, it makes you more PRODUCTIVE. That productivity saves you time and money, which is often the difference between success and failure.
So far, most of the innovation in micro-farming software has focused on several categories:
- Food Networks to make customer acquisition easier.
- Business operations to reduce time spent on bureaucratic tasks.
I’ll give you quick example of each category. In the near future, I’ll publish interviews with the entrepreneurs that are building this software so you can get a better idea on where these solutions are headed.
Food Network Software
Food network software is run as a Website that connects:
- Food producers with
- Food buyers — from restaurants to bakers to hotels — in the local area.
It helps food networks forms and keeps the participants aware of each other. A good example of this is from my new friends at Sustaination out of the UK.
Micro Farm Business Software
This Web based software automates the following tasks:
- Take customer orders and helps you manage the packaging of these orders.
- Tracks and optimizes the delivery routes for food to customer homes/businesses.
- Bills customers and automates payment.
A good example of this is the Bucky Box. A software package from my friends at Enspiral in New Zealand. It claims to reduce the admin workload from 2 days a week to 2 hours a week.
They are currently in a private beta if you are interested in evaluating it.
As you can see with the two solutions above, becoming resilient by going local is a revolution that is going on across the developed world. Your choice is simple: join in and thrive or stay dependent on our broken, global system and wilt.
Your always looking for ways to give you the edge analyst,
John Robb
PS: Why do I advocate using software? Rolling back the clock 200 years to an earlier stage of technology is less of a resilient strategy than a lifestyle choice.
