Internet Initiative

The Internet Initiative is an action plan based on our finding that while residents often use the Internet to obtain information about healthy foods, and how to prepare foods, few use it to obtain information about where to shop for foods. This is compounded by the fact that existing online resources about where to buy locally-grown foods are a disorganized few. We believe this may be a missed opportunity, and in an effort to bridge the informational gaps present in accessing locally-grown foods we designed a plan to facilitate the organized use of the Internet by farmers’ market vendors through the shared Twitter hashtag #HartfordFarms. By vendors in the Hartford area posting on Twitter using the hashtag #HartfordFarms anyone can view collectively all of the posts that include the hashtag, connecting all of the vendors that use it. #HartfordFarms aims to give farmers’ market vendors an initial and connected presence on the Internet.

Twitter Feed

[custom-twitter-feeds]

This is a demo of what #HartfordFoods might look like were it in active use. #Organic is show instead for visualization purposes. This can also be viewed directly on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=%23Organic

Business Card

We designed a business card that can be handed out to vendors at farmer’s markets to facilitate their use of Twitter in this way; however, due to the time of year, actually handing them out is not currently feasible.

 

Farmers on the Internet

Based on 2014 data collected by the Connecticut Department of Agriculture, of approximately 4300 registered farmers in Connecticut, only about 430 have a website. Coming in at about 10%, this amount is incredibly low.