Connecting Folks to Their Food: Farm Aid's Homegrown.org

It’s called Homegrown.org and it’s an ever-evolving virtual space (and in the real world, too) where their 8,000+ loyal members can meet to talk about the easiest way to can vegetables, the best chickens to raise for meat production, and even exchange parenting tips. It’s also a resource for finding sustainably-produced food near you, plus a whole lot more.

Glenda Yoder, associate director for Farm Aid, says since the organization’s founding in 1985 they’ve evolved to include a “stronger alliance” with what they call “eaters,” the people who support farmers by buying their agricultural products. This realization came during the escalating corporate industrialization of the food system and the accompanying stress on family farms.

In order to connect with consumers, Farm Aid launched their Homegrown effort in 2007 at their annual concert, which was held on Randall’s Island in New York City. The food concessions at the event were made of ingredients from family farms, had some ecological standards, and included a fair price to the farmer. The 2007 Farm Aid concert also had the first Homegrown Village, where attendees could learn about soil, water, energy, farming, and food. Every Farm Aid concert since has featured the local concessions and the village, which have continued to grow through the years. The website also launched in 2007 amidst the flourishing DIY scene.

“By doing that, we felt we could help increase the cultural understanding of the experience of food, and connect that to family farmers, agricultural skills, and agrarian life,” Yoder tells Modern Farmer in a phone interview. “We had seen a cultural opening to the handmade, can-do, DIY attitude, and the idea that our lives could be enhanced by physical engagement of experiences and skills. Homegrown.org was made to create a community for that, and to create a platform so that people could share that knowledge.”

The website began as a blog and, like Farm Aid, has has evolved over time. Originally intended as a community platform akin to what Facebook has become, Yoder now thinks of it as more of a “wholesale site” where people can post about skills (they call them 101s) and then other people can come and pick them up, use them, and share them through other social media sites.

The 101 Library is one of the most popular aspects of the site, which is no surprise. This treasure trove of informative articles provide step-by-step guides for everything from growing asparagus to making your own bath and beauty products. Backyard gardening, and canning and preserving are the two biggest areas of interest for the many visitors to the site, but the discussion section on backyard chickens gets pretty busy too, says Yoder.

Among the newer offerings on Homegrown.org is a section called Young & Green, where participants of GrowNYC‘s Youthmarket share their stories. The Youthmarket is a network of urban farm stands started by the non-profit GrowNYC, operated by neighborhood youth and supplied by local farmers. It was created to help provide fresh fruit and vegetables in the city’s food deserts and at the same time give youth needed business and retail skills they can use later in life. Farm Aid now has a similar program at their yearly concerts.

The site will continue to evolve to both better serve its current users and to expand the site’s reach to serve even more people, Yoder says. “I feel strongly that our engagement in regard to food can’t just be about our purchases. It has to be about how we live day-to-day and how our lives are enhanced as we get closer and more connected to the source of our food,” she says. “There’s so much room to expand the cultural understanding of the importance of family farmers and good food.”

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