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Internet farmers reap profits on the Web
A mouse click away from veggie delivery
April 2, 1997
Web posted at: 6:45 p.m. ESTFrom Correspondent Greg Lefevre
SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- More than a few American farmers are plowing new ground on the Internet, using Web sites and e-mail to sell their crops.
The Web has dramatically changed the way Nigel Walker's Eatwell Farm does business.
Walker's farm is an hour away from San Francisco. But with a Web site and a Bay area full of well-wired citizens with sophisticated tastes, Internet farming was not only inevitable, it is also profitable.
"We found that a lot of our customers in San Francisco have e-mail, too, and it was fun," says Walker. "It was something different, and it's just kind of grown."
Indeed, it has. Over half of Walker's business comes to him over the Internet.
Walker's customers sign up for anywhere from one to three months, and receive a basket of vegetables every week.
Walker posts a calendar on his Web site which lists which crops are available and when. Cucumbers and summer squash, for example, are available now.
Farmers take requests
Tomatoes are due in a couple of months, and Walker expects to have a lot of them. He currently offers 26 different varieties of full-sized tomatoes and four kinds of cherry tomatoes. He also has a test plot with 90 other kinds in the ground.
How easy is a purchase? After the customer views the 'menu' a quick mouse click brings up another page -- an order blank. The customer chooses the vegetables and the quantity, and where they are to be delivered.
Walker downloads and fills the orders. He also asks his customers if there is something he's not growing that they'd like to have.
"We communicate in a sort of personal way with them," says Carol Gould, an Internet customer.
Internet farmers also publish recipes on their Web sites for everything from gazpacho to leftovers.
"So if they send you some leafy green that you've never heard of," says customer Art Siegel, "you have some good ideas where to start to cook them."
Thanks to a preview on the Internet, the sugar snap beans are going fast on the Net and at the farmers markets that Internet farmers help promote.
"Having a Web site and having access to tools like the Web site can really help them," says Judith Redmond of the Community Alliance for Family Farmers. "It can really help them make better connections with people in urban areas that are going to support them."
In fact, some struggling farmers have taken to selling on the Internet to get higher prices than they would at wholesale.
It can be the difference between farming and folding.
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