Next 2 us

New geosocial SMS network for African farmers please help test by signing-up!

 This tweet reflects exactly what we hope to accomplish with Hungry Garden's new SMS service in Africa.  We have developed a geosocial network that will allow small farmers to connect to each other and to their suppliers and buyers via simple text messaging.  Farmers may register for the service mark their location on a map and set a privacy radius around their location within which their content is shared with other registered users.  By sending a text that starts with want, have or discuss and a topic word of phrase, the service exchanges text messages based on the use of keywords.   Once connected individuals may use the service to exchange text messages without revealing their mobile phone number.

We hope to roll-out the service within the next four to six weeks under a pilot program in East Africa.

If you are located in the United States please help us test the service by following the instructions at Next2.Us SMS  The page contains information about the SMS service and instructions on how to use the service.

We could really help testing this new geosocial network via SMS to make sure it works properly prior to our roll-out in Africa.

new blog post: Hungry Garden's Geolocation #hashtags

Check out Hungry Garden's listing on Oneforty for Twitter apps.  The listing has some great screen shots of the Hungry Garden software for your to review.  We would appreciate it if you would use the url http://14t.me/1Lr0Kg to share a link to Hungry Garden with family or friends by Twitter or Facebook. 

Hungry Garden lets you automatically exchange messages and discover new followers and neighbors based on location and privacy radius each user sets and controls using the Hungry Garden software.  With Hungry Garden software YOU control your location on a Google Map; YOU control the distance in miles that Hungry Garden will share your content (from 1/4 mile to 3000 miles) with other users.  If you want to discover new followers that are close to you, or only interact with your neighbors, set a small radius.  Hungry Garden restricts your content to only users that have set their location within your privacy radius.  Or if you want to discover more followers select a wider radius around your location to share your content.  This way more users will be able to find you by your interests.

With Hungry Garden you can also hide, your location, street address or email address or all three.  You have complete control over you privacy.

With Hungry Garden REGISTER ONCE at http://dev.hungrygarden.com and

1. create account name with immediate access to all software features
2. Set you location on Google Map
3. Set you privacy/radius (to share content in circle around location)
4. Sign-in to your Twitter Account using the Twitter Tab Menu in Hungry Garden.

You're all set.  Now return to Twitter.com or your favorite Twitter application and start your Tweets with #want, #have or #discuss AND you favorite #hashtag.

Hungry Garden will check your Twitter account once a day, and;

1. Read and SAVE tweets that start with #have, #want or #discuss to your Hungry Garden Map.
2. Match tweets with other users based on keyword, location and privacy/radius. 
3. Exchange tweets automatically with other users that match your message.  Messages are sent to your @twitterID.

Hungry Garden hashtags #want(a), #have(b) and discuss(c) work with each other AND any other hashtag.  The matching logic is as follows

        a = b (#want matches with #have)

        b = a (#have matches with #want)

        c = c (#discuss matches with #discuss)

Remember Hungry Garden #hashtags #want, #have and #discuss WORK WITH ANY OTHER HASHTAG.  To match the first and second hashtag have to match (per above).  For example  #want #bike matches with #have #bike and #discuss #tennis matches with #discuss #tennis.  You can include descriptive text after the hashtags.  The full message with be exchanged between users when match is made.

Lets resurrect the art of "community" dining and really pay for home cooked meals.

My response to; Leslie Hatfield: Let's Get Cooking: On Julia, and Pollan, and Feminism and Food, The Huffington Post, August 6, 2009 , provides an opportunity to talk about something that makes sense to me.  How we have lost the art of "community dining" in this country.  And, how we have lost a connection to the best home cooks in our community by making it illegal for their neighbors to pay them for what they do so well.  There are a lot of great cooks in my neighborhood.  They make terrific, wholesome home cooked meals just about every night of the week.  I would love a way to establish a business relationship with these cooks that is public, and legal, whereby, I eatin or take out a meal to from their home to mine to feed my family.  It would be convenient, safe and provide an income to them and a great service to me.

Leslie this is a great article! I really enjoyed, as a male that cooks 99% of the meals for family of four and therefore can readily identify with the time constraints of producing wholesome, home cooked meals, your point that this shouldn't be just about wives and mothers spending time cooking. How to cook, and cook well, is really something that everyone should know how to do regardless of sex.

These sentences really jumped out at me as so close to what could be a solution:

"Potlucks, eat-ins, taking turns hosting meals with your neighbor or extended family, all of these could help lighten the load for home chefs, with the added benefit of enhancing those relationships. After all, good food is best enjoyed with company."

I believe we need to really turn on its head how food is prepared and served in our communities. There are fabulous home cooks throughout this country that love and enjoy preparing home cooked meals. Why is it that they can not do what they love, and do it well, right in their homes, and make a business out of it? When I travelled to Costa Rico as a young man upon entering a new town I would ask in broken Spanish where the nearest restaurant was located. I was invariable pointed to the local family that cooked for the entire neighborhood for a modest price.

Likewise, why is it when Cuba experimented with capitalism their first trial was to allow home cooks to establish small restaurants? Has our food policy and regulations obfuscated our view to such a degree that we can not recognize simple, local solutions right before our eyes? I propose that one way around regulation would be for home cooks to sell entertainment (that's probably regulated too) where people would gather in local homes on informal drop in basis, share a meal and be asked to recite a poem, listen to music, tell a story, or participate or watch some form of "entertainment" for which they would pay the host a fee. The meal would be complimentary. And take out should be an option.

The more I see problems with our food system in this country the more I think we need, as Joe Salatin of Polyface Farm, says, to opt-out. We need a movement that returns the power to the individual. An individual not divorced from his food choices and sources. An individual that is active member of community that takes responsibility for his own and the welfare of his neighbors in exchange for the personal opportunity to make decision without regard to local, state or federal regulations regarding something as basic as the substance one ingest daily.

It used to be common in this country to travel and knock on a door for a meal. If you could not pay, you told the host so and offered to do chores in exchange for food. How is it that we have come to a point where simple, local solutions have been cast aside and lost from our memory of how we used to deal with one another?

Of course there are a whole host of problems in resurrecting community dining, but I firmly believe that social tools, now available, can be brought to bear to help us update solutions that worked before, and are needed again, now more then ever. As I have come to understand the problems with our national diet, the art of cooking is a fulcrum on which any solution must balance. Therefore, I applaud your call to all in "Lets get cooking"

Brian Puckett

Hungry Gardener

Get on the Food Map!

Hungry Garden is a FREE resource for internet users that are interested in regional/local food.  With your help, Hungry Garden is building "food maps" connecting farmers to consumers and all points in between.

Can consumer demand drive changes in food options

Tim at Nature's Harmony has a great post regarding what needs to be done to change the food industry.  I am a great admirer of what Tim and his wife are doing on their farm for their customers.  You can read his post here and my observations are posted there and here.

I agree there needs to be a "revolution" in food and, in the main, it must come from consumers.  That is why I built the HungryGarden.com web site so I can find fresh local food near me and allow others to do the same.

Who Grows Your Food?

Who Grows Your Food? from Anthony-Masterson on Vimeo.

List of Links

Rob Marqusee, Director of Rural Economic Development for Woodbury County, will eat only food grown within 100 miles of the Woodbury County Courthouse for the entire month of June 09 (and no meat will be allowed in the diet).  A special page on his web site will chronicle the adventures in real time (beginning 6/1/09). Read about it here   This is great idea and one that should be replicated by others.

Check it out, Still Tasty is a web site that tells you the shelf life of various foods.

Carbon foot print your food here.

Civil Eats has a good article "Next Spring Break Get a Real Tan  -- A Farmer Tan."

The organic local debate here.

Pictures of white house garden.

Article about homemade baby food.

Toward a less efficient and more robust food system

La Vida Locavore cites a great article by Tom Philpott about how to create a robust, diversified local system in High Country, a three-county region in the mountains of western North Carolina.   Philpott starts his article referencing Jane Jacobs great book The Economy of Cities.  I believe it is an apt comparison as maybe we need less efficiency in our food industry.  Near the end of the article Philpott writes:

Ending Hunger in Brazilian Town

model of local food success

Francis Moore Lappe, article The City that Ended Hunger, features a food lesson from Brazil's fourth largest city, Belo Horizonte

Ms. Lappe writes: "Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market—you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you."

The mayor began by creating city agency to promote food as a right for all.  The agency developed: