You spoke, we listened.  This week, we’ve added step-by-step instructions for new buyers and sellers.  You can now get the lowdown on using FarmsReach before you register.  Jump over to www.farmsreach.com and click the ‘Buyer‘ or ‘Seller‘ tab to check it out.

Journalist Christina DiMartino looks at how FarmsReach lets farmers extending their marketing online.  Read it.

Seasons change. Product lists fluctuate. Suddenly winter squash replaces those heirloom tomatoes. Here’s how to make quick changes to your list:

1) Use the rolodex to find the item you want to update.
2) Check off the items you want to change.
3) Choose one of the options at the top: Make Available, Make Unavailable, or Delete (see image).

Make items available, unavailable, or delete them altogether.

Ta-da! It only takes a few seconds to make sure buyers see your latest availability.

Today, we’ve made it simpler for farmers to broadcast their availability to wholesale customers. Farmers with extensive product lists will find it easier to manage updates, as well as add varieties, pack sizes and other item details.

Improved Product Listings at FarmsReach

Here’s an overview of the improvements you’ll see on the My Stall page when you next login to FarmsReach:

• Filter your entire product list by choosing All Items, Available, or Unavailable.
• Add multiple items and packs on a single page.
• Open any item and add packs at any time.
• Pinpoint items alphabetically by using the rolodex ribbon on the left.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a closer look at how we’ve made it easier to manage product details.

CEO Lana Holmes discusses FarmsReach on NPR’s Morning Edition.  Listen to it. 

Michael Pollan says that to trim healthcare costs, we need to trim our waistlines. We love the idea of healthcare organizations promoting diversified, regional food economies.  For one thing, this could lead to a sea change in the quality of commercials on prime-time TV. More gastronomy, less gastric reflux.

Andy Griffin from Mariquita Farms muses on whether a “non-GMO” seal could make sense in practice(PDF link).  The weekly CSA newsletter takes on ethical questions raised by pollen drift in the neighborhood foodshed.

This week in NYC, Agriculture is the new cleantech.  Agriculture 2.0 attendees may want to read the Roots of Change president Michael Dimock’s message to socially responsible investors before they go.  He passes along a kernel about converting CSA shareholders into bona-fide investors. Micro-finance comes home.

Helene York from Bon Appetit serves straight talk about sourcing locally.  Dishing on the messy business of locally grown supply chains, the BAMCO executive describes the perils of removing a cereal dispenser from a college dorm.  Don’t mess with the corn flake needs of college students pulling all-nighters.  Sounds like a new diet reality show in the making, maybe United Healthcare can sponsor.

This week, Connie from Wine Forest Wild Mushrooms (farm site, current availability) reminded us that, even though Napa Valley chanterelle season has ended, the Pacific chanterelle season is still in full swing. The shrooms from Oregon have arrived early this year due to heavy fog drip. And that spells goodness.

Ian Garrone from Far West Fungi (farm site, current availability) suggests pairing chanterelles with corn. He’s been inspired by the mouth-watering salad Brett Emerson has put together at Contigo. Everything is better with butter and garlic.

Wild mushrooms are a great example of the thrill kitchens face when they start sourcing locally: an amazing flavor and food story to share with your customers. But, the kitchen has to have the imagination, resources, and skills to pull it off. Two weeks ago, FarmsReach met with a hotel chef intent on bringing regional cuisine into his kitchens. But, with centralized procurement, labor challenges, and a conservative customer base, he has to spend carefully. Odds seem good the hotel room service menu won’t have Candy Cap Mushroom ice cream anytime soon.

This week, we’ve made it easier to place routine orders. Buyers ordering from farmers frequently will now be able to complete the ordering process faster.

Reorder feature at FarmsReach

Here’s how:

• When you login to FarmsReach, you will see a new tab, “Re-Order” on the Order Food page
• There, you’ll see a running list of the 20 items you ordered most recently. For each item, FarmsReach keeps track of the selected pickup/delivery options and dates.
• Simply choose which items to re-order and fill in the quantity for each. (example: Granny Smith Apples from Hidden Star Orchards to pickup this Saturday at Ferry Plaza Market)
• As you order new items, they’re added to the running list.

Chefs from some of our favorite kitchens told us this would simplify their lives so we’re happy to build this feature. We think it’s pretty snappy. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Back in July, Blake Hurst, a Missouri farmer, penned “The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-Intellectuals,” for the online edition of The American: The Journal of the American Enterprise Institute. This past weekend, Tom Philpott of Maverick Farms posted his reply, “An agri-intellectual talks back“. I recommend you read both articles.

What was most interesting to me was that both writers take it for granted that we are rethinking how we value food and farming. And both see the stakes clearly. As we no longer stop at “can we feed the world?” but instead ask “can we feed the world healthier food?”, society will begin to divvy up the pie differently.

That’s why the fireworks are shaping up over innovation. We can expect agri-academics and apparatchiks from all corners to keep themselves occupied for at least the rest of this decade debating appropriate technology and what constitutes a breakthrough.

Just yesterday, the postman delivered one of Andy Kleinschmidt’s tweet-inspired t-shirts to my door. The shirt reads “Agriculture =Applied Environmental Protection.” What the Hurst-Philpott brouhaha points out is that there will be competing paradigms for how we fill in that equation for a long time to come.

There are plenty of good reasons, from freshness to knowing the provenance of your food. But you may not know all of the other impacts that remote purchases have.

Local First does a great job of explaining this (by way of trends research firm PSFK .) They point out that nearly double the money leaves the local economy when buying things from afar — intangibles like accounting.

It’s not just the short-term money being spent elsewhere: longer-term effects happen too. Consider, for example, an ailing local economy that can’t afford good schools; this in turn contributes to less-trained local workers, meaning locally produced goods are less valuable.

When buying food, local makes even more sense. It’s not just the percentage of money that leaves the community, it’s the total cost as well. Shipping and storing food increases the total cost and reduces the money that makes its way into farmers’ pockets.