David Onstad and David Eakin discuss plans to begin 2008 update of Farm Direct.

Farm Direct, the directory of locally grown and locally sold foods in Illinois was created by Terra Brockman, Laurence Mate, Stuart Tarr, and David Onstad in 2003 as a regional directory in central Illinois. In 2004, the directory was expanded statewide, under the supervison of Onstad at the Dept. of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at University of Illinois and delivered to the public via the Internet and in a 64-page catalog of farms, processors, and markets. 

Both versions included 10 pages of educational material for consumers. The Illinois Library Systems and hundreds of librarians throughout the state joined with us to distribute copies of Farm Direct and hundreds of thousands of bookmarks. The bookmarks lead citizens to our web site (illinoisfarmdirect.org) that permits consumers to search the database by county, zip code or product. Because of budget cut backs, printed versions have become infrequent, but the database on the web, which contains information on almost 600 farms and processors plus over 200 farmers markets, has been updated by the Agroecology and Sustainable Agriculture Program (ASAP) every year since 2004. With ASAP’s support, Farm Direct will be updated again in 2008.

Goals of Farm Direct

1. Provide consumers in Illinois with information that allows them to interact with local farmers and processors. Interaction should involve more than communication of price.
2. Provide infrastructure for Illinois farmers so that they can more easily sell their food products in local markets.
3. Collect data about Illinois farms and processors to study patterns in structure and function of local food systems.

Farm Direct combines outreach and research. We attempt to accomplish the first two goals by educating consumers about local foods, organic foods, community-supported agriculture, and other issues. The educational and research efforts would be more difficult to accomplish without the public service, primarily the Internet and printed directories.Over the years, farmers, market managers, librarians, and consumers have expressed their support for Farm Direct or requested assistance from Farm Direct staff. Many of them see Farm Direct as one of the efforts that can help rebuild the community infrastructure that can support local food systems.

If you have an idea that can improve Farm Direct, have a request for help from those of us working on Farm Direct, or want to be included in the database, send us an email or a letter. onstad@uiuc.edu, Dept.of NRES, University of Illinois, 1201 S. Dorner Dr. Urbana, IL, 61801