At Nextdoorganics, we are working hard to support the future of locally produced food. Our vision is that of a distributed farm system operating in urban and suburban neighborhoods. We believe that in order for a food supply to be sustainable it must be economically viable and integrated into the community. To that end, we have created a business model which can achieve these goals. It’s about using resources we already have in a responsible, sustainable, efficient way. We are building a network of local urban and suburban farmers who can share resources, knowledge, risk and profit.

There is a growing awareness that our food system is in crisis. Rapidly raising food prices combined with the unknown origin of mass produced, centrally processed food products are driving the demand for affordable local and natural food higher at double digit growth rates. At the same time, local resources ideal for food production lay fallow or polluted with chemicals. Urban and suburban farmers and food entrepreneurs who would like to make use of these resources face high risks and labor costs to connect with their customers, and the choices that customers have in these areas are limited at best.

At Nextdoorganics, we are seeking to implement a change in sustainable local agriculture through the use of an innovative open-sourced business model which empowers people to take control of their own food choices and enables a profitable way for people to make a living while supporting improved health and food availability as well as improved ecosystems. By kicking the middle men out of the equation and providing a shared base of knowledge and resources, Farm organizers can use the land available to them in suburban and urban settings to create their own farm clusters. By spreading the resources across many micro and small scale farms, we can cut the hurdle costs for these food entrepreneurs and enable them to get in at whatever level they want, while offsetting the risk of unbalanced harvests, weather conditions, sales softness. Our model makes it easy for a household to get help in maintaining a family garden while saving on grocery costs and making some much needed extra income, or if they are very ambitious, it allows for them to make it a full time endeavor by creating a farm cluster utilizing the backyard and/or rooftop plots of their neighbors and other interested landowners. While sustainable local farming is clearly a topic that has received much attention, and the concept of a distributed farming system has been around to some degree, there has never been a full for-profit model which uses this to ensure that long term profitable jobs will be created, regardless of the public’s desire to fund such activities through non-profit grants.

Currently, we are developing land on several acres outside of Providence, RI to establish a center of excellence where we will perfect the most efficient methods of small scale farming and train future farmers in these techniques. We are also actively recruiting farm organizers and land owners in Metro NYC who we will join in our efforts to grow food and flowers locally on a network of small plots. In addition we are working on programs in schools and municipalities which will offer on-site food production, local agriculture education, health and sustainability awareness. We are currently distributing local produce direct to consumers in Brooklyn, and are seeking to expand this distribution infrastructure rapidly within the next few years. Produce which cannot be sold direct is donated to local non-profits. Our volunteers and landowners will be compensated primarily through free produce and flowers, and our farm organizers will be salaried employees. It is our intent to establish a profitable and easily scalable model which can be replicated in any area with a high enough population density. In short, over the next several years, the primary activities will recruiting and training a network of farmers, and growing and selling produce to support this network.

Our goal is to build and support networks of small-scale sustainable food producing plots managed locally, providing community-based food and labor education and exchange. We believe that engaging local populations in the growing of their own food provides fundamental and wide-ranging opportunities for health improvement, social engagement, economic empowerment and nature stewardship. The demographics of our community is really a full cross section of American society, as a lack of quality local food sources is an issue that effects us all, and our mission is to create a fundamental change in food production and distribution. That being said, we are focusing our initial efforts in areas of high population density in order for our sales channels (which will become our primary funding source going forward) to become established quickly. We are active in several Long Island towns, Brooklyn and Queens, and Providence County, RI. In every neighborhood where we have put our message out, we have received a very positive response. So much so that we have a backlog of volunteers willing to work for free to help us achieve our vision. We hope to recruit farm organizers from the neighborhoods that we work in. In Queens and Brooklyn, this is a mix of immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean and young urban professionals. In Long Island and RI, this is primarily suburban landowners. The vision of Nextdoorganics is not color specific but is focused on creating a broad based shared network where the unifying attribute is a desire to improve our food system.