INTRODUCTION

Today’s educated consumer demands a “back to basics” approach to food and nutrition. While the Internet is an ideal way to provide consumers with information, consumers need to make informed decisions resulting in healthy food choices. This site is designed to provide consumers with the information they need to make informed decisions regarding local produce offerings, health, and food safety.

Agriculturehealth.com is a comprehensive food-systems Web site designed by a partnership formed by the Mid-Atlantic Consortium. Agri-culturehealth.com is being designed to educate users about the benefits of local agriculture, including marketing, food and nutrition, health, and food safety. While useful to the consumer, this site is also designed to be user-driven for the producer. Agricultural users are able to list their markets and product offerings available to consumers. Agricultural users will also find reliable information related to the business of farm retail marketing.

MISSION

The mission of this project is to provide a user-driven, user-friendly food systems web site for the farm market operator and the fresh-market consumer, demonstrating how collaborating institutions can cooperate in developing more efficient Internet-based educational and outreach tools.

GOALS

The practical goal of this project is to greatly enhance the meeting of pertinent technical needs of professionals in business, government, private, voluntary and non-governmental organizations, students, agricultural producers, and consumers. Toward that end this web site is designed to be user-driven and to become self-supporting.

OBJECTIVES

The specific objectives of this project are to provide easy public and private entrepreneurial access to a database of current and reliable food-system information, to feature an easily accessible and searchable database of basic and advanced resources, and to provide evaluation mechanisms that allow feedback for improvement of the web site.

The site currently consists of four interactive components:

• Agri-Marketing: a resource center for direct farm market retailers, providing in-depth information on planning farm markets, selling products/locating supplies, and events.
• Regional Foods: a searchable, cross-referenced database of local producers and crops that connects markets and consumers. Consumers can search by state, market listing, or crop to find what they need. Easy addition of new markets and careful screening makes this a very powerful mechanism for marketer and consumer alike.
• Food & Health: an informative collection of links to food-related health research, nutrition, and educational resources.
• Food Safety: a valuable resource of informational web sites on food safety for kids, consumers, educators, and industry.

IMPACTS

The web site is available to farm market operators and consumers around the region, nation, and even the world. One of the unintended consequences is the appeal and usefulness the site offers for agri-tourism throughout the world. The site is likely to be of interest by farm market operators and consumers.

• LEAD INSTITUTIONS:
  University of Delaware; Rutgers, The State University
• TEAM MEMBERS:
  Kathleen Shimomura, Rutgers, The State University; Cassandra Corridon, University of Maryland; Jimmy C. Liu, National Agricultural Library; Cindy Roberts, National Agricultural Library; Tony Balzano, Sussex County Community College
• ACADEMIC PARTNERS:
  The University of Delaware; Rutgers, the State University; University of Maryland, College Park; University of Maryland, Eastern Shore; Sussex Community College, NJ; Middlesex County College, NJ;
• INDUSTRY PARTNERS:
  Brandywine Farming Traditions, DE; Brodhecker Farms, NJ; Fifer Orchards, Inc., DE; Filasky’s Produce, DE; Matarrazzo Farms and RJM Marketing, NJ; New Jersey Dietetic Association; Produce Marketing Association, DE; Springdale Farms, NJ; Wakefern Corporation, NJ; Walker Brothers, Inc., NJ; Walnut Grove Farm, NJ; Windy Brow Orchards, NJ; ThienSchmidt, DE; Mayaviewkeeper, Inc., NJ
• GOVERNMENTAL PARTNERS:
  Delaware Department of Agriculture; New Jersey Department of Agriculture; U.S. Food & Drug Administration; USDA National Agricultural Library; U.S. Department of Agriculture Cooperative States; Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES)