The predominant method of communication among most of our producers was through the telephone (i.e. mainly cell phone but some landline as well) while a few relied more on fax or e-mail.

 

P10 said that he felt the importance of cell phones was growing since it allowed producers to stay in touch while out in the field:

 

“I think every…there are a lot of old farmers who are anti-cellphone maybe, but I think for most farmers it’s now become like as valuable as your tractor because you’re outside during all business hours and so anything you’re trying to do related to that, you need to be in touch.”

 

Some producers, like P14, said they preferred communicating over the phone or in person because "when you’re able to talk to people you’re able to get more out of them and e-mail is a little more impersonal, not as easy to communicate.”

 

P5 also emphasized the importance of face-to-face interaction when he said “I like real social interactions,” implying that interactions online were less real and less valuable to him. P3 also touched upon this, saying, “there's something about the relationship of face-to-face communication [with customers]” that he really valued and preferred.

 

Though online channels were not used extensively used for communication, many of the producers we spoke with mentioned using the internet for research purposes like to find information on how to grow unfamiliar crops (P13), what materials had been approved for organic use (P3), and if there were any good deals on machinery for sale (P6).

 

Additionally, many of our producers mentioned that they rarely updated their websites and some were even unsure of whether they had profiles on other sites, like LocalHarvest.org, or what information was present on them. Some of our producers tended to lament that their online presence was not better maintained as a platform for communication, but expressed a lack of both time and resources to create such channels or keep them up-to-date. 

 

P2 just started a website but was not really using it. When asked if his farm had information on any other sites he said, "I’m not exactly sure what's on that website, we might be on there but we might not."

 

P3 and P4 did not have time to create and maintain a customer mailing list, saying, “we use computers, but our generation is not as into that.” P5, who worked on the same farm and also maintained the farm’s website said that it was “a little out of date” and had “a lot of stuff that needs to be changed."

 

P1 also struggled to maintain an online presence in the face of many similar obstacles. His current website was homemade but he said that he “can’t figure out how to update it.” He also wished for a better website and mailing list but said there was “no budget for that.”

 

In addition to a lack of budget and resources, some producers like P8 also highlighted the fact that he did not want to take the time to create a website but instead wanted to be out farming. He stressed how, “No one wants to do a website. They want to farm. They don’t want to sit in front of a computer to do a website. They want to farm.” 

 

 

Though some of the producers did not want to put time towards creating their own website from scratch, many of them specifically expressed a desire to have more communication with customers, especially online.

 

 

P10 said:

 

“I would like to have our website be more than what it is and be possible for our customers to maybe get…build more community through it and things like that. It’s more a matter of not having the resources to implement that.”

 

He even felt that just exposing customers to communication between producers would beneficial. He explained:

 

"To me it’s like the difference in how MTV used to show music videos and now it just shows ‘Behind the Music’ or whatever, but people seem to like ‘Behind the Music’ a lot better and that’s kind of like the equivalent of just putting out there the farmer-to-farmer communication resources for customers to learn from.”

 

P3 also mentioned how his customers really wanted such interaction and exchange. “It's more than just fruit,” he said, “they want a good peach, but they want something else...interaction, information, and service.”

 

Even though both producers and consumers valued interacting with each other and wanted to foster this connection, some producers like P11 highlighted the difficulty of this process. “It’s really difficult to get the connections between them,” he said, “to fill those information lines between the producers and the final users. It’s very tricky."

 

One of the main barriers is that no communication tool currently exists to connect all of the participants in the food system.

 

P12 recognized this problem, explaining how he felt that the food industry needed a new tool to connect all of the individual moving parts:

 

“It needs to be one bigger umbrella that could be a go-to resource that could be electronic and not print…something that was better well-known and could be a forum, a place to interface within the food industry for restaurants, producers, consumers, cooks, ‘cause there really isn’t one. There’s Tablehopper but that’s pretty restaurant focused, there’s Sonoma County Wine Commission within the wine industry, there’s the UC Extension for certain things, so within the little niches there’s some pretty good ones but for the Bay Area as a whole there isn’t one.”

 

P10 felt similarly, stressing that any appropriate solution would have to integrate as many different participants within the food system as possible:

 

“It all has to come together. As you think about ways to try and contribute to the movement, I’d just encourage you to be aware of how many different things are going on and whenever you see the opportunity to bring other people into the fold or to promote the movement as a whole instead of just a silo of it…there’s a lot of work to be done.”