November 7, 2011 | seedstock

Press Release – agrowculture, New York City’s newest food-tech startup, is trying to alter the way people grow, buy and sell their food. While the company has only just launched in alpha, it aims to help neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs develop sustainable, fresh local food networks.

In the advent of New York City Council’s Food Works legislations (Local Laws 50, 51, 52 and 49), agrowculture hopes to increase local food sourcing and stimulate local commerce through online markets and local sales networks. Backyard farmers, community gardeners, rooftop beekeepers, mycologist[s] and canners can create a Farmer Profile on agrowculture.org and have product listings. Their “farms” are mapped on the site for their neighbors to browse and buy directly from them. Online markets such as this decrease the time farmers spend selling their food and increase market share.

To help jump start the local food movement, agrowculture has recently launched a petitioning application on their site that allows communities, restaurants and schools to request an urban farm in their area and even specify the type of food they would like to buy. Each petition is mapped, along with farms, on agrowculture.org and allows urban farmers to get the market insights they need to start supplying food directly to those who pledged their support.

“We also want to help restaurants, schools, and companies internalize food production, increase food awareness and improve the diets of students and employees,” explains Nick McEvily, agrowculture’s Founder.

agrowculture wants to foster the urban agriculture movement by empowering the 21st century farmer to leverage social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Vimeo to engage customers and improve the transparency between the farmer and the consumer.

“The social movement toward internet activism has been greatly reliant on the ease of online financial transactions, especially crowd-source funding and donation plug-ins. We’re hoping to leverage this trend by creating urban farming campaigns on crowd-source funding platforms like ioby.org and kickstarter.com,” proclaims McEvily. “We’ll help farmers raise the funds and outfit them with the products they need to grow food on walls, balconies or rooftops.”

agrowculture was founded to create meaningful connections between urban farmers and their community by integrating them across an increasing array of physical, digital, mobile and social channels.

In addition to McEvily, Matthew Schmohl, John Monastero, and Zach Gould have joined the team to assist in all aspects of the business. The team plans to expand their e-commerce platform in the coming months and increase the number of petitions on the site.

Additional information about agrowculture can be found at http//:www.agrowculture.org

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Informational Video on agrowculture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jMPFYiHhzQ

SOURCE: http://agrowculture.org/blog/2011/11/01/agrowculture-2/