Unlike Nike, your average farmer doesn't have a marketing department that runs a highly sophisticated website for him or her. Heck, I'm just grateful that our CSA farmer (John Crisp in Americus, Kansas) uses email to communicate with his shareholders. It's not that John isn't fully capable of running a website - I think he could do just about anything he desired - but small farmers are perhaps the most overworked people in the nation, so he has his hands full already.

At an excellent talk I heard recently on the subject of local, sustainable farming, local farming was described as "farming in the dark," - that is, you farm by headlight or flashlight after you come home from the day job that keeps you afloat and gets you benefits. According to Rhonda Janke, who covers the field of sustainable cropping systems for Kansas State University Research and Extension, the average small farmer in our region earns between about $3 and $15 per hour, with the average somewhere around $7.50 per hour, or less than a retail employee at your average mall. One of the best ways to change this is to buy direct from farmers, and to buy at a price that actually reflects the fair market value of their produce.

There's a problem here, however. These local farmers can be hard to find given the aforementioned lack of marketing. That's where sites such as Local Harvest come in. It offers a platform where "small farms, farmers markets, and other local food sources" can advertise their produce and products.

The site's search mechanism is very good, allowing the user to specify what they want to find and where. Word to the wise: unless you live in a very dense urban area, you might want to search by state or at least city rather than by zip code. Just like Orbitz, weather.com, and other major sites, the search disambiguates: If it has more than one entry for a name, it asks which you would like.

Even slicker, Local Harvest has integrated Google Maps so that you can just click on the map of the United States (sorry, no listings for Canada) and as you zoom in on a location, the site lists any search results for the visible region below the map. It's fun just to play with that tool to see what the density of local food options looks like from coast to coast.

Given the strong trend toward sustainable and locally grown food, sites like Local Harvest could play a major role in connecting consumers with with producers. Now, if only it helps farmers make a decent living, we'd have something to get really excited about.