LocalHarvest Newsletter, December 23, 2008
Welcome back to the LocalHarvest newsletter.
It's nearly Christmas, but instead of sugar plums, I have numbers dancing in my
head. Membership and site traffic numbers, year-end and pricing survey numbers.
I'm a words-over-formulas kind of girl, so believe me, this is a rare day.
Still, these are interesting statistics. Some we feel proud of, some we are
humbled by.
Here's a few that please us: LocalHarvest welcomed 3,675 new
member listings so far in 2008. That's ten new members every day! Of these, 2,583
were farmers, 590 were farmers markets, and the remainder were restaurants, co-ops,
and the like. The LocalHarvest database now offers information on nearly 18,000
farms and farmers markets (etc.) nationwide. As always, our marketing budget
for 2008 was exactly $0, so we have all of you to thank for helping us spread
the word about LocalHarvest. Mil gracias!
Over 3.8 million people found local food with LocalHarvest's help this year, a
million more than in 2007. Our monthly newsletter goes out to 54,000 people like
yourself, and 75,000 people get our weekly Keep Me Posted
updates. Over 16,200 people bought products through our catalog
this year. Numbers on two new LH projects look like this: to date, 831 farmers have added
Ark of Taste products to
their LocalHarvest listings since we launched our partnership with Slow Food in April.
In the last two months, nearly 300 farms
have started blogging with us, posting stories
about life on the farm, recipes, photos, and videos.
We had really hoped to give you the results of our first LocalHarvest pricing
project: "How Does Local Compare?" but, unfortunately, we don't have those
numbers yet. This is the 'humbling' part I mentioned up top. It turns out that
crunching the data in a meaningful way is an exceptionally complex proposition.
We've been at it on and off for a week and are still slogging through the fine
points. I promise we will keep at it, and I will have the results for you in
our January newsletter.
As we approach the end of 2008 we would like to thank
all of you for supporting your local farmers and LocalHarvest. In these
uncertain economic times, it feels particularly important to spend our food
dollars on fresh, nutritious food grown by people whose chosen work is to feed
our communities. Real food for the people!
As always, take good care, and eat well.
See you in '09,
Erin Barnett
Director, LocalHarvest
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Hopefully you've finished your holiday shopping, wrapped everything, and delivered
all the packages that needed to go somewhere. Should you have one or two people left
on your list, though, you might want to consider a LocalHarvest
gift certificate. Available
in any amount, and applicable to any of our catalog's 5,576 farm products.
Your loved one might very well choose some citrus. Matter of fact, you might yourself.
Plenty of other people are, every day. And every day our friendly citrus growers are
picking more. We’ve got all kinds –
grapefruit,
tangerines,
oranges,
Meyer lemons and
Bearss limes.
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