Food Solutions New England (FSNE) is a regional food systems learning-action network dedicated to advancing a sustainable New England food system. The FSNE network is organized around four interrelated activities:
A New England Food Vision, a bold vision that calls for our region to build the capacity to produce up to 70% of food that is produced in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner, that promotes health and is accessible by all New Englanders by 2060; New England state food planning initiatives; annual New England food summits and topical workshops; and related analysis, communication and visualization.
The UNH Sustainability Institute serves as the backbone organization for FSNE. Since its inception in 2006, FSNE has advanced its mission by linking a common agenda, shared measurement, continuous communication, and synergestic activities.
Right on...An online marketplace to move R&D to a next step could bring together enough folks to both demonstrate need if outside funders (kick starter/foundations/other grant makers) would like validation/documentation, and it would reduce the development cost if the project is funded internally by coordinating orders, doing small production runs etc.... I especially like the idea of tapping into university projects. I could see projects going both ways - some originating at the university and finding legs to get to the next stage on farm hack, and projects that are stuck (eg. technical barrier, documentation, testing, prototype needed etc.) on farm hack moving forward because of assistance from student projects, university machine shops etc.
Many grants require public posting of results, and Farm Hack could be written in as the dissemination method for grant funded projects. It would also be a good place to cruise to get ideas for new projects to work on for funding proposals.
I think we talked at RSDI about something that might be a cross between an etsy type market place for farmhack tools and kickstarter type function for funding R&D? Cool stuff...