Apps For Urban Farmers
Nothing shouts ‘traditional’ as urban farming does. Actively trying to pull away from our digital world, it encourages people to roll up their sleeves and start getting their precious typing hands dirty. Still, it seems quite impossible to avert anything from the digital revolution, which is once more proven by the newest trend in urban farming: apps!
After washing the earth off your hands and whipping out your smartphone or taking place behind the computer, the urban farming continues. Sprout It is an urban farming web app (it’s not available for smartphones as an app yet) made by Ohio-based Växa Design Group. Users fill in their ZIP code and add whatever they have growing in their garden to their personal database. The web app then gives growing and cultivation tips, updates on the weather and alerts to make sure users’ plants won’t wither due to all these digital distractions. It is a very well designed website and could be a very useful tool, not just for urban farmers but for regular gardeners around the world as well.
An app specifically for the Dutch market is Stadse Boeren (‘Urban Farmers’), available for both iPhone and Android. As the name suggests, this app is more focused on the urban farming trend. It not only shows a list of great urban farming related events in your area (with the option to put them in your phone calendar), but it also has an extensive barter section, where people can trade their urban farmed crops for those of others. Even the peer-to-peer economy seems to rear its head!
It’s easy to get into contact with other avid urban farmers and exchange tips and tricks, discuss crops and plants and find local initiatives to meet up at. Hopefully, the digital nature of this trend within urban farming will be embraced instead of averted, for we think it could boost its popularity immensely.
