What is it about the Bay Area? Don’t these people ever hanker for some denatured, commercially-processed foodstuff of indeterminate origin, hauled in on gas-guzzling monster trucks whose catalytic converters have been stripped out and melted down for gun metal? Only a week ago in this very space we were discussing the efforts of Local Food Lab – a food innovation incubator started by erstwhile Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs…
… And that’s another thing by the way! What’s up with all these former Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs horning in on the local, organic food innovation business? What is it with you people? Are you too good for microchips and machine code all of a sudden? …
Anyways, this week’s techy food innovation spotlight falls on Good Eggs, an e-commerce site founded by … who else … an ex-Googler and a software entrepreneur. Good Eggs aspires to be a kind of Etsy for local food, providing a technological and logistical framework for farmers to sell their wares online. Users can search for local food producers, shop for organic goods, and sign-up for delivery. The site’s founders aren’t short on ambition. Their vision is to help grow local food systems from one percent of current food production to 10 or 20 percent within the next decade.
As much as we love innovation and entrepreneurship, not to mention whizz-bang tech tools to create new green infrastructures, could there be just a whiff of the fad-ish about these efforts, of digital dilettantes living in languid luxury dabbling in the kind of thing that might get a write-up in the New York Times Style section? Can such projects get us closer to a real debate about food policy and substantive change in the way we eat, grow, and live?
Well, enough of casting aspersions on other people’s passion and sincerity, especially people who could probably have you whacked via iPad. No doubt they are indeed good eggs.
via GOOD.
