Down on the Farm and Up on the Web

You’d never mistake Farming and the Environment for an agribusiness giant. It has only two staffers working out of a single small room. But the organization’s small size belies a large mission that includes fostering the economic vitality of community farming in Washington State and promoting environmental stewardship of the state’s agricultural resources through sustainable farming practices.

It’s a big job—and a crucial one given the profound impact of the production and transportation of our food on our health, our economy and the environment. Just consider a couple of figures. Nearly 14 million acres—more than 30 percent of Washington’s land—is dedicated to agriculture. The production, transportation, processing, storage and preparation of food account for 10 percent of total energy consumption in the United States—greatly contributing to global warming and other environmental problems.

So how does a two-person shop tackle such a mammoth and complex mission? The answer is a lot of talking to farmers, consumers, supporters and government officials. And lots of nuts-and-bolts work putting together conferences, conducting workshops, building relationships and organizing markets.

Smart Decisions

As consuming as this work is, it would be even more overwhelming if Farming and the Environment were not extremely strategic about its use of electronic communications and database technologies. “Farming and the Environment has made smart decisions about how it integrates communications technologies with its programs and everyday work,” says ONE/Northwest Program Manager Andrew Burkhalter.

Over the past two years, ONE/Northwest has worked with F&E to build a compelling website, a polished email newsletter and a state-of-the-art relationship management database, which all work together to help F&E build and maintain relationships with all of their key audiences. “They have made communicating online and keeping track of their relationships a deep part of their everyday work,” Burkhalter points out.

Step One: A New Website

When ONE/Northwest started working with F&E on its communications plan, the organization had a minimal online presence. Its first website, launched in December 2003—some two years after the organization was founded, was little more than an online brochure. In spring 2005, with the help of ONE/Northwest, Creaturekind Communications and an outside design firm, F&E launched an attractive, easy-to-use website with greatly expanded content. The site was built using Plone, an open-source content management system that makes it easy to build and maintain a powerful website. “Plone is an incredibly user friendly platform, enabling us to update the site and make changes very easily which is really important for a two-person operation like ours,” F&E Executive Director Jeff Voltz points out.

After only a few hours of training with ONE/Northwest, Voltz and F&E staffer Wendie Dyson were ready to start creating content, updating the site and considering new features to increase the site’s usefulness and reach to potential audiences. Dyson, who manages the website, is enthusiastic about the freedom that Plone provides, “By helping us to update content independently, that’s the biggest help of all,” she says.

The New Website Takes Off

The number of monthly visitors to F&E’s site jumped 700% from January 2005 to January 2006, from just over 100 to nearly 800. Several factors contributed to the increase. F&E launched an email newsletter using an email marketing service called WhatCounts, which helped draw attention to the site. Voltz also points out that he has not been shy about adding people he comes in contact with to F&E’s newsletter list. Voltz and Dyson also bolstered their website’s usefulness by adding a “Meet The Farmers” section, where readers can learn more about commercial farmers who practice environmental stewardship, what they are growing and where to buy their produce. The section now includes profiles of about 40 Washington farms using environmentally sustainable growing practices, along with information on 175 markets and restaurants where these farms’ products can be purchased.

Traffic to F&E’s website continued its impressive growth throughout most of 2006, nearly tripling again to an average of about 2,200 monthly visitors in the summer. A major factor was the start of a farmers market in the Des Moines Marina. The Des Moines Waterfront Farmers Market, which is managed by Dyson with sponsorship and support from the City of Des Moines and a variety of local businesses, ran from mid-June until the end of October. According to Voltz, it is the first market in Washington State striving to have 100 percent of the vendors selling farm-fresh foods grown using environmentally sustainable methods.

The Des Moines Farmers Market was a big success, bringing together sustainable producers and shoppers looking for nutritious, locally gown produce. It drew about 19,000 shoppers and generated more than $140,000 in sales during its 20-week run. Importantly, the market provided a great vehicle for farmers—and F&E—to interact face-to-face with the public. F&E used the opportunity to sign interested shoppers up for its weekly e-market bulletin Buy Fresh By The Bay and get out the word about their work. By October, the number of people receiving Buy Fresh By The Bay reached 450, bringing more people to the website. Information about the Des Moines Farmers Market is “absolutely the most viewed section of the website,” Dyson says.

Dyson has also worked to keep the site current and consistently posts events and news items. Not only has this helped maintain the freshness of the site, but it has also generated goodwill and a number of reciprocal links on other Web sites, all of which has helped draw visitors. “Our website helps give us credibility,” she comments.

A Database for All Seasons

ONE/Northwest Database Program Manager Steve Andersen has also worked with F&E to implement a Salesforce.com database, enabling the organization to keep on top of donors, volunteers, farmers and other contacts in a single system. Because of Salesforce’s flexibility, Andersen was able to build features into the database that allow F&E to track all sorts of financial and other information that is useful to the organization. For example, F&E can now quickly call up weekly sales for each seller at the farmers market, relationships between farms and sellers they supply, as well as the number of acres on farms specifically devoted to sustainable production and environmental stewardship practices. "Like most organizations, F&E needed a bunch of stuff that was 'standard' and a few important custom features. Using Salesforce gave us the flexibility to easily build custom features that exactly fit F&E's unique needs," Andersen says

Electronic communications are a key part of F&E’s efforts to develop an economic model that unites stewardship farmers and increases their access to direct markets. In the end, all of us—farmers, consumers and yes, even animals, stand to benefit by returning our farms to more sustainable methods that will protect the environment and the tradition of community and family farms. Smart technology decisions have helped put Farming and the Environment in a strong position to pursue this important mission.