Urbana, Illinois
February 22, 2007
Author: Debra Levey Larson
URBANA - From producer to consumer and
back again, the food chain winds its way from field to fork
across America. But, connecting the product with the customer
can be difficult, particularly for smaller operations that may
not have the resources to do extensive marketing. The
MarketMaker website is helping make those connections on a
multi-state level.
MarketMaker currently includes Illinois,
Iowa, Nebraska and Kentucky but Michigan and Indiana have just
recently announced plans to become part of the network and New
York's site is expected to be launched this summer. Nearly a
dozen other states have entered into discussions to join the
effort to build this powerful web based marketing resource for
consumers, farmers and food related enterprises.
"MarketMaker began as an online database
of Illinois businesses and was so successful that now other
states have joined the effort," said University of Illinois
Extension specialist Richard Knipe. "University of Illinois
developed and owns the tool but the multi state partnership that
is able to pool large amounts of food industry data and provide
it to the public really adds value to the resource."
Individuals can use the MarketMaker
website to search for restaurants or places to buy things like
maple syrup, wine and produce direct and producers can search
for farmers' markets, grocery stores and other outlets to sell
their food products.
The original website is located at
www.marketmaker.uiuc.edu.
From there, visitors can search for restaurants, grocery stores,
farms and other production facilities across several states.
"It's more than a directory of information because it has
interactive features like mapping and search capabilities so
users can really target and focus on the data that they need,"
said Knipe.
Each state has a unique site but all the
data from all other MarketMaker states can be accessed from any
location. In June a National MarketMaker Portal will be made
available to the public. The National Agricultural Resource
Center (AgMRC.org) at Iowa State University will host the portal
and will include a clickable map of the entire United States.
Participating states are highlighted, making it easy for users
to navigate from state to state or to regionalize their data
searches.
There is no charge associated with
having a business or farm listed on the site.
"Our goal is to make the site a resource
for all farmers and businesses in the food supply chain," says
Knipe. "We are as interested in helping a grocery store find
farm-fresh eggs as we are in helping the farmer find a place to
sell them, so it's important to include as many producers in our
database as possible."
You can see MarketMaker by visiting any
of the following sites:
Illinois:
www.marketmaker.uiuc.edu
Iowa:
www.marketmakeriowa.com
Kentucky:
www.marketmaker.nebraska.edu
Nebraska:
www.marketmakerky.com
For more information about MarketMaker,
contact any member of the development team:
- Richard Knipe
(rknipe@uiuc.edu; 309 792-2500,
- Darlene Knipe
(dknipe@uiuc.edu; 309-792-2500),
- Sandy Shetler
(sshetler@uiuc.edu; 815-441-0300).
MarketMaker was developed through a
collaboration between the University of Illinois Initiative for
the Development of Entrepreneurship in Agriculture (IDEA), the
Illinois Department of Agriculture and C-FAR (Illinois Council
on Food and Agricultural Research). The project was funded by
the Illinois Department of Agriculture, University of Illinois
Extension, and the Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural
Research (C-FAR). |
