#BuyLocal since 2020
How a county Facebook group became a national farm map
On April 17, 2020, as grocery store meat cases emptied in the early weeks of the pandemic, Shonda started a Facebook group for her local county so neighbors could buy beef, pork, eggs and produce straight from the ranchers and farmers down the road.
Word spread fast. Producers and buyers from across the country joined, and the group grew into the U.S. Meat and Produce Market, connecting families with local food in every corner of the country. Today Shonda runs it from Arizona.
To make producers easier to find, the group built a producer map with volunteer help. Farms and ranches added themselves through a simple form, and the map grew to 769 producers in 47 states.
What's on the map now
Those 769 farm and ranch listings are still here, shown at town level for privacy, and waiting to be claimed. The map also includes 13,934 unclaimed listings from the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service Local Food Directories: 7,053 farmers markets, 1,954 CSAs, 4,474 on-farm markets and 453 food hubs, covering 53 states and territories. Together that is 14,710 listings.
USDA directory pins are public business locations. They are labeled Unclaimed · from USDA directory so a market, farm or food hub can take over its listing, update what it sells and offer local pickup when the marketplace opens. A few names already on the 2020 map were left in place instead of duplicated.
The map also has a #BuyLocal restaurant layer, in its own color, for restaurants that serve local meat or produce. Places Shonda has already featured in the USMPM Facebook group carry a USMPM Spotlight badge. More restaurants will be added from the group over time. If you cook with local farms, use Add your restaurant on the map; submissions are reviewed before they go live.
Credit where it's due
The original Local Meat & Produce map and hub were built by volunteers with the WyGISC community collaborative (Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center). The producer listings shown here are a snapshot of that public map, shown at town level for privacy.
Farmers market, CSA, on-farm market and food hub listings are from the USDA Local Food Directories, a public dataset maintained by USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. Listings may be out of date; confirm details with each business.
What's next
USMPM.com is turning that map into a #BuyLocal marketplace: producers claim their listing, keep it up to date, list what they sell and offer local pickup. Buyers find real food from real people nearby. Learn more for producers →