Interactive map helps farmers & landowners find each other
June 13, 2012
We recently launched the New England Farmland Finder website for a consortium of organizations led by Land For Good, University of Vermont Extension, New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, and others.
The purpose of the site, in their own words:
“New England Farmland Finder makes it easy for farm properties to be posted, and for farm seekers to search through them. It is free, simple, region-wide, automated and constantly current, serving as a friendly portal for property holders and farmland seekers.This website was created to help New England’s farm seekers and farm property holders find each other. For many new and established farmers, simply finding available land is a huge challenge. On the other side of the equation, more and more private, public and organizational landowners want to make land available for farming. They want farmers to find them.”
In order to stay within a limited budget, we agreed in advance to use a clean, simple design and focus our time on developing the desired functionality: a user-generated, interactive map of available farmland listings. Everyone was happy with the result, and we now use this site as a model for projects where a clear functional purpose can be achieved without heavy investment in design.