The term Locavore is one that I’m not very familiar with – and to be honest, I was under the impression that throwing out a blanket term like “eating organic” was good enough. The whole organic movement hit the mainstream as I was making an exodus from the west coast, so concrete and constant car honking have muddled my green/hippie roots.
The thought of going to a farmer’s market or even grocery shopping in an actual store makes me cringe a little bit when I can order groceries online and have them delivered. But Buster McLeod’s Locavore iPhone app has me thinking twice about what I’m putting into my body. I mean, I don’t think Panda Express or any other fast food slinging joint is healthy or tasty like Greg does (Editor’s Greg’s Note: It is true. I do loves me some Panda.), but I probably don’t buy things that are local either and that’s just as bad.
So what exactly is Locavore you ask? According to the iPhone app’s description a “Locavore is someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius.” In other words, a locavore tries to purchase and consume only locally grown foods with the idea that they tastes better and are better for you.
Locavore the app tells you what’s in season in your area, how much longer it’s in season for, what’s coming into season, and what’s grown in your state, pulling fruit and vegetable availability from the NRDC. But it does much more than that and it kicks much ass.
When you launch the application you’re greeted with the main splash page that says, “Rolling up to the market…” Once the app is fired up you’ll see the following icons across the bottom: In Season, Markets, Food, States and About. Locavore automatically detects where you are based on cell phone triangulation or GPS (depending on which iPhone model you have) and lists what’s “Currently in season” and what’s “Coming in season soon.” Each food item has a small pie chart next to it that indicates how much longer the food is in season or when it’s coming into season. The pie charts are filled in with shades of red, yellow, orange and green to indicate freshness. Red means it’s going out of season so be quick about picking those up, while green means you have plenty of time to pick up a bushel of whatever it is that you like to eat, hippie. When the foods of your region are populated you can tap each one to get a more detailed breakdown of where else it grows in the US and how much longer it will be in season.
“Markets” lists all the local Farmers’ Markets in your immediate vicinity. I’m not sure what the distance cut-off is but there are approximately 25 markets within 2.4 miles of where I am. Local Harvest populates this section of the app. Tapping into any listing leads to an in-app web page for that market, though you can break the page out to Safari if you choose to do so.
The “Food” screen lists all 234 foods in Locavore’s database. By tapping into one of them, it pulls up a map of the US and breaks down where it grows, where it’s in season and when it will be in season.
The “States” tab does exactly what you’d expect, telling you which foods are in season and what’s coming into season in a specific state.
And last but not least is the “About” section of the app. It’s here that you can get news and updates from the Locavore Twitter account without ever having to leave the app. You can also ask questions and submit bugs via Get Satisfaction.
Well, that’s the Locavore app in a nutshell. It’s simple to use and it’s a hippie/foodie/chef’s dream come true.
But it’s not perfect. Like any first release, it has its bugs. One bug we stumbled upon: If you hit the “In Season” tab after launch while you’re already viewing it, it pulls up the loading graphic, which isn’t a big deal since you can get back to the list of foods by tapping it again. But that bug renders the “In Season” tab useless if you happen to accidentally hit that “In Season” tab while you’re in it and decide to navigate to a certain food in the list. If that happens, you won’t be able to get back to the main list without restarting the app. The Locavore guys have told me that they’re working on fixing it for the next release.
The Locavore iPhone app is available now from iTunes for an introductory price of $2.99 for the first thousand buyers. I suggest you jump on it now.
Note: Ex-CrunchGear writer Matt Hickey had a part in the development of this application, which we felt was worthy of a disclosure. We judged it as we would judge any other iPhone application that was submitted for review.
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I’m not a hippie, but I already love this idea. And $3 isn’t a bad price. My girlfriend and I go to a farmer’s market every weekend in the spring and summer and spend a LOT of time trying to figure out what’s actually the freshest. This helps a lot!
if you are actually at the farmers’ market every weekend in the spring and summer why wouldn’t you, you know, talk to the farmers and have them tell you what’s freshest (or in season)?
i guess i’m not seeing how this application is useful.
The produce we find at a farmers market at this time anywhere in the US is not much fresher than what we find at most grocery stores, considering that they increasingly buy it from local farmers and growers.
Most people wrongly believe that local farmers do not use pesticides and other chemicals on their farms, and if they are asked about them, they would openly lie and deny they do. We should remember that they want to sell what they offer and… make money. No different from any other business.
The main issue is pesticides, food preservatives and other chemicals that make produce, and items in the salad bar, more appealing. Yes, produce on display and salad bar items are sprayed several times a day with chemicals that improve their appearance. Chemicals used are not fully tested on humans, but this is another topic…
Why are pesticides and chemicals in our food important? Simple: there is growing research evidence that they are linked to many types of cancer, including breast cancer. Yes, in this sense, genetics are *not* the main cause of breast cancer as many people thought. In fact, most women diagnosed with breast cancer do not have defective genes…
Holly M Wagner MD
MedixNet.info
“The produce we find at a farmers market at this time anywhere in the US is not much fresher than what we find at most grocery stores, considering that they increasingly buy it from local farmers and growers.”
Either you do all your shopping at a grocery co-op like Rainbow in SF or you live in the California Central Valley (where some huge % of the country’s produce is grown) or you are totally spewing wrong facts here Grocery stores are increasingly sourcing their goods from mass-market producers.
Even so-called Organic groceries like Whole foods are more likely to source their produce from mainstream distributors. If you buy mesclun mix at Whole Foods, it doesn’t matter if you’re in SF or Boston or Florida, it’s coming from Earthbound Farm’s operations in Salinas or Arizona depending on the season. Most apples here at Whole Foods Boston are sourced from Washington, and some even from New Zealand. We have a couple of hardy & tasty local varieties of Apples that we can get from Whole Foods through about January, but beyond that, all the apples are coming from Wash/NZ. That’s irrespective of whether they’re organic or conventionally grown.
A good place to start reading about this kind of stuff is Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, which takes a very rationalist, journalistic approach to organic vs. locally grown vs. industrially produced food.
“I probably don’t buy things that are local either and that’s just as bad.”
Would love a definition of ‘bad’ in this case, or is this just your chosen moral judgment?
Creative, well executed app. Also not newsworthy. Intentional or not, this is a plug and by being homepage featured it chips away at TC’s integrity.
Nice post! Also check out my blog/podcast at http://macmaniapodcast.com.
The concept of eating locally grown meats and produce (locavorism?) is gaining steam and with the corporate takeover of the “organic” food market I believe this market will grow exponentially to combat corporate farming.
Add in the fact that buying local stimulates the economy in your area (not the economy of China) and you have a great recipe for combating the recession as well.
Glad to see these kind of apps popping up.
One of the other key reasons that people turn loca for locavorism is to do their part to reduce their carbon footprint, unnecessary packaging, and general waste. Most of our food travels over 1,500 miles to get from its point of origin to our stomachs. With processed foods, who knows, its origins can come from multiple locations to travel to some factory to get processed and packaged, then shipped worldwide again. All this adds up to a lot of waste.
We get a nice box of “in season” fruits and vegetables delivered from a nearby farm to our doorstep every week, and love it. The farmers markets are another great way to meet the people who are actually producing our food, most often organic, and feel a sense of community that has been lost with this generation.
This is a simple and crude marketing tactic by the powerful agricultural lobby.
Personally I think it should be broadened into a more active protectionist policy and then evolve into a full racist ideology….
It’s more than just being good and good for you — it also has some environmental benefits, is better for the local economy and fights back against corporate farming.
There’s a whole movement of localism that goes beyond just food … it’s shopping at locally own shops rather than chains, local restaurants instead of chains, getting involved in local civic groups and politics, etc.
If all you’re doing is eating locally grown food, you’re only tackling half the problem.
Think globally, act locally!
I don’t care how local the produce is… if it’s poisoned locally or globally, I don’t want to eat it. I get that flying something half-way across the world produces its own poison that we can all enjoy, but if local eating is supposed to be healthier, it needs to be grown properly both for the consumer and the local environment. Now, when it’s local AND organic, then we’re in business. Of course, it’s kinda tough to find grow organic bananas in Maine in March — or in August or any month. We have a very short growing season here and consumers need to start thinking in terms of properly storing the locally grown produce while it’s available. Developing responsibly energized greenhouse systems using responsibly growing practices here in Maine could go a long way to producing a year-round growing season. But who’s going to step up. Perhaps we need a new level of investment in the concept of the CSA (”community-supported agriculture” whereby consumers become investors in that season’s crop by providing the farmer money upfront for a share of the harvest) — long-term infrastructural CSAs that can provide year-round returns?