You are very welcome @jackyjacky, it made my heart expand just a little bit to read your intro 
Looking forward to seeing your presence on the github repo and in slack 
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@jackyjacky what a story ! Agree with @danielle I feel such a great alignment with what OFN is ! We’ll try to do our best to facilitate your integration in the community, please feel free to reach us on Slack if anything is unclear on how that community work, or if you are lost somewhere in the OFN abundant jungle of ideas and threads of discussion 
We also do have periodic “physical” gatherings that we discuss in the #global-community channel. I look forward to meeting you in real life someday ! So you can feel the human empathy and love that is also at the heart of our collective project
Yay Jacky I’m so glad you’re here! Glad I was able to introduce you to OFN!
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Thank you!! I will definitely be in touch as I explore and come up with more questions. I’m excited to get involved!
Me too!! I am so grateful that you were able to connect me to this project!
That’s amazing @jackyjacky ! I’ll try to do my best introducing you to the tech side of the project. I’m glad that you found a tech project that aligns with your values. That is what I found back in 2017!
Hi @RachelDuBois thanks for your work on OFN. There is a farm in North Wales which is looking for a volunteer to set up their OFN shopfront. Let me know if you are interested and I will introduce you https://www.campsites.co.uk/search/campsites-in-wales/gwynedd/caernarfon/henbant-permaculture-farm-and-campsite 
Hello everybody,
I am Júlia, a Hungarian Berliner. My first contact with OFN was in February when I connected with @Kirsten during my stay in Melbourne.
I am a fresh graduate of the Food Innovation Program. I spent last year in Italy and on a global mission to scout disruptive solutions that will make our food system more sustainable. My research focus was on urban food concepts and alternative supply chain solutions.
I learned about the German instance being rolled out and I offered to contribute to the project with some translation, maintenance, etc.
I am still familiarizing myself with the platform and trying to figure out where to start reading all the available documentation. I will for sure have a few questions 
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That’s great @JuliaDalmadi and welcome aboard! Don’t hesitate to ask anything!
Hi @JuliaDalmadi - nice to meet a fellow alternative food distribution researcher! Until last month, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems in Canada. I’ve launched OFN-Canada, and now OFN-Canada is picking up some of my research into challenges and opportunities of so called disruptive digital technologies for smaller scale producers. Contact me anytime.
Hello!
My name is Adam Moore and I am a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne.
From a perspective of cultural geography, my research project seeks to examine the work of developing, maintaining and using a cooperative digital platform like the OFN to organise the sale, purchase and distribution of food.
Through my research, I hope to understand how cooperative digital platforms are created and shaped through these multiple forms of work; and in doing so, identify and evaluate the qualities of cooperative digital platforms which may help to achieve a more progressive and equitable politics for labour in future platform economies.
If you have any questions or would like to be a part of my research, please get in contact with me either through the OFN community discussion spaces, Slack or via my work email - abmoore@student.unimelb.edu.au
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Welcome to the community @AdamM and it was great to have you virtually with us last week for some sessions ! 
Hi @MyriamBoure, thanks for having me along to the sessions! It was such a great opportunity to learn about how you all work together
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Hi @AdamM - I’m sorry I’ve not been in touch. I just finished a 3 year postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (Wilfred Laurier University, Ontario, Can). My research focused on the challenges and oppotunties being presented by ‘disruptive’ digital tech, and how these new developments might help and challenge small scale producers and sustainable food systems. Right now, OFN-CANADA has a research grant to explore how digital platforms (including OFN) are adding value for small and medium scale farmers. From our abstract: " Following action research methods, we will examine how digital platforms in this sector are (1) disrupting inflexible supply chains, (2) responding to changing consumer roles and demands, and (3) using digitized data to support farm management. Through engagement with platform users we will develop a set of 3 case studies of promising platforms, host 3 knowledge mobilization meetings with farmers, developers, policy-makers and researchers, and co-develop a typology that maps the small farm platform economy in Ontario. Finally, we will curate and share policy examples with relevance to this sector." We are just getting started and I’m hoping to set up a kind of ‘advisory’ or ‘sounding board’ group. Maybe like a research collaborative or something. Would you (or anyone else @channel be interested) ? We’d do a zoom meeting every 3-4 months and share our respective work. (PS - My degree was in human geography - kind of a cultural + economic geography mix)
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Hi Theresa,
Thank you for getting in touch. Apologies about how long it has taken me to get back to you. I took a break from my work and have had a few family commitments.
Your project sounds fascinating and something that I would be very interested and honoured to be involved with.
I will get in contact with you on Slack and we can chat further about this.
Also - great to speak with another human geographer!
Hi all, I’m Bevan Jones and my partner in sustainability is Diane. Together we run Thrive Centre in Hogsback, Eastern Cape of South Africa. Very close to where Nelson Mandela and other apartheid struggle heroes attended school and university. Thrive is all about food, energy and water sustainability and we teach off-grid, organic, regenerative agriculture, grey water systems, natural building etc. Or at least Diane does - I’m still learning from her. She literally gave birth to her daughter under the mango tree where she lived in a rural village called Port St. Johns many moons ago. Diane can talk to plants in that anything and everything seems to grow abundantly in her hands.
We also take in animals that have been badly treated elsewhere, such as horses, donkeys, dogs etc. Our free-ranging homestead also has ducks, pigs, rabbits, goats, chickens which have all dramatically lowered our cost of living and increased our standard of living. Will also hopefully soon have a small Jersey cow because I can’t stand paying for milk and butter at vastly inflated retail prices.
However, I come from a bad place. 
Graduated as a mining engineer and found my way into investment banking and corporate finance. Co-founded globalcoal, which commoditised the international coal market. Made a fortune and lost a fortune. Experienced a lot. In my defence, if we hadn’t founded globalcoal, we wouldn’t have seen such rapid demise in fossil fuels as we are seeing now.
I still have great networks in global finance and at least I understand how the global corporate engine works, but also know that it is going to break down fairly soon. No nation can ever escape its debt burden and that’s why it’s vital that small, resilient, local and decentralised networks take root as soon as possible, to take over from the large centralised corporate networks. Thanks to open source and the net, thousands of little lights are coming on around the world. We’re seeing this movement grow strength in renewables (although corporates are still retaining control, instead of communities) and food (although in SA at least this is still unfortunately being milked for profit as a funky trend for the rich who can pay for their health). We need to see this happen in localised water purification and sanitation as well.
I’m passionate about getting OFN South Africa up and running. It has the potential to help break down the mega-monoculture farms, warehouse / distribution networks that we have in the very Westernised parts of South Africa. On the other hand, it creates wonderful opportunities for our historically disadvantaged, small emerging farmers (who have plenty of amazing land but no funding or markets) to access and create localised markets. Africa will probably be the last GMO-free, food basket for the world and we need to ensure that it is not dominated by greedy global corporates, but that we start re-cultivating those ancient grains and crops, and bring much needed diversity back into our diets.
I also keep myself busy with consulting work for GCX Africa, which is a sustainability management platform looking to assist corporates in measuring and managing their sustainability initiatives. GCX has found that by focusing on financial performance, board members start to take it seriously. For me I’ve always seen the inherent profit from true sustainability, as we seek to emulate Nature’s circular economies and positive feedback loops. I also run African Source Markets which is helping African commodity producers to access fairer markets for their products.
If anyone would like to visit South Africa, they are always welcome to stay at Thrive Centre in Hogsback, the village that supposedly inspired J.R. Tolkien to write Lord of the Rings. Nature and Ubuntu are abundant down here. Plus, we’re close to where fire was first harnessed on this planet and we will ensure you feast heartily with us, whether a simple barbeque (we call it a braai) or 3-star Michelin meal.
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Rory Fogerty here. My partner, Jennifer Kerr, and I run a market garden in Waiuku, SW of Auckland. You can read more about us at permakai.nz
The major challenge faced by us and other growers in our area is to build market share in a space dominated by the convenience and diversity of the supermarket.
As a small grower alone we can never offer the range of goods the supermarket can, only by aligning ourselves with other growers, bakers, bottlers, and similar artisan trades can we hope to offer the customer an alternative. By combining with other local producers we can offer something the supermarket cannot - local products produced in a sustainable way and less food miles means food that is fresher and more nutritious.
The desire for local food is emerging in NZ and openfoodnetwork.org.nz will play an important role in making it possible for everyone who grows or produces local merchandise to reach customers. Through OFN everyone with even the smallest of surplus is given the opportunity to sell this in a simple and effective way…
We also offer a service whereby we use our modern equipment to prepare beds for prospective growers, check out permagrow for more info. Our aim is to enable everyone who wishes to grow food the means to do this.
We have an arrangement with a South Auckland school whereby their horticulture students come to our farm to learn how to grow and gain valuable work experience. I am also project managing an initiative to establish education gardens, a large allotment style community garden, a permaculture food forest, and a Maori healing garden (rongoa maori) on a 1.5ac vacant plot of land adjacent to the school. Our goal here is to offer food resilience to the school community while raising the general level of nutrition thus addressing the many lifestyle diseases or diabetes, blood disorders, liver and kidney issues, obesity and so on. The project is being assisted by the District Health Board and supported by local organisations.
Once again OFN will play a pivotal role in enabling the exchange of surplus from the gardens to the community.
So in a nutshell, my partner and I stand for making local sustainable nutritious food available to as many in the community as possible while inspiring them to live as sustainably in as resilient a manner as possible.
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Hello Every one, I need to introduce my self to this great community…
I’m Jimoh from Nigeria living in Lagos. My father is a farmer and I’m an IT expert. I have setup different types of website and mostly involve in pear-to-pear project. I studied computer science with Mathematics in Federal University of Technology Minna. Recently I met Mr. Kamonru, the Agricultural Specialists and Chemist, where we spoke on Agricultural development and food system in Nigeria, a system that will be link buyer with a farmer. We look into the challenges facing our farmer. This led us to the paths to the OFN and founding ABUKEM to prove the platform for Nigeria communities . and morealso many thank to @NickWeir, @luisramos0 for the guidance and encouragement all the time.
Thank you
Best Regards
Jimoh!!!
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Iam Rafat Jordanian agronomist working in Qatar as Technical Agronomist, i graduated from JUST and then in 2005 i worked as Technical support and trial supervisor for ME & North africa @ SQM/ADFERT and then i jumped to do Agronomy consultancy for the farming system at UAE.
2011 shift to Qatar to do same,but there i start to attend Sustainable Urban planning Session by Doha Architecture forum and it was the starting point to get on coding and Agricultural digitization and i was crazzy with Open Source Community and them invention.
The block-aid story happen and the market start booming and i was pressurize living the best moment of born a virgin agriculture farming system from scratch in real life, (hint: Qatar was depending on her neighbors for food supply).
i get a cross OFN by searching for Agriculture Precision and sustainability that can compete the Agribusiness model in my country which is depends on brokers.
i found it very interesting and promising much. Thanks for the Team who Did it and make it REAL 
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Hey, I’m Malek, 25 years old and currently living in Normandy, France.
I first heard about OFN in 2019 when I was looking for an alternative from supermarkets or any profit-making capitalist enterprise. I discover that OFN could meet my personal sensitivities with community-driven operating, local goods distribution and responsible ethical conduct.
Then, I start to use OFF platform as a customer and a little bit as a hub with Amélie at Saint-Lô Village.
In November, I just finished a course in computing science engineering, with skills in security, networks, cloud computing but not limited to.
And here we are, I’d like to join your community and contribute to a sustainable project that makes sense to me for the common good, with anything that could be helpful, like in computers, trainings, communication, promoting…
Thanks to Amélie and @Rachel for inviting me in!
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