Farmer Brown's Journal

Where do you buy your food? Sainsbury's? Tesco? Or a nearby FARMERS' MARKET?
Have you ever noticed where your apples come from? Brazil? France? Or KENT - GARDEN OF ENGLAND?
Did you realize that local orchards and farms in Kent are vanishing?
Supporting local production not only gives producers a CHANCE, but also gains consumers a CHOICE.

Farmer Brown’s Journal is my MA project at Ravensbourne College in 2005. It is an online social network for local producers and consumers.
In the beginning it was a mild project passes the information of local produce to the public. Largely influenced by my tutors who are quite a group of activists, some controversial issues have been added into the project - especially the high ratio of imported food in the supermarkets and its impact to the environment and local industry. The goal is to preserve the local culture, tradition and the landscape.

Technique
Farmer Brown’s Journal, an online social network platform, is based on Drupal. Visitors can register as a ‘consumer’ or a ‘producer’. Common functions of online community are provided such as forum, blog and event announcement. It is hoped that the relation between the local producers and the consumers will be reconnected through this platform.

With the data collected from users of this platform, two interactive maps are presented to the users as the visualisation of public participation. One map presents the public involvement regarding the market affairs using the quantitative data collected from market forums and the geographic data of the markets. Another one presents the public concern calculated by the number of the users reside in the same area and how active they are.