---
title: "Open Food Network: Farmers and Eaters Building Their Own Marketplace"
description: "How local food communities created open source software to connect farmers directly with the people who eat their food"
summary: Local food communities in 20+ countries now run their own digital marketplaces, connecting farmers directly with the people who eat their food. The software is free, the relationships are direct, and more money stays in local economies.
date: 2026-01-04
tags: ["case-study", "food systems", "local economy", "open source", "cooperative"]
categories: ["Worker-Owned Platforms"]
weight: 9
featureImageCaption: "Photo by [Niklas Ohlrogge](https://unsplash.com/@ohlrogge) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/ecSFDt5VHog) (Unsplash License)"
---

## What They Needed

Local food systems have a problem. Small farmers want to sell directly to their communities—through farmers markets, CSAs, food hubs, and buying clubs. But the logistics are complicated: managing orders, coordinating deliveries, tracking inventory across multiple sales channels.

Commercial software exists, but it's expensive, designed for industrial scale, and locks communities into someone else's platform. When a farmer or food hub uses corporate software, their customer relationships and sales data belong to the platform, not to them.

Food communities in Australia started asking: what if we built our own?

## What They Built

They created the **[Open Food Network](https://openfoodnetwork.net/)**—open source software that lets local food enterprises manage online sales, coordinate logistics, and connect producers with eaters.

The platform supports:
- **Farm shops**: Individual farms selling directly online
- **Farmers markets**: Coordinating multiple vendors in one marketplace
- **Food hubs**: Aggregating products from many farms for distribution
- **Buying clubs**: Groups purchasing together for better prices
- **CSAs**: Managing subscriptions and shares

Because it's open source, any community can run their own instance. Your data stays yours. Your customer relationships belong to you. And if you need features the software doesn't have, you can build them.

## What Happened

The Open Food Network now operates in **20+ countries**, with local instances run by food communities on every inhabited continent.

**The numbers:**
- Thousands of food enterprises using the platform
- Millions of dollars in sales flowing directly from eaters to farmers
- A global community of developers, food activists, and local food advocates maintaining and improving the software

**What users say:**

> "Before Open Food Network, I was juggling spreadsheets, emails, and a website that didn't talk to each other. Now everything is in one place—and I actually own it."

> "We're a small food hub. Commercial software wanted thousands per month. Open Food Network let us start for free and grow at our own pace."

> "The software is good, but what really matters is the community. When we had a problem, people from three different countries helped us solve it."

## What They Learned

**Local food is global.** The challenges facing small farmers in Australia are remarkably similar to those in France, the UK, the US, and South Africa. Open source let communities share solutions across borders while keeping control local.

**Software can embody values.** Open Food Network isn't neutral infrastructure—it's designed to support local food systems, fair prices for farmers, and direct relationships between producers and eaters. The values are built into how the software works.

**Federated is stronger than centralized.** Each local instance is independent, but they share code, knowledge, and development effort. No single point of failure. No distant corporation making decisions for everyone.

**Community support beats customer support.** When you use corporate software, you're a customer. When you use Open Food Network, you're part of a community. The help you get comes from people who understand your work because they're doing similar work themselves.

## What This Means for You

If you're involved in local food—as a farmer, food hub, buying club, or farmers market—you don't have to rent your infrastructure from corporations.

Open Food Network is free to use. You can:
- Join an existing local instance
- Start your own instance for your region
- Contribute to development if you have technical skills
- Just use it and focus on growing food

The broader lesson applies beyond food: communities with shared needs can build shared tools. The software becomes a commons that everyone benefits from and everyone can contribute to.

**Learn more:** [openfoodnetwork.net](https://openfoodnetwork.net/)

---

*When farmers own their marketplace, more money stays in the community, relationships stay direct, and the software serves the food system instead of extracting from it.*
