How Participatory Marketing Can Fund Sustainable Farms

 

Small sustainable farms are a valuable environmental and cultural resource, but they are notoriously difficult to fund. Rossi Mitova has come up with a way for everyone who cares to help fund small farms through the soon to be launched interactive website farmhopping.com. Pimp My Cause marketing volunteer Edwina Mullins is helping Rossi and her team take the project global and reach more farmers and farming advocates all over the world.

The project came about after Rossi graduated from university in London with a degree in investment and financial risk management. She heard from her friend Mihail about his incredible experience on a sustainable farm in Bulgaria. He was greatly impressed with their rare breed livestock, which are important to the local ecosystem, but much more expensive to care for. Mihail wanted to do a small part to help support the farm so he offered to buy a few of the Karakachan Sheep and long haired mountain goats to help with the costs and to have a stake in the farm. He enjoyed visiting his animals and receiving some of the farms produce.

This triggered an idea for Rossi, why not create a system so that more people who care about small sustainable farms can have a stake in an actual farm, learn from the farmers, maybe even visit and enjoy the products made on the farm. And so farmhopping was born, an online platform to connect farmers with advocates. The website will allow users to interact with real farms all over the world. They can 'purchase' animals and the money will go towards the cost of running that farm and the users in turn can visit their farms, receive produce from them, learn about the farming methods, culture and lifestyle of the farmers.

"You can own a sheep in India, a goat in Israel or a cow in Bulgaria," Rossi explains. "This is a platform for people who recognise the environmental and social importance of small farms and want to do their part to support them. If users enjoy travel they can visit their farms, enjoy the produce, help care for the animals, learn about new lifestyles, cultures and farming methods and have a fun experience."

Rossi is hoping that the project will stimulate new farms to turn to more sustainable farming practices such as raising endangered livestock species and organic production, which would otherwise be too expensive for the farm to maintain. It will also help to raise ecological awareness amongst consumers, teach them about farming and sustainable practices.

farmhopping has big ideas so they needed the marketing support to make their ideas a reality. After hearing about Pimp My Cause from the People Who Share they posted an advert asking for marketing help and were contacted by Edwina Mullins. Edwina's digital marketing experience in the agricultural sector was a perfect fit for having the sector knowledge and contacts to help farmhopping.

farmhopping has a fairly complicated model, the challenge was to merge education, charity work, travel and getting free stuff into one coherent message. Edwina took the time to fully understand their ideas and help them decide on the best marketing channels. She has created a roll out marketing plan for the website's launch and is currently developing an overall marketing strategy.

She has helped them answer difficult questions such as 'who is our target market?', 'should we be looking for marketing support through existing charities and NGO's?' and 'should we focus on local farms or go global?'.

Edwina has brought in colleagues and friends to help on the project and has helped to identify and contact potential farms around the world to build the network of small sustainable farms. Rossi knows that they are extremely lucky to have found a marketer with the right skills and passion to help them take this ambitious and unique project forward. Rossi is hoping Edwina will come visit their first partner farm, Perun, located in an environmentally projected area of Bugaria in October to enjoy the full farmhopping experience for herself.

The farmhopping website is currently under construction, the informational website will be up in October with the full website launch coming soon.

farmhopping is still in need of web development support, so if any developers would like to give some time to the project, please get in touch.

It's a fantastic idea and we look forward to seeing how the farmhopping network grows in the coming years.