The Ripe Blog

A lot can happen in a week. For our friends around the world, there have been some very interesting developments in Australia regarding local food of late.

Funding community food

Just last week the Australian Federal Government scrapped the Community Food Grants program, taking back $1.5m earmarked for investment in community gardens, city farms, farmers markets, and food co-operatives and hubs around Australia. Needless to say, this didn’t go down well.

Hungry for homegrown food? Your online foraging experience has just been improved! We’ve made a spade-full of changes that will make it easier to find homegrown produce nearby.

Here’s a summary of the latest changes we’ve made your your food browsing experience:

Produce search, not just location
First on the list of our big improvement is the ability to search based on the food you want to find, rather than just by location. You can enter apples, oranges or organic and find the listings that meet those terms.

Quietly and while no-one was looking we unveiled an exciting new tool.

When we launched RipeNear.Me we knew there were a lot of edible plants in the world, and we had an inkling that categorizing them might be a challenge. Well that was an understatement! Fortunately you, our RipeNear.Me community, are not growing all 80,000+ edible plant species at once (yet!) but you’ve certainly stretched our thinking on what is “sufficient”.

In addition to the plethora of plant species we found another hurdle. Often a piece of produce will have several “common” names, and the one you’re most familiar with depends on from which part of the world you hail.

An old saying goes, “You eat with your eyes first.” Well over here at RipeNearMe we couldn't agree more. That is why over the past few weeks and months we've been hard at work beautifying our design on mobile and tablet devices. We're putting the beauty of natural, local food back in your hands.

Imagine This…

Karen has traveled halfway around the world, leaving home and the local food of Denver, Colorado to visit Melbourne, Australia - a trip every American should take! In her travels she happens upon two wonderful things; a mulberry tree growing in a park and RipeNearMe.

Meet Ryan. He's one of our first growers on RIpe Near Me in sunny Adelaide, South Australia. Ryan grows some of the best silverbeet (chard) in the Adelaide Plains right in his own backyard. We caught up with him recently when he picked up some eggs in exchange for his greens. Watch the video to see what Ryan had to say.

You've been waiting patiently for it, and at last it's here! Try out the search bar at the top of the page... Ta-daa! ... maps.

If your browser or device allows your location to be known you can simply hit the search bar and be transported to a map of your location. Alternatively add your suburb, town, city or state to the search field first.

One nifty feature is the ability to search for specific foods in or near a location. For example, try searching for: "eggs near Melbourne", or "Tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, spinach in Mississippi", or "olives close to Adelaide".

I like to imagine a world where the vast majority of my food comes from peoples backyards in the community I live. For years I've seen trees beyond fence lines that touch the ground from the sheer weight of their fruit, and yet it's left for the birds or to rot on the ground. I'd much rather eat that fruit than the stale and bland imposters on offer at the local supermarket. That's why we created RipeNear.Me.

I know that I'm not alone - a lot of people yearn for the same opportunity. Oh to be able to see the plant/tree/animal that made your food, and shake the hand of the grower who raised it.

We've been asked many times "are you available...." here, there and everywhere? The answer is a big YES!! - RipeNear.Me is a global service. That said, there are some important things you should know while we're in beta:

Being an Australian based company we have launched in English, using dollars as currency, and with produce names used locally here. We understand that it might be confusing for you if you live elsewhere. For example, our friends in the USA might find it difficult to find cantaloupes because we call them rockmelons. And we understand that if you live in France you want a website in French - and with euros.

Welcome to RipeNear.Me! If you're reading this, you're likely one of our first users in our ambitious attempt to change the way the world sees food.

This site is only as good as the listings provided by you, the grower of great food. For our mission to be a success we need your help to post your food and share it with the world.

We'd also love your help to share this idea with your friends, family and followers. The benefit you'll get out of RipeNear.Me will grow exponentially in proportion to the number of users posting and picking food here.