Hacking Meat: Using Technology To Even The Playing Field With Big Agriculture

For small farms, going up against huge, automated competition can be daunting, even more so when you’re selling meat instead of just vegetables. But a recent hackathon created solutions for any farmer to get their meat to market easily and efficiently. A lot of independent food producers will tell you they like the idea of selling direct, but are put off by the legwork involved. Setting up shop at a farmer’s market or online isn’t just about rearing and growing, and putting things in a light-truck. There’s all sorts of back end stuff that needs to happen first--tasks that prevent farmers from doing what they should be doing, and put them at a disadvantage versus Big Agriculture, which industrialized and automated everything years ago. One of the purposes of Hack//Meat, a hackathon organized in New York recently, was to figure how to level the playing-field a...