Growstuff

Growstuff is a website to track and share data on home food production. I founded the project in 2012 and we had our public launch in July 2013. The software is open source and developed by me and a team of volunteers from around the world. We currently have over 500 members from 6 continents (none from Antarctica yet!) tracking what they're growing in their veggie gardens, but we want to expand to 50,000 worldwide over the next couple of years.

Growstuff's different from most other food/gardening websites. Some of the things that make us special:

  • We're open source, because we believe that making our software available for free and being transparent is key to running an ethical business/social enterprise.
  • We release our data for free, under a Creative Commons license, to benefit other social enterprises, researchers, community groups, and local government.
  • Our software is built collaboratively with our community, and we invite everyone to take part.
  • We encourage, train, and mentor software developers from non-traditional backgrounds and marginalised/minority groups.

But the important thing here -- and the way we measure Growstuff's success -- is that we want to get more people growing their own food and learning that there are alternatives to our unsustainable global food system. It doesn't matter if it's a twenty acre hobby farm or a pot of basil on the windowsill. Growing stuff, any amount of stuff, is empowering and worthwhile, and we think more people should have a go at it!

Financiado pelo capítulo Melbourne (September 2013)