A QUIET revolution of world food distribution is about to get louder.

On July 12, Fife Diet (Europe’s largest local food project) will be launching an online food distribution hub using open source software which is rapidly being taken up and developed by local food activists around the world.

Food hubs from Scotland to Stroud are leading the way in the UK with an international collaboration across three continents.

Stroudco Food Hub co-founder Nick Weir says “I was part of a group that came together seven years ago to find an alternative to the massive inequalities of the supermarket distribution system. Having spent so long building up what we thought was a unique producer-consumer co-operative it was very exciting to find that so many other groups all over the world had been having the same idea at the same time and are as passionate about it as we are.”

Not only in the UK, but across Europe, America, Asia and Australia individual community foodhubs have been springing up in response to the growing demand for fairer ways to get food from the farmer to the eaters.

These foodhubs have now reached a critical mass and are about to join forces to start cross trading, increasing their buying power and collaborating internationally on the website software they are using to facilitate their trading.

The result is Open Food Network (OFN) which has the potential to spark a revolution in food distribution. Not only will existing food hubs have hugely improved website software for their producers, shoppers and administrators, but these hubs will be able to link together to cross-trade and provide a hugely flexible network of farmers, producers, veg box schemes, institutional buyers and shoppers.

This could ultimately provide an alternative to the supermarket-dominated food distribution system.

Fife Diet will be the first UK project to use OFN – launching this week.

Margaret Hall, Fife Diet’s says "Since 2007 the Fife Diet has been exploring what a local, sustainable diet might look like. We've seen some big changes in the food system in Fife, but still many barriers remain in place in accessing the fantastic produce around us. The Open Food Network has allowed us to trade for the first time, joining up our 6,000 members with the people growing and producing food, taking the next logical step in building a better food system."

OFN which is already in use by several foodhubs in Australia, makes it very easy for small-scale farmers, growers and food processors to offer their products for sale through a wide variety of distribution channels.

The software then does the marketing for them, connecting with the growing networks of consumers who are interested in buying local and keen to find alternatives to the supermarket system.

OFN creates maximum transparency, making direct connections between farmers and shoppers and showing exactly who is being paid what and how much of a cut any intermediaries are taking.

OFN co-founder Serenity Hill said “Unlike other ‘online farmer’s markets’, the Open Food Network provides the tools and information to make it easier to run food hubs of all shapes and sizes and to reduce distribution costs. By providing a common software system that suits all small-scale food and drink producers as well as all the alternative food distribution channels we are not only giving shoppers and buyers the chance to buy produce as locally as possible, we are also stimulating an increase in the number of small-scale farmers, food growers and processors by giving them easy access to the growing demand for local food”.

Several software developers have spotted the growing need for systems to facilitate the growth in alternative food distribution.

The key factor which differentiates OFN from other similar developments is that it is open source.

This means that rather than being privately owned, it is owned collectively by all its participants with nobody taking a profit from the software ownership.

Furthermore all participants are free to make improvements to the software and all these improvements then benefit all the other software users.

The only rub for OFN is that unlike their closed source competitors they are not venture capital funded. So OFN is crowdfunding to raise funds to adapt the Australian software to the UK market.

Donations will pay for software developments and trials for existing foodhubs to run the new software in parallel with their existing systems until they are ready to go live and start connecting with all the new foodhubs springing up as the food revolution blossoms.

Crowdfunding details at http://startsomegood.com/openfoodnetwork

OFN co-founder Serenity Hill said “Working with our British partners has been truly inspiring. In many ways the UK is leading the charge against the dominance of Supermarkets with so much work already done here to establish alternative food distribution systems and with a successful crowdfunding campaign we could start to really make a difference for farmers around the world.”

• Online food hubs provide an alternative to the supermarket-dominated food distribution system

• Community groups in three continents have been developing software to make this happen

• These groups are now collaborating to launch an international system that is connecting farmers directly to eaters

• The first UK pilot of this system launches this week

• This system is unique in being open source – a jointly owned and developed commonwealth.

• A crowdfunding campaign will pay for further software development and implementation

For more details about OFN in the UK please contact Nick Weir on nick@nickweir.co.uk or 01453 840037.

For details on Fife Diet’s launch of OFN contact Mags Hall on mags@fifediet.co.uk or Elly Kinross on elly@fifediet.co.uk or 01592 871371.

For more information about OFN please visit: www.openfoodnetwork.org.uk