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About the Photo: FoodHub actively connects growers and consumers of healthy, regionally grown food. In this photo, Marketing Coordinator Megan Foucht staffs the FoodHub booth at the Oregon School Nutrition Association conference. Offering students nutritious, healthy regional food is one of the goals of Ecotrust's social ventures. Photo credit: Stacey Sobell, Ecotrust's Farm to School Manager

Support from the Meyer Memorial Trust is allowing Ecotrust to scale up FoodHub, an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of regional food. FoodHub links farmers, ranchers and fishermen harvesting the incredible seasonal bounty of the Pacific Northwest with restaurants, hospitals, schools and grocery stores looking to meet the growing consumer demand for locally grown food. FoodHub’s long-term benefits include strengthened rural economies and equitable access to healthy, regionally grown food.

Ecotrust describes how FoodHub is used this way:

"Thanks to FoodHub, food buyers can walk to their computers, type in the word "raspberry" and quickly access a list of regional raspberry producers. They can sort their search results by specific attributes, check out various raspberry producer profiles, send one a message through FoodHub's message center, and arrange for delivery – either direct or through a mainline distributor. Never before has that raspberry producer been so highly visible to the region's food buyers. And never before have food buyers had it so easy."