NewFarm.org: the premier organic farming web site-valued for its stories, information and dynamic online tools and services. Go To Website »

In January, 2002, Chris Hill, web designer Glenn Hughes and a small staff launched NewFarm.Org as the online rebirth of a once-loved magazine. The web site quickly emerged as a highly valued national resource, vibrant online community, and the premier organic farming web site-valued for its stories, information and dynamic online tools and services.

Goals: To give the Rodale Institute a broader presence in the sustainable and organic agriculture community. To provide credible information, inspiration, support, community and tools to assist organic and sustainable farmers in growing and marketing more successfully, and to help conventional farmers make the transition to organic.

Growth: Over a three year period, the web site grew in readership by over 60% a year, to 80,000 visitors a month in fall of 2005.

Marketing and promotion: We followed a mostly organic marketing and promotion strategy-attending conferences, cross-linking with other sites, smart meta-tagging and key wording of pages, email-to-a-friend and other pass-along options, an appealing email newsletter, some active PR related to the launching of new tools and services, and networking with industry leaders, educators and farmers.

Custom Application Development

The Organic Price Index
The nationally recognized OPX compares organic and conventional prices on dozens of products in different regions of the country—a critically important tool for organic farmers, who have no other way of determine asking price. The OPX is a dynamic, database-driven web application that dynamically displays content based on a variety of search parameters. It has an easy-to-use administrative back end and an attractive and intuitive interface for end-users.

The Farm Locator
The Farm Locator is a collection of self-entered web pages for over 1,200 farmers. Farmers call up an easy-to-use online form to enter a rich set of data about their farms: philosophy, background, products, market information and more. The entire database of farms is searchable by zip code, product, market type and other criteria.

Farm Select
Farm Select is a dynamic modeling tool that allows farmers to compare the economics of conventional versus organic production on their own farm by entering their own data or relying on default data from national databases.

The Organic Certifier Directory
The Certifier Director is the only qualitative directory of certifiers in the country. It allows farmers and processors to select and compare certifiers based on a wide variety of criteria, from support services offered to fee structure, to size and type of farm typically served.

The New Farm Resource Directory
A database of over 500 sustainable farming and food organizations and online resources, rich with detail information and searchable by category, keyword, location and name.

The New Farm Bookstore
Over a thousand featured books on farming, the environment, gardening and sustainable communities and food systems. Searchable by category, author, title. This is a highly-customized version of the popular X-Cart e-commerce package.

Tools for Community and Connection

Contact us
Over 450 messages a month, including commentary, stories, rants, questions, suggestions, and thanks.

Email newsletter
15,000 active subscribers, published twice monthly, growing at a rate of over 400 new subscribers a month. See Project Portfolio for samples.

Free Classifieds
The New Farm classifieds section began as a lark, and quickly blossomed into one of the most active areas of the site, with 50 new classifieds added every other week, and thousands of visitors reading and using them. It became an important resource for the sustainable and organic farming community.

Discussion Forums
The discussion forums developed slowly, but took off when we developed separate forums for unique communities of interest. In particular, the forum serving new and beginning farmers began to evolve as an important space for sharing stories, insight and information.