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App Will Match Farmers With Meat Distributors

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And many people want to carve out a slice of the national meat market - that includes people who would like to sell you locally grown meat.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

A company from Kansas City - now, there's a city that knows meat - is developing an application, or app, for smartphones. Nathan Jones wants to help local farmers find distributors.

NATHAN JONES: You've got a lot of folks picking up the phone trying to find each other. And what we hear from both sides of the equation, surprisingly, is, you know, I'm really looking for more farms when we talk to distributors. And the farms say, you know, I'm really looking for more independent distributors, and I can't find them.

INSKEEP: The company Ag Local intends to bring them together, starting in New York and San Francisco.

MONTAGNE: Jones hopes eventually to get information to consumers, locavores who want to eat locally produced, sustainable food.

JONES: Surprisingly, there's a ton of these services on the Web right now for fruits and vegetables, for sustainability. But there isn't any marketplaces that actually support and connect the whole ecosystem around the way that meat is bought and sold.

MONTAGNE: When you buy local food, you aren't paying for long-distance shipping that uses a lot of energy, though when it comes to meat, the equation can get complicated.

INSKEEP: On this program a couple of months ago, the economist Tyler Cowan argued that if you want sustainable food, you might consider that raising meat takes a lot of energy.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED AUDIO)

MONTAGNE: But Cowan went on to say he likes the taste of local food, and in Topeka, Kansas, he's likely to order a steak.

INSKEEP: In Kansas City, the founders of that startup company would like to make sure a local steak arrives when Cowan orders it.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KANSAS CITY")

INSKEEP: This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.