Five a day: Consumers trade fruit and veg online

United States – Frugal consumers who have been busying themselves growing their own produce in their gardens and allotments can now make a bit of cash on the side.

A new website called Veggie Trader provides green-fingered individuals and locavores with an online network through which they can trade, buy or sell their bounty of homegrown fruit and veg. The site’s founders hope to encourage users to specialise in certain crops as well, through a concept they call ‘cooperative gardening’.

‘The idea is pretty straightforward,’ the website reads. ‘A group of neighbors agrees at the start of the growing season to a list of produce they want to grow, and then each household raises the types of produce it believes they’re best at growing. By concentrating exclusively on just a few crops, each household will (in theory) enjoy greater yields and better quality produce. The resulting harvest can then be swapped and distributed among the whole group, with everybody getting a little bit of everything.’

Originally launched so that at-home gardeners could sell off their excess produce, the website has now grown to be a fully-fledged trading system for people concerned with sustainability and local food.