Our Mission Who We Are Our Values

We envision a food system that is human-scale, local, and built on relationships.

img-1
img-2
img-3
img-4
img-5

We're the most comprehensive site for connecting to local food in your community

We provide access to over 25k farms across all 50 states as well as thousands of farm-related events every month.

Discover farms in alabama,alaska,arizona,arkansas,california,colorado,connecticut,delaware,florida,georgia,hawaii,idaho,illinois,indiana,iowa,kansas,kentucky,louisiana,maine,maryland,massachusetts,michigan,minnesota,mississippi,missouri,montana,nebraska,nevada,new hampshire,new jersey,new mexico,new york,north carolina,north dakota,ohio,oklahoma,oregon,pennsylvania,rhode island,south carolina,south dakota,tennessee,texas,utah,vermont,virginia,washington,west virginia,wisconsin,wyoming

Who We Are

TLDR: Techno-luddites who love growing food.

We are David and Andrew. Our paths first crossed in a permaculture design course in 2019, where we discovered we shared a love for the natural world and talking philosophy, as well as a tendency to work our asses off on stuff we care about. We're a pair of software engineers who remain deeply skeptical of technology. It's just the two of us. We don't have funding and we both have day jobs.

But we feel strongly about the importance of self-suffiency at the community level. We think getting there involves:

  1. Supporting the people in the community who grow the food
  2. Getting the people who have the types of skills your great-grandma had sharing those skills with everyone else
  3. Connecting the people who actually realize all this is important.

We believe technology can play an important role in achieving these goals, so that’s what we’re working towards.

David and Andrew building a garden at Andrew's property in Julian CA, 2021.

David Berning

David lives in Encinitas and runs a small farm (Cardiff Tiny Farm), growing veggies for the farmer's market on a leased 1/8 acre plot. In his spare time he does Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. David handles outreach and relationship building with farmers and organizations for RootSeller, and all things business related.

Andrew Haupt

Andrew now lives outside of Eugene, OR, where he homesteads with his family. An avid forager and fermenter, he's working to start a micro winery/cidery called Crown Shy Cider and Wine, which right now equates to a couple barrels and some carboys in the barn. Andrew writes the code that makes RootSeller happen, but hopes that one day the ship can (sort of) sail itself so he can spend all his time outside.

Our Values

We are a Public Benefit Corporation — as a result, we're legally bound to uphold the following mission:

Enhance community resilience by increasing consumer awareness of and access to local food produced in a way that enriches the local ecological landscape, and by empowering the network of producers who make it possible.

In normal people speak, this means we want to build resilient communities full of people who know each other and know how to do stuff. And food is at the root of it.

People First

Technology can too easily become anti-human. We constantly re-evaluate to ensure that our tech is serving people and not the other way around.

Be of Service

We exist to serve our mission without compromise, at the expense of short-term gain. We are a registered Public Benefit Corporation and tied to our mission as a result.

Cultivate Trust

We acknowledge trust is difficult to earn and easy to lose. We therefore always act in full transparency.

Get Your Hands Dirty

We're not afraid to roll-up our sleeves and do the hard work ourselves.

Do Good Work

We commit hard to the goals we set for ourselves to ensure RootSeller is an exceptional product.

Truth Over Everything

In a world that's becoming increasingly more chaotic and confusing we recognize that the only real protection in life is power of truth.