Prasenjit and I are students at Cornell Tech doing research on building a platform to connect farmers with institutional buyers like hospitals or schools. We want to compare local vs. non-local food on price and food miles. Our goal is to show that by buying directly from local farmers buyers can save on both. I used to be a farmer in Upstate New York. So far our adventure has included qualitative interviews, exploring the agricultural census, and finding data on the origin of every product. We’re building an algorithm that matches farmers and buyers.