RootSeller is a community-maintained database. Every farm, market, and event listing can be
edited by anyone with an account. We believe the people who live in a community know it best —
they know when a farm stand changes its hours, when a new market opens, or when a beloved farm
closes for the season.
This isn't a platform where farms have to manage their own profiles. It's a shared resource,
like a wiki for local food. Farmers can claim their listings for full control, but the community
keeps everything accurate and up to date.
Every edit is tracked, every change is reversible, and we review activity to keep things honest.
The result is a directory that's more complete and more current than anything a small team could
maintain alone.
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:
Supporting the people in the community who grow the food
Getting the people who have the types of skills your great-grandma had sharing those skills
with everyone else
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 Landrace Cider and Wine,
and writing about it on Substack. 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.
