MachineryLink

People of a certain age -- OK, MY age -- may have culture shock over all the newfangled, internet-based ways of accomplishing tasks that used to require shoe leather and face-to-face conversations. Shopping used to require a trip to the store; communicating used to require at the very least a trip to the phone, if not a personal conversation or post office visit. (No telegraph jokes, please.) And financing your farm operation required time spent with the banker. Or bankers.

Welcome to the brave new world of internet farm funding. You may have heard of crowdsourcing, where project owners or authors seek intellectual input from a group of people, typically via the Internet. There is also crowdfunding, where an individual with a concept or an idea or a need seeks monetary input from a group of people, typically via the Internet.

Omaha, Nebraska, Public Radio station KVNO reported recently on a farm couple from Ceresco, Nebraska, who have turned to crowdfunding to help fund an expansion of their operation. That expansion would include adding to their 5-head herd, building a creamery and an ice cream parlor. See the article here: http://bit.ly/…

Crystal and William Powers both have full-time off-farm jobs, but they need more financial wherewithal to fund their dream of making the farm their full-time employment. They weren't keen, KVNO reported, on traditional methods of farm financing and the interest rates that went along with them.

So they turned to the internet. There are hundreds of crowdfunding sites; one of the most well-known is general in nature, Kickstarter.com. There's also GoFundMe.com and tons more. The Powers found a site geared toward sustainable and local food, Barnraiser.us.

The couple has raised nearly $8,000 of the $10,000 they estimate they'll need for their project with 11 days left (as of this writing) on their barnraiser.us crowdfunding project. Contributors, according to KVNO, will receive anything from a thank you note to free ice cream for life, depending on the amount of the contribution.

For more information on crowdfunding, simply do an Internet search with your favorite search engine. The amount of information you find will overwhelm you. I know it did me.

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