Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY

An excellent story from McClatchy’s on how farmers are using social networking sites to promote their products and their worklife reality, the beginning of a new American commerce that will slowly cut out all the middlemen who drive up prices for their own profits :

With a hand-held video camera, a computer and 800 cows, Barbara Martin of Lemoore is letting the world into her life as a dairy operator.

No, it’s not a new reality television show. And Martin isn’t craving her 15 minutes of fame.

But she is joining a growing number of farmers and others in agriculture who are using social media tools to communicate with each other, send out information and educate the public about agriculture.

Dairy operators have become especially skilled at launching Facebook pages, blog posting and using Twitter, a microblogging site.

“I want people to know about the people and families who run dairies in this country,” said Martin, a third-generation dairy operator. “This is not a factory farm. We are a family who cares about their animals, and I want to show that.”

The Full Story Is Here

This social networking will eventually to lead to direct contact between farmers and customers, building networks of small distributors to get milk from farms to the people would be the next step in tearing away the corporate bureacracy of modern farming.

A decentralising of the United States’ most basic and oldest commerce - “I have something that tastes good” “I want to buy your tasty things” - is already underway.

Online social networking doesn’t only connect one person or one product maker to millions, and soon billions, worldwide, it is now beginning to localise everything. A farmer will soon be able to, once again, sell his milk to locals who want to buy it, for a cheaper price.

So how long will this decentralisation of American commerce be allowed to continue? It’s not good for the global corporations. What do they get out of it when they no longer stand between the seller and the buyer?

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