Bitcoin Forum

If you could visit a farmgate or roadside fruit stall and pay with bitcoins that would be a nice service.

Is anyone planning on contacting local farmers and trying to get a bitcoin food supply chain started ?

I tried, the farmer asked "Where do i find that on AOL?", I pretty much ended the chat there...

I am actually. I'm also going to be importing olive oil in to the US (from Chile) and selling it online for btc.
Organic and herb infused as well. It is probably a few months out though but stay tuned.

I would love to buy olive oil with bitcoins. I don't think I've ever had Chilean olive oil. Can anyone attest to it's quality?

I'm involved in community supported agriculture where I live. I am in the process of trying to interest farmers in taking bitcoin. I'll keep you posted.

I'm going to send some samples up. If you'd like I'll send you a bottle on the condition that if you like it you spread the word.
It's the same as buying any product anywhere in the world really. There are good oils and low quality cheap oils.
I'm planing on bringing a variety but nothing that I would call bad or dirt cheap.

In  regards to the flavored oils I've been making those myself with local herbs and a native indian (mapuche) spice called Merken that is made with dried goat's horn peppers, corriander and a few other things. I was shocked at how good they turned out, I underestimated my ability (or more likely luck).

I'm talking with the FDA / customs now. I'll probably send a few samples by air then the rest of it by boat (hell of a lot cheaper).

I'll be sure to be in touch before it ships.

I've got a legit company down here in Chile. the website is www.chile-deals.com but we're only selling trucks / trailers / clothing / electronics etc on the site. Not any oils yet.
Also it's domestic to Chile so don't buy an ipad case  ;D

I'd really like that.

Is it hot?

Despite the name Chile is about the least spicy country I've ever been to.
Obviously I could make some spicy oils and I'm probably going to,  they will be export only most likely.
They have a pepper here know as the "Puta Madre" I'll let you google what that means if you don't know.
It's pretty damn hot, not quite Habenero but it's up there. I've never known anyone local to eat it though haha.

The merken isn't spicy to the point it burns you, I'd call it "warm" I can eat it straight if I wanted to and I'm not that tough.
Mostly it just has a really good flavor, I'll be importing it too most likely. It's just hard to sell things that people have never tried.

Things like a Bitcoin farmers' market would be much easier once the Bitcoin phone app (payer scans a barcode from the seller's phone and then transfers the bitcoins) are usable.

yeah but also chances of getting scammed at a farmers market are pretty low.
Honestly I'd take unconfirmed payment and not worry about double spend.
Especially if it's just a few items.
Plus I'm planing on selling farmers marketish stuff online so that's not much of a concern.

I don't think we're talking confirmed/unconfirmed here, we're just talking about making the payment at all.  In order to spend bitcoins at all you're going to need some sort of Internet-enabled device, and a smartphone would be a good choice.

Yeah as soon as I wrote that it hit me. I need to pay more attention and not do 10 things at once.
Obviously the confirmation is a part of it too though. Smartphone is step 1 but then you still have to wait or take the risk.
If we have an app for ios / android we've got a lot of people covered though.

Local websites that function as the farmers' market are a great idea.  No need to get up early on Saturday to drive to a parking lot full of vendors in hopes of getting fresh tomatos before they are all gone.  A vendor could simply put up on Thursday 80% of his expected pick for Friday, to be delivered to an agreed central location at noon on Saturday.  If his pick is greater than expected, then people could still offer to buy more once they arrive.

Good idea, of course some people are going to want to pick as they stroll or see it first but you could offer a discount online and that would be easier for you since you know how much you're going to sell at a minimum going in.

For smallish transactions, confirmation is not going to be a huge deal.  The effort required to pull off a successful double-spend means you need to have nodes spread across the network that are able to introduce two competing transactions with fairly equal coverage -- or at least the node that makes the payment to the merchant needs to be close enough to his client that he sees that one.

And usually farmers' markets and similar merchant scenarios are dealing locally, so it's not like if you did successfully pull off a double-spend that the guy wouldn't recognize you the second time and refuse to sell to you and/or report you to local authorities.

Exactly I wouldn't worry about it at all. If he's buying a truck of produce then I might wait but even then I'd be really surprised if someone went to the trouble for produce when they could rip off something easier to dump and make a couple of bucks that won't rot in 5 days.

Yes, but this was the kind of thing that I was thinking of...

http://www.sustainabletable.org/shop/csa/

...except that CSA's are an ongoing agreement.  Such a farmer could pre-sell half of his crop via a weekly CSA agreement, an additional 30% on an ad-hoc basis on the website two days before the Farmer's Market, and any other marketable crops at teh farmer's market itself.  In this way, the farmer gets the advantages of futures support without the futures, and sells most of his weekly product before he even picks it.  The Farmer's Market trip then becomes mostly an active advertisment for the service as well as a chance to unload the remainder of his product.

Anyone who is buying an entire truck load is willing to wait 10 minutes.

You could probably load up his truck with it while waiting for confirmation.  :)

That is true :)

I tend to think bitcoin would be good as a way to prebuy before you got to the market.

You could probably just get coupons at the market gate which all the stallholders would accept as a form of local currency.

I love olive oil its too bad I wont be able to buy some in Aus.

That would be great.

I could probably export to Aus as well but if it's just a gallon or two it's going to be expensive.
If all goes well in the states I'd be happy to export to Aus. Let's see how it goes and  maybe we can work something out.
If I get good reviews from the US customers and you can get a couple of people to go in on it or you want to resell it then I'm sure it will be profitable.
Worst case scenario I'll price it all out and if it's too expensive then we don't do it.