Information is crucial to an efficient marketplace. How can you can make the best purchasing decision if you don’t know what’s available?

Steve Schimoler, general manager of culinary business development for SYSCO

It’s not a reality yet, but Steve Schimoler, general manager of culinary business development for SYSCO, the foodservice distributor, envisions an online farmer’s market of the future. A chef located in, say, Boston will be able to log on and find a regional farm that’s harvesting radicchio that week, or a farmer with a surplus of ripe peaches will be able to get them to a pastry chef who wants them.

“A lot of small farmers have the capacity to grow more, but they don’t have distribution for more product if they grew it,” says Schimoler. What’s needed is a regional redistribution system, to redirect produce to the buyer. “The Internet is the key component,” Schimoler says. “We want to open up the electronic network so we have access to data from growers all over the country.”

In the future, perhaps, the Internet could function as a regional produce clearinghouse, with local farmers listing their crops, volume, harvest date and price, and local chefs shopping online for the produce they need to give their menus greater seasonality and local flavor.

Schimoler says that SYSCO has already conducted a successful test of such a system in Minnesota, working in collaboration with the state’s department of agriculture. Borrowing the hub-and-spoke concept from the airlines and exploiting online technology, such a system could efficiently allocate perishable produce and enhance the seasonality and regionality of America’s menus.