We’re bringing the Foodprint Project to Los Angeles in spring 2012 — but first, we need your help figuring something out.
It takes millions and millions of tons of food to feed a city the size of LA. Where does it all come from?
For Foodprint LA, the Foodprint Project has teamed up with the Los Angeles Food Policy Council (convened by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa with the goal of creating a sustainable and equitable regional food system for Los Angeles) and Kullect (a new app that makes it easy and fun to organize and participate in mobile data collections), to learn more about what food Angelenos are buying, and where.
So, if you live in the greater Los Angeles area, we need your help! Every two weeks, we’ll be asking you to document your purchases of different types of food — bread, eggs, peaches, milk, chips, etc. — using Kullect’s handy mobile app (available for iPhone and Android). We’ll take the data (anonymized, of course!), analyze it for patterns and insights, and create data visualizations — infographics, maps, and charts — that we can share with everyone who wants to understand the city’s foodscape a little bit better. After all, building a more accurate and detailed picture of the way Los Angeles feeds itself now is a vital step toward designing a better food system for the future.
Here’s how to get involved:
1. Register at Kullect. You’ll need to provide your email address to receive an invitation to the service (Kullect is still in private beta, so you’re getting a sneak peek at the future into the bargain!). We’ll also ask you to provide some basic demographic information. This is totally optional and it will never be associated with you and your email address, so if you don’t mind sharing, it will help us relate the data we collect to the larger demographic of Los Angeles.
2. Download the Kullect app. It’s free, and it works on Android and iPhone.
3. Document your food purchases. Every 2 weeks, we’ll be asking you to record your purchases of a different food type. We’ll send you an email to let you know what it is: right now, we’re collecting data on milk. So, if you’re grocery shopping at the store, filling up at the gas station, or grabbing breakfast to go at a coffee shop, etc., and you’re buying milk any time during that two weeks, we want you to whip out your phone, take a quick photo of your milk, enter the price, and choose from a list of vendors, and contribute your individual milk purchase data to help create a bigger picture of the Los Angeles milk-scape. You can (and should!) do this as many times as you buy milk, during that two week milk-data Kullection. And feel free to check out our FAQ list or get in touch with any questions.
Here at the Foodprint Project, we get excited about the opportunity to relearn, and then re-imagine, our city through food. This collaboration is a way to get as many Angelenos involved in that process as possible, so please join in, and get your friends, family, and colleagues on board too.
We’ll start sorting through the data as soon as we’ve collected our first food type, and we’ll email you with our findings as well as share them with the Los Angeles Food Policy Council and online here. Meanwhile, a huge thanks for your participation, and to our partners, the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, especially Paula Daniels and Alexa Delwiche, to UCLA Computer Science professor Deborah Estrin, and to the folks at Kullect, especially Sasank Reddy.
We’ll also continue to keep you posted on our plans for an amazing Foodprint LA event in the spring. Tell us what projects and people we shouldn’t miss, and sign up for our mailing list to receive updates as our plans unfold…
