Building upon communication

With the ultimate goal of this project being the facilitation of face-to-face communication between farmers and consumers, I have to look at how to involve consumer input in the system I intend to build.
To start my brainstorming, I began to look at my own needs as a consumer. Immediately, what came to mind, is that I am unfamiliar with the local farmers around me. However, even with the unfamiliarity, I am interested in purchasing foods locally. Clearly, the old sales model between seller and buyer doesn’t work for marketing locally grown food. Typical of the current system is that buyers go to a market with their lists of items and choose from the selection. I got to thinking about this… what if sellers were able to come to me?
As an example, let’s say I want to buy eggs from local, organic farms. However, I have no idea what farms sell eggs. Therefore, I am resigned to going to the grocery store and shopping in the organic isle or stopping by a farmer’s market on the chance that there would be a farmer there selling eggs.
What if I built a system where buyers could post their grocery lists, and other buyers / farmers could recommend where / how to get each of the items. Given my example, I would post “eggs” to my list, and perhaps someone might see that and recommend a farm. Else, a hen farmer could be notified of a potential customer in his or her local area and could contact me directly.
The systems clearly would be a social network for local food… one not created to promote a specific farm, but a specific group of individuals within a geographic area.

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