Riding the emerging trend in the UK for the redevelopment of local community ties and organic home grown food, the Landshare movement aims to cover all bases with a simple but effective concept; by putting people with land who want to share it in touch with other people that want to grow stuff.
Now receiving widespread support form celebrity advocates of eco-gardening such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and popular household brands such as Everton Football Club and Channel 4, the profile of the movement is bound to spread even more quickly with these further aids to word-of-mouth.
With nearly 40,000 fans having signed up so far, the deal seems to be illustrating a cultural zeitgeist that captures the flavor of the moment. The sharing of communal resources and collaboration to achieve a greater good are now being amplified and promoted through 21st Century Web 2.0 technology, with Facebook, YouTube and supporting blogs.
The Landshare sign-up URL offers location based look-up to put you in touch with fellow land-sharers and the community spirit is strengthened with user forums sharing insights and information on relevant subjects. Extending the idea of local online communities working in real life, imagine the possibilities for setting up a mobile WAP site using location based services for people to connect on the move too.
Crowdsourced Gardening
Landshare Lets Communities Grow Their Veggies Together
Trend Themes
1. Community Gardening - The trend towards shared communal plots of land, supported by celebrity influencers and technology platforms, provides opportunities for new business models in the organic food space.
2. Crowdsourced Agriculture - The success of Landshare highlights the potential for technology-enabled platforms to disrupt traditional agriculture models by fostering peer-to-peer relationships and collaborative resource sharing.
3. Location-based Sharing - The location-based feature of Landshare's platform demonstrates the potential for proximity-based social networks to support community-driven initiatives and facilitate greater collaboration among users.
Industry Implications
1. Organic Food - As more consumers seek locally-sourced and sustainably-produced food, businesses in the organic food industry can leverage the trend towards community gardening and crowdsourced agriculture to offer new products and services.
2. Agricultural Technology - The Landshare platform showcases the potential for technology to support innovative agricultural models and enable peer-to-peer resource sharing, creating opportunities for new products and services in the agricultural technology industry.
3. Location-based Services - The success of Landshare's location-based platform highlights opportunities for businesses in the location-based services industry to support community-driven initiatives and facilitate collaboration among users in real-time.