Real Time Farms brings crowd sourcing to the locavore movement

The food system has become complicated enough that it is extremely challenging — if not impossible — for a single person to find out exactly where all of his or her food originates. But what if you could band together with people in your area who had the same concerns, and pool your information about farms, farmers markets and restaurants.

That was the basic idea behind Real Time Farms, a new web project from former Google engineer Karl Rosaen, which he’s hoping can help bring transparency from the field to the menu.