A BELLINGEN, NSW, man is on a mission to deliver local produce to people's doors.
And he plans to boost farmers' profits with a revolutionary new software system that could be used by food co-operatives globally.
Donovan Craig is a web database designer and community entrepreneur.
He was a founding member of the Bellofoodbox project, a sub-committee of the Northbank Community Garden, formed to reduce the "food miles" of fruit and vegetables grown in the mid-north coast.
The program is not for profit and uses only organic fresh produce sourced from local producers less than 100km from where it is sold.
"We saw that a lot of produce from our area was going all the way to wholesale markets in Brisbane and coming back down," Donovan said.
"It comes back double the price, has travelled more than 10 hours and growers were getting a tenth of what we pay them. It's about supporting growers and giving them a local outlet."
The project took off, and to cope with demand Donovan and friend Francis Beresford developed "cloud-based" administration software for it - Box-o-Matic.
After building systems for US, Europe and UK corporates, the men teamed up to simplify delivery of fresh food.
"We needed a system fast to be able to survive and we needed it to be easy because we couldn't afford more admin staff. The way we deliver food will be a huge issue as transport becomes more expensive.
"There's also a huge demand globally for local food."
Donovan said the system meant supermarket distribution networks could be bypassed to enable best prices for farmers and freshest food for consumers.
"We found people didn't want to buy from Coles and Woolworths and wanted to support local farmers - this was the way to do it."
