Online food directory aims to link farmers with millennials, Wichita-area consumers

A 31-year-old Wichita native wants to encourage consumers and farmers to buy and sell local food.

To make that happen, Mikel Bowyer, who graduated from Wichita Heights High School, started an online project called ICT Food Circle, which he hopes to register as a nonprofit.

He has many aspirations for the organization in the future, but right now, he started ICT Food Circle as an online directory of farmers.

For example, if you want to buy eggs, you can contact 14 local farmers who sell eggs. Three others sell turkey, nine sell pork, 17 sell beef, and the list goes on – including produce, grains, honey, herbs and nuts.

The directory isn’t updated with real-time inventory right now; Bowyer hopes the site will include an up-to-date list in the future.

Someday, Bowyer also wants to open a public market near downtown with local grocery food, local fast-casual restaurants and live entertainment.

He’s been working on ICT Food Circle as a side project to his part-time and full-time jobs. He delivers parts for Impresa Aerospace full time and works part time as a manager of Public at the Brickyard, 129 N. Rock Island.

On a wider scale, the topic of local food recently gained attention from the organization that put bike lanes through the streets of Wichita. In mid-December, the Health & Wellness Coalition of Wichita released research about local food production and consumption in Sedgwick County.

The study found that even though many fruits and vegetables can’t grow in Kansas, if just 5 percent were local, it would keep about $54.6 million within the county each year.

Bowyer said he got the idea to create an online directory when he saw a need to bridge the gap between farmers and millennials.

“And not necessarily start it off face-to-face, but on the computer – online,” he said.

How it started

The project started back in June when he joined a group called Open Wichita. Open Wichita is a civic hacking organization that aims to improve the community through projects with public data.

Bowyer attended Open Wichita’s first Hackathon, which was held on the National Day of Civic Hacking.

He isn’t a coder or an engineer, but said he was drawn to the group description online, which welcomed anyone and solicited project ideas.

“So I’m sitting there amongst everyone who has these name tags that say coder, or developer, or engineer, and here’s mine that says ‘food guy’ on it,” he said.

Bowyer said everyone then went around and delivered their pitch. That’s when he got attention of a developer, web designer and an engineer who now work with him on the ICT Food Circle site.

“This is my idea of a sustainable force to promote local living, eating, buying,” he said.

Seth Etter, founder of Open Wichita, said roughly 30 people attended the Hackathon. He said ICT Food Circle exemplified the work he hoped to see from the group.

More than being technologically focused, he said, “we want to be civically focused.”

Consumers can find local farmers by visiting ictfoodcircle.org. To be added to the list of farmers, email ictfoodcircle@gmail.com or visit the group’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/Ictfoodcircle, or Twitter account, www.twitter.com/ictfoodcircle.

This story was originally published January 4, 2016 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Online food directory aims to link farmers with millennials, Wichita-area consumers."