Sourcing your food locally carries endless benefits for your health, the economy, the environment. The Local First Arizona Foundation has spent over a year making it that much easier.

The new and improved version of Good Food Finder (GFF), a comprehensive online directory of local food, comes with advanced search features that allow users to be very specific, narrowing down food producers by location, products sold, distribution, and more.

“Good Food Finder has been redesigned to take both business-to-business and consumer-based searches into account,” said Kimber Lanning, LFAF’s Executive Director. “For example, a restaurant owner can now search for food producers that operate at wholesale levels, and families can locate a u-pick farm or farmers market within 20 miles of their home.”

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Local First expanded their Local Food team and built an internship program in the fall of 2014 for the sole purpose of developing Good Food Finder further.

“At long last, we are able to take the site out of beta mode, and release Good Food Finder’s full potential,” said Rachel Morningstar, LFAF’s Local Foods Development Coordinator. “Over the last year, we’ve had all hands on deck working on this site. Our team has cleaned up the nearly 1,000 business listings on Good Food Finder and we have rebuilt the entire website from scratch.”

Good Food Finder re-launch updates include:

• Search by interactive map for producers within a specified number of miles from an address, city, or state, or use GPS to narrow the search to a five-mile radius.
• Business owners can claim their page and make updates themselves with new advertising and “bump up” options.
• Farmers markets, CSAs, food hubs and restaurants that practice local sourcing can all now be listed.
• Resource pages include guides on topics such as why local is important, agritourism opportunities, as well as guides for finding emergency food and registering for food access benefit programs.

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“A fully functional, comprehensive, and state-wide portal for identifying local food is exactly what Arizona needs,” said Lanning. “In conjunction with our other healthy local food initiatives, GFF will greatly expand our ability to influence public health in Arizona and will keep more dollars circulating in Arizona’s local food economy.”

For more information, visit goodfoodfinderaz.com.