BEND, Ore. — Farming in Central Oregon already is a gamble, with dry weather and a short growing season, but a Bend business has built an app that takes the risk out of finding customers.

The online marketplace, Food4All, lets shoppers connect with farmers in their community through an app created by Bend resident Kami Semick. The app earned her a U.S. Department of Agriculture Small Business Innovation Research program grant of $650,000. The grant is awarded to businesses to support high-quality research related to scientific problems and opportunities in agriculture that would lead to a public benefit.

Food4All plans to use the grant to fuel sales and marketing efforts with the app. Over the next two years, Food4All should be able to grow the number of farmers and ranchers listed on the app, Semick said. The goal would be to provide more opportunity for customers to purchase locally grown food.

Today, there are about 1,400 farmers on the Food4All website — 50 in Oregon — growing and raising everything from produce to eggs to beef. Once listed, the farmer posts products for sale and prices and customers can search by ZIP Code to find what they’re looking to buy.

One of the farms that joined early on was Rainshadow Organics, which grows vegetables on 25 acres in Sisters.

With so much of farming left to unpredictable forces, one way to bring in more business is through the app, said Alison Holland, Rainshadow Organics farm liaison.

“Farming is a gamble of the heart,” said Holland. “We have a variety of crops because we know when farming becomes less of a gamble and more of a guarantee.”

Semick, a retired competitive ultra-marathon runner, created the app in 2018 because she had to hunt down local farmers to buy community-supported agriculture boxes. The app works by connecting consumers to farmers in the same area and allows them to make transactions.

Consumers can buy products in a community-supported agriculture subscription or buy specific items with prices, available dates and terms of pickup or delivery set by the farmer or rancher. It’s truly a field/farmer to table kind of transaction.

The online marketplace enables contactless pickups from local farms, or even from a farmer’s market.

The app allows farmers to upload inventory information on a smartphone from the field. It instantly updates inventory levels as orders are placed, so everyone, including large institutional buyers and local distributors, can see how much food is available in real time.

“By being able to bring their products directly to local markets, farmers can expand their business without adding to their overhead and consumers have increased access to local, climate-friendly options for fresh food,” Semick said.

The software is free to farmers but charges consumers a transaction fee, which is 2.5% of their purchase, plus 95 cents, but is capped at $9.95.

“We continue to create relationships in Central Oregon with producers,” Semick said. “We have found traction on the east coast, South Carolina, Indiana and Illinois. We’re growing by word of mouth. It’s very organic.”

The High Desert Food & Farm Alliance has a similar platform, but doesn’t allow for transactions.

On its website there is a directory of local farmers, links to farm trails and opportunities for restaurants and farmers to gather.

Four years ago, the farm alliance sought out help from Oregon State Univeristy-Cascades computer students to create a prototype digital version of the farmer’s directory, said Yong Joseph Bakos, OSU-Cascades senior instructor and program coordinator.

“It takes a lot to operate a successful farm and it takes a lot to develop direct to consumer software,” Bakos said. “At the end of the day, the farmer will choose the farm, not the software. A platform like this can accommodate all farmers and markets, not just one farmer and one platform.”

At Rainshadow Organics, being listed on the platform is just another way to sell produce, like a farmers market or a community-supported agriculture box, Holland said.

“It allows us to have the option for customers to pay for their (community-supported agriculture) subscriptions monthly, rather than in a lump sum,” she said. “I never see the credit card info, but I can access someone’s account, see what they’ve ordered and their purchase history.

“It makes it easier for us to manage subscriptions.”