A grass roots farm movement

No MAGA beef.Know your farmer.

Connect with independent agricultural producers. Know where your food and farm products come from. Put your money behind the future you believe in.

Get the app Find a producer

01Know your farmerMeet the independent people and families producing the food you bring home.
02Know your foodUnderstand how it is raised, and which practices your purchase supports.
03Build a stronger futureKeep more food dollars connected to local agriculture.

The mission

Know your farmer. Know your food.

Blue Dot Farms connects people with independent agricultural producers, and gives buyers practical information about food, farm products, purchasing choices, and the policies shaping American agriculture. We are not a certifier, a retailer, or a campaign — we are a directory and an explanation.

Why this matters

Nobody decided to stop knowing where food comes from.

It was taken off the label, one policy at a time. None of this is secret — every item below is a matter of public record, and each links to its primary source.

Dec 2015

The label stopped telling you

Congress repealed country-of-origin labelling for beef and pork in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, after WTO rulings authorised Canada and Mexico to retaliate. Imported meat can now be sold without naming where the animal was raised.

CRS RS22955 ↗

Structural

Four companies, about 81% of the cattle

The four largest packers buy and slaughter roughly 81% of US fed cattle. This is not new — the share was 79% in 1992 and has sat near 80% ever since. It is a standing feature of the market, and still why an independent producer is a price-taker.

USDA AMS ↗

Mar 2024

"Product of USA" was finally defined

USDA restricted the voluntary claim to animals born, raised, slaughtered and processed here, with compliance required from 1 January 2026. Product labelled before that date may still be on shelves under the looser rule.

Federal Register ↗

Mar 2025

The local-food money went first

USDA ended Local Food for Schools and Local Food Purchase Assistance — together over $1 billion that schools and food banks used to buy from nearby farms. Over 40 states had agreements. USDA's own workforce fell by about 20,000 the same year.

Senate letter to USDA ↗

Every figure here was checked against its primary source on 3 September 2026, and each links to that source. If something falls out of date, tell us and we will correct it.

New — Blue Dot Farms app

The directory, in your pocket at the meat counter.

One app that installs straight from the browser — no app store, no download, no account. Browse the directory, read the buying guides, and put a farm forward while you are standing in front of it.

  • Find a farm. Search every listing by product, town or state — type "texas" or "TX", both work — and filter by what they actually sell.
  • Suggest a farm. Name, town, what they sell, about thirty seconds. Queued on your device if you are offline and sent when you reconnect.
  • Learn what you are buying. Local versus imported and how to actually tell, what the labels legally mean, the questions worth asking, and how to buy a share without the surprise.
  • Understand why it got this way. The 2015 labelling repeal, packer concentration, the shift to a food trade deficit, and the 2025 cuts to local-food programmes — every claim linked to its primary source.
  • Installs from the browser on iOS and Android, works offline, and is served public fields only — review notes never leave the server.
See it on a phone Open the app

The directory is growing

Every listing shows how it got there. Public-source listings are built from a producer's own public business information. Producer-confirmed listings mean the farm asked to take part. Neither is a certification or an endorsement.

Help us build the map

Know a farm that belongs here?

Suggest an independent producer, submit a correction, or request removal. Every submission goes through the same private review — a suggestion does not automatically become a public listing.

  • 01People describe themselves. We do not use voter records, contributor data, or inferred voting histories to classify producers.
  • 02Your details stay private. Submitter identities and review notes are never published — they are not sent to the browser or the app at all.
  • 03Producers can always correct or leave. Removal requests are honoured, and a listing is never a certification or an endorsement.

Reviewed privately, usually within a week. We contact the producer before publishing a confirmed listing.