State’s “Pick Tennessee” Program Updates Image, Services

NASHVILLE -- The Tennessee Department of Agriculture today unveiled a new look and improved features for the popular Pick Tennessee Products consumer site. A simplified, phone friendly logo icon and increased Web capabilities are part of a push by the department to maximize its consumer and producer services. 

Ensuring full digital access, including “responsive” Web design, with each page conforming to the shape of whatever type of screen displays it, is part of a larger process leading to the launch of a mobile app in early 2014. The new free mobile app will allow users to locate the farms and products closest to them through direct GPS mapping as well as provide access to the full Pick Tennessee site.

“We’re putting our farmers, programs and products in front of consumers as never before,” announced Agriculture Commissioner Julius Johnson. “We’re reaching out to consumers where they already expect to find us—on their phones, through mobile apps and other digital services.”

“The Pick Tennessee Products website was the state of Tennessee’s first consumer Web presence, going live in 1995,” Johnson said. “It continues to be an Internet gateway to all TDA Market Development producer programs, and home to all Market Development consumer information. Pick Tennessee Products remains a completely free service to our producers and ag industry, on the Web, in print and broadcast, and most recently through the full range of social media.”

The longstanding “Pick Tennessee Products” consumer program connects consumers and retailers with local food producers and makers on farms, at farmers markets, online and in retail outlets. The site currently features close to 2,000 participating farms, processors and other ag and farm businesses, listing about 10,000 individual items. Last year the site attracted more than 286,000 visits.

Visit Pick Tennessee Products on the Web at www.picktnproducts.org and follow Pick Tennessee Products on Facebook and Twitter.