An engine for social innovation, Farmer Foodshare is reshaping the local food system by increasing access to healthy, nutritious food throughout North Carolina. We create unique system-level outcomes by expanding the market for small and mid-size family farms and delivering fresh food to the hungry.
We envision a healthier world in which all people have access to nutritious food.
We value innovation, impact, inclusion, community-driven solutions, transparency, professionalism, and a healthy work-life balance.
Farmer Foodshare began as a grassroots effort in 2009, when shoppers at the Carrboro Farmers Market noticed that at the end of market, there was food left unsold. Some of it could be sold elsewhere, but after a day in the sun, far too much was destined to become compost or to feed the farms’ animals.
Yet just a mile away, there was a food pantry that had never had the ability to provide fresh food.
That disconnect prompted volunteers to launch Farmer Foodshare with the goals of minimizing waste, creating economic opportunity for farmers, and ensuring that nutritious food was available to all members of the community. Initially, the work was done at farmers markets, where volunteers used monetary donations to purchase food from farmers at a fair price and then donate that food to local food pantries. Over the years, that work has expanded to include a Wholesale Market, which sources locally grown food at a much larger scale and distributes it to businesses, institutions, and community-based organizations. It also includes nutrition education programming to encourage the next generation to become healthy eaters.
Farmer Foodshare’s efforts to create a thriving local food system directly impact food security among vulnerable populations, promote economic development, and complement other organizations’ efforts to address social determinants of health. Although the city and the county are thriving economically, its poverty and child poverty rates, at 18.5% and 27% respectively, are higher than state and national numbers. The poverty rate differs widely by race/ethnicity, and within Durham and Durham County. In Durham, 19% of the Black population are living below the poverty line, followed by 15% for Whites and 10% for Latinx. In Durham County, poverty rates are worse: 19% Blacks, 27% Latinx, 17% Asian, 7% white, and 22% for other/mixed race.
So how does living below the poverty line affect children and families? One of the main challenges is food insecurity, or hunger. According to the USDA, in the past year more than 90% of these families worried that food would run out; nearly 80% could not afford a balanced meal; and individuals in 96% of homes with very low food security skipped meals in order to make food last longer. According to the NC Justice Center, in North Carolina, people in nearly 590,000 households do not have enough food to eat each day – that breaks down to almost 1.6 million North Carolina households that don't have enough to eat.
As families try to stretch their dollars to cover the costs of rent, transportation, clothes, childcare, and medical care, it forces families to make tough choices about the amount and quality of food they are able to provide their families. In many cases it comes down to Food or Rent? Food or Medicine? Food or Childcare? The readily available options, unfortunately, are processed, unhealthy foods; often they’re also the only affordable choices. As a result, 18% of our seniors are struggling with hunger, 1 in 5 NC children are food insecure, and nearly a third are obese or suffer from malnutrition. A lifetime of diet-related illness looms.
It’s also very difficult for family farmers in North Carolina to make a living. Their opportunities are often limited to direct sales at farmers markets or their own farm stands, because large-scale distributors are not equipped to work with smaller suppliers. Occasionally farmers connect with local restaurants to provide single ingredients but that does not provide satisfactory revenue. In urban areas like the Triangle, the increased pressure to develop land only compounds the challenges of maintaining a farm. Farmer Foodshare was launched to connect them in ways that are equitable and lasting, enabling institutions of all sizes to use fresh food while paying growers fairly.
Operating through the lenses of food distribution, food education, and food sovereignty, Farmer Foodshare creates markets for North Carolina family farmers, enabling them to focus on what they do best – tending to their farm, and selling more of what they grow. While at the same time, we partner with a network of schools and nonprofits, businesses and institutions to enable hungry families to have access to fresh, nutritious food, which in turn, provides a steady stream of revenue to our farmers.
