Since launching in 2020, the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association’s FarmsSHARE program has built a statewide alternative food distribution network grounded in partnerships, strategically investing in local food and agriculture to support North Carolina’s rural economies, small farms, and communities.
With over 1.7 million pounds of fresh, locally-grown food purchased at fair market prices from 300+ farmers across the state and distributed to thousands of food-insecure households, FarmsSHARE offers a proven model for how state and private support can drive public health, economic development, and community resilience.
At the heart of the program are 18 food hubs, deeply rooted in the communities they serve. These food hubs purchase food from local farmers at fair market prices, then work with trusted community organizations to distribute free, high-quality, culturally relevant food boxes to households experiencing food insecurity. The result is a local food system that supports farmers, strengthens local food infrastructure, and ensures that fresh, healthy food reaches those who need it most.
Through the FarmsSHARE program, we’ve had the privilege of growing our relationships with our partnering food hubs across the state.As we celebrate and reflect on five years of impact, we’re shining a light on food hubs as vital anchor points both to the FarmsSHARE program and to North Carolina’s regional food system at large, from the mountains to the coast.
FarmsSHARE Coordinator Lenwood Edwards and FarmsSHARE Faith Community Organizer Emily Ling recently chatted with four of the food hubs we work with in Western North Carolina about the impact of FarmsSHARE in their communities, particularly in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and their vision for the future. This is the final installment in our food hub spotlight series: read the Eastern NC story here, and the Central NC story here.
High Country Food Hub (Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture), Boone
TRACTOR Food & Farms, Spruce Pine
Foothills Food Hub, Marion
Black Farmer’s Hub, Raleigh
WNC From the Ground Up, Sylva
High Country Food Hub
Located in Boone, the High Country Food Hub is delivering local food year-round to the most northwestern corner of North Carolina. The hub primarily acts as an online marketplace where customers can purchase from a variety of local producers, and it also administers multiple “Food as Medicine” programs, through which they work with local healthcare agencies to provide nutritious, fresh food to people facing chronic illness and disease. High Country Food Hub is operated by Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture, a WNC nonprofit working to build an equitable and sustainable food system through programs including educational workshops for farmers, a year-round farmers market in Boone, food access programs like Double Up Food Bucks – and of course, the food hub.
As an original FarmsSHARE partner food hub, High Country Food Hub has seen firsthand how the program has positively impacted farmers and communities over the last five years. For producers, having a consistent market channel offering a fair market value for their products provides financial security as other customer bases fluctuate seasonally. That security and consistency was especially meaningful for smaller-scale farmers selling lower volumes of crops as they grew their businesses, as well as for meat, egg, and dairy producers who are often not included in other food box programs. And for community partners, the addition of fresh, local food into their pantries and food deliveries was a “game changer,” said Sam Springs, the Local Food as Medicine Coordinator for High Country Food Hub. Community partners reported improved client satisfaction and well-being in response to food box distribution, and some partnering organizations have even been able to expand their capacity and reach as a result of increased client interest.
FarmsSHARE has positively impacted High Country Food Hub as an organization, too. As the team continues to develop and expand their in-house programs supporting local farmers and community health, the team uses FarmsSHARE as a model for an alternative food distribution network that works up and down the food value chain. In discussing FarmsSHARE, “There is not a better program to stand behind,” says Producer Programs Coordinator Laney Baker. “It’s working.”
As evidence and support for local, healthy food on community wellbeing continues to grow, the team at High Country Food Hub hopes that future funding for FarmsSHARE and similar programs will be permanent, and calls for buy-in from institutional and corporate partners: “We know what the need is,” says Sam Springs, “we just need the money to do it.”
TRACTOR Food & Farms
From its home base in Spruce Pine, TRACTOR is on a mission to increase access to community-grown food while reconnecting people with agriculture for a healthier community, environment and economy. In addition to serving as a FarmsSHARE partner food hub, TRACTOR coordinates a variety of other initiatives bridging the gap between farmers and consumers, including a CSA program, Food is Medicine services, wholesale markets, and their Healthy Harvest program, which connects local produce to food pantries and other community-based partnerships. TRACTOR also leads several creative projects working to decrease the infrastructure, labor, and cost barriers that small-scale producers face, including a shared-use equipment program, community use and access to TRACTOR’s own food storage and processing spaces, and a farmer task force providing paid, hands-on skilled labor to farmers recovering from Hurricane Helene and other severe weather events.
Participating in FarmsSHARE has helped TRACTOR expand the amount of local foods they distribute to their network of food pantries and community partners, who in turn can then serve more community members facing food insecurity and chronic health conditions. “I really appreciate all the produce that is good for diabetics,” one food box recipient shared. “Most of the food from the groceries and at the food pantries are full of carbs and not good for people with high blood pressure, heart disease, or diabetes. I really appreciate all the thought and consideration that was used in this program.”
During the three years that TRACTOR has participated in FarmsSHARE, the hub has also been able to grow their organizational capacity, expanding their core full-time staff from a team of five to a team of nine, and launching additional part-time and seasonal positions. Associate Director Michael Graf shared that, “TRACTOR believes in paying people a fair wage to support the food system,” and that FarmsSHARE provided key support in the hub being able to rely less on volunteers.
TRACTOR is hopeful that the momentum from the success of programs like FarmsSHARE will continue to grow, especially in the field of Food is Medicine. “North Carolina has been at the forefront of how community-based food programs can be implemented successfully,” says Michael Graf. “We believe these programs have a great impact because they allow the community to have input, which helps guide the development of future efforts by identifying and addressing barriers.”
Foothills Food Hub
Foothills Food Hub, located in Marion, North Carolina, serves McDowell and surrounding counties along with 15 food pantry partners through their portfolio of food access programs, including a Food is Medicine program, an online direct-to-consumer sales platform, and a Produce for Peds program, which provides fresh produce to patients at local pediatrician offices. Operations Manager Tim Burke expressed that FarmsSHARE’s greatest impact on Foothills Food Hub was that it allowed them to access new markets, and provide fresh produce to food pantries that have previously lacked a fresh food component. “The smiles, the thank you’s…everybody who received goods through FarmsSHARE was better for it,” says Tim Burke of the hundreds of food box recipients they’ve reached with FarmsSHARE’s help. “We’ve never received any negative feedback.”
With this increased capacity gained from participating in FarmsSHARE and other food box programs, Foothills Food Hub moved into a new facility in 2025, and they’ve made their new expanded cold store infrastructure available at reduced cost to local food access organizations. Foothills Food Hub’s vision for a sustainable food system includes more of this kind of resource sharing, with food hubs coordinating their efforts to build a statewide distribution model, and Tim Burke emphasizes that this kind of food system work is ultimately a community economic development tool.
He would love to see FarmsSHARE as a permanent program and expresses that funders and politicians must understand that spending locally puts money back into the economy. “The only way you can save agriculture is to remove the for-profit middleman and replace it with a non-profit model.”
WNC From the Ground Up
WNC From the Ground Up food hub is located in Sylva and serves the eight westernmost counties of North Carolina: Jackson, Macon, Swain, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Through a combination of programs including FarmsSHARE, the Healthy Opportunities Pilots (HOP), and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program Plus (LFPA+), WNC From the Ground Up sourced from over 40 farms to serve approximately one thousand households; and now, amidst cuts to federal and state-level food and agriculture programs, the hub continues to distribute healthy food across the region through additional partnerships with food banks, churches, and community organizations, while advocating for more robust and long-term investment in sustainable food systems.
“FarmsSHARE got us deeply into food access work in a way that created real, sustained income for farmers,” says WNC From the Ground Up Executive Director Lisa Kelly. Two-thirds of all FarmsSHARE funding the food hub received was distributed directly to farmers in payment for their product, providing financial stability and market access consistency that allowed many participating local producers to invest in infrastructure, hire labor, plant additional acreage, and commit to specific crop production. The remaining third of FarmsSHARE funding was put to equally good use, right at the food hub: WNC From the Ground Up expanded cold storage and transportation operations to meet demand from local producers.
Looking ahead, Lisa Kelly is clear about the importance of consistent, permanent funding for food access and health programs, both for the food hub’s own financial viability and for the network of farmers, organizational partners, and community members they serve and work with. “This model — ‘build it up, prove it works, then cut it’ — harms everyone involved,” she says. It is only with secure funding that they can continue to grow on the work and success of WNC From the Ground Up and the entire FarmsSHARE food hub network.
Hurricane Helene: Loss, Mutual Aid, and Resilience
In September 2024, Hurricane Helene changed the landscape – literal and figurative – of Western North Carolina overnight. Farmers, food hubs, and food access organizations saw their land and infrastructure destroyed, their supply chains and market channels severed, and their product washed away and lost. And yet, in the aftermath of a one-hundred-year storm, they thought of everyone but themselves: reaching out to neighbors and friends, offering what they had to help those in need, pooling their resources and funds to survive, repair, and recover.
To call these farmers and food hubs resilient feels inadequate.
In the face of disaster, CFSA’s FarmsSHARE food hub partners, and countless more community-led organizations, came together to persevere, protect those most vulnerable, pay farmers for their viable product, and distribute fresh, local food for free in their local communities; and FarmsSHARE funding was used in their efforts, to procure stored product from impacted farmers to minimize lost revenue, create and share resources for those in need of new market channels, volunteer labor, and new equipment, and to sustain the crisis operations of food hubs.
Restoration work continues in much of Western NC, and CFSA extends our gratitude and acknowledgement for the ongoing, often behind-the-scenes work that the four food hubs profiled here, and the many other WNC food hubs, farmers, organizations, and volunteers have done and continue to do to provide fresh local food to those who need it.
The Big Picture: Smart Investment, Real Impact
Across the western region of North Carolina, the common thread is clear: FarmsSHARE works. Food hubs report that long-term, flexible funding allows farmers to confidently crop plan, invest in their businesses, and reduce the stress that comes with uncertain markets. Community partners report improved health outcomes, stronger relationships, and increased trust in local food systems.
It’s a win-win-win: produce box recipients are “beyond satisfied” with the freshness and quality of the food they receive, participating farmers are represented in – and engaged with – their home communities, and food dollars remain in the local economy. Plus, thanks to the local leadership prioritized in the FarmsSHARE model, food hubs have been able to tailor their partnerships and distribution strategies to best fit the needs of the counties they serve, ensuring that both community partners and food box recipients reflect the local population. FarmsSHARE is an economic strategy that keeps dollars local, invests in agricultural resilience, and advances food equity with dignity and care.
A Call to Action
Across Western North Carolina, FarmsSHARE is powering food security, local-level agriculture, and circular economies thanks to the dedicated partnership of food hubs like High Country Food Hub, TRACTOR, Foothills Food Hub, and WNC From the Ground Up. Their work, and the positive impacts they’ve seen in their communities through FarmsSHARE and other food distribution programs, serve as a case study in the power of investing in local food systems. When we support farmers and prioritize healthy food access, we’re growing a stronger North Carolina from the ground up.
For policymakers, philanthropists, and funders, the message is simple: investing in FarmsSHARE is investing in North Carolina’s future. These food hubs are not just distributing produce, they are building infrastructure, training future farmers, and contributing to community health and wellbeing in measurable ways in some of the state’s most vulnerable communities.
The time to scale this work is now. The blueprint exists. The leadership is in place. And the results speak for themselves.
We’re thankful to our food hub partners who are working to change food access conversations to prioritizing healthy food for all.
Lenwood Edwards, FarmsSHARE Coordinator
Emily Ling, FarmsSHARE Faith Community Organizer
