Photo Courtesy of Christina Benton
Spring brings light and hope, a much-needed sentiment after last year’s gloomy anxiousness for our health and well-being of our loved ones, as well as the threatening worries of our country’s economic condition.
Many of us struggled as we saw, or even experienced first-hand, the already unjust structures of our current food system hitting economically distressed communities, low-income households, and Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color with the hardest blow.
But, just as spring brings light, there are also luminaries who shed the light of kindness when it’s most needed.
When you meet Christina Benton, you meet a farmer who not Read More
We are thrilled and honored to announce a new partnership at the Urban Farm at Aldersgate. Wisdom and Cherie Jzar, founders and owners of Deep Roots CPS Farm, will manage the Urban Farm at Aldersgate over the next 6 months as we develop a longer-term transition plan. Under Wisdom and Cherie’s mentorship, Sam Hargrove will help manage the daily operations of the farm.
Carolina Farm Trust and Deep Roots CPS Farm share the goal of ensuring equitable access to healthy, fresh, and affordable foods. The alignment of our work will undoubtedly potentiate the multitude of benefits that the Urban Farm can bring to Charlotte’s East Side. In addition, we Read More
Pack your lawn chair and head to the West End this Saturday for a day of fun and food that will help support local farmers.
It’s a great opportunity to meet, greet, and eat while helping to improve food access in the city’s underserved areas.
While development is brisk on the west side of Charlotte, “food deserts” remain. Farmer Paul Brewington is one of the anchor vendors of the newly established Rosa Parks Farmers Market that serves the area. He’s a vocal proponent for the foods that are still hard to obtain for too many residents. “There is a quite a difference between the taste of fresh produce that Read More
When Zack Wyatt was laid off from his government contracting job in December 2014, he was mad — mad at himself, mad at those in his life, mad at his circumstance. But it didn’t take too long before he said passion got the better of him.
At just 35-years-old years old, Wyatt is a husband, the father of five children and the founder of Carolina Farm Trust, a new nonprofit organization that aims to protect farmland, support farmers in the Carolinas and foster an ecosystem of sustainable living. As Wyatt has said, “agriculture is long-term,” but as North Carolina relinquished hundreds of thousands of acres to urban and suburban development Read More
I admit it; I buy produce at Trader Joe’s. Lots of it! I know it comes from Mexico and California and anywhere but here and the blueberries don’t even taste like blueberries, but I buy it because it’s there and it’s familiar and it’s cheap. And that’s precisely the consumer habit Zack Wyatt hopes to disrupt with Carolina Farm Trust, an early-stage organization aimed at protecting the farmland that feeds us here at home.
Every year North Carolina loses 100,000 acres of land to urban and suburban development making it harder and harder for existing farmers to expand their operations or for new entrepreneurial farmers to enter the business. Zack’s plan is Read More