We work with partners to build a higher quality of life in our rural communities by creating new value from our assets and sharing that value in more equitable ways. All within the ecological boundaries of our planet, because we love our children and our community.
Our food hub connects local farmers to consumers across the region. Our ByWay Foods (link) products make it easy to serve up local and healthy food in commercial and home kitchens.
What’s Growing On, our hands-on elementary curriculum, gets students, their families, and school personnel excited about healthy, local eating.
Drawing on their research and stakeholder engagement expertise, the Working Landscapes team helps communities with food system and natural resource management planning.
We are working to avert catastrophic climate change, increase our region’s climate resilience, and build the future we need. We need everyone to be a part of this transformation!
In order to increase small town vitality, we put vacant or underutilized properties back to work. We would love to help with your project.
Whether you are a farmer, entrepreneur, school nutrition program, or other food service provider, Working Landscapes can help you with your business development or culinary needs. We offer the following services:
We know that small farmers work hard to produce food, and that most don’t also want to be salespeople, delivery drivers or processors. Working Landscapes has designed our food hub around the needs of small farmers: we have infrastructure, technical know-how, marketing relationships, and product lines to help growers connect more easily to wholesale markets. We buy produce and meat from farms in our region, and we also provide technical assistance in such areas as food safety certification. Since 2012, we have worked with more than 80 farms. We prioritize creating opportunities for farmers of color.
If you are a rural landowner and want to do more with your land, we can help you identify ways to put your land to work for you, the community and the planet. We can help connect you with new farmers looking for land, understand how to manage your land to benefit soil health, or brainstorm with you about ideas you have. We have partnerships with land trusts, regional and national nonprofits and local/regional/state agencies that can help you get started using your land more sustainably and with a larger financial return.
We can help you engage your students, teachers, cafeteria staff and parents in learning about and experiencing the benefits of healthy, local eating. From tested, core-curriculum aligned elementary school lessons to cafeteria-based activities and procurement that puts local food on your lunch plates, we want to that make it easy to incorporate local food into your classrooms, cafeterias or after school programs. Since 2013, we have provided fresh-cut local produce to 20 school districts in North Carolina, and engaged more than 14,000 students in hands-on learning and school gardens. We have trained teachers and cafeteria personnel, helping to build capacity within your district to support, engage in and lead farm-to-school activities.
We connect your hard-working kitchen to high quality, locally grown products in convenient, ready-to-use formats. We have eight years of experience in processing fresh, healthy locally grown food for foodservice customers, and always maintain the highest food safety standards. In our new, expanded produce processing facility, we can lightly process almost any fruit or vegetable to meet your needs. For example, our diced sweet potatoes make it easy to incorporate North Carolina’s state vegetable into your menus—a healthy, cost-effective ingredient in a wide range of dishes.
As a community leader, you are looking for ways to benefit the public good and connect your agencies’ priorities to community perspectives. You may be considering conducting a survey, or holding a community input meeting. Our staff have the expertise to help you plan and conduct an exemplary, engaging community planning effort or research effort. We also have experience with community based economic development, small town revitalization, greenway development, food systems and regenerative agriculture.
If you have an underutilized building you’d like to redevelop, our staff have first-hand experience in planning and implementing complicated redevelopment projects in small, economically distressed communities. We have experience bringing together a variety of funding streams to achieve vibrant results, and have expertise in designing beautiful, inspirational spaces. We can work with you on a plan or serve as a developer on your project.
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