How does your food get from farm to fork? Who benefits along the way? Working Landscapes is working every day to help build resilient food value chains–mission-aligned partnerships that move our region’s food while revitalizing communities and protecting the environment.
Farm to School
At Working Landscapes, there is no customer more important than public schools! School meals are vital sources of nutrition for most of our region’s children. ByWay Foods is the food hub with the longest track record of supplying schools in our region (since 2013), and we are the only hub to supply farm to school programs in two states–North Carolina and Virginia! In 2024, we supplied fresh-cut produce to 38 school districts, which helped increase local food access for more than 880,000 children.
In addition to supplying school districts directly, we are proud suppliers of the NC Department of Agriculture Farm to School Program that serves schools statewide. We also supply schools through our partner hubs, 4P Foods and Farmer Foodshare. Our farm to school collaborator, Firsthand Foods, offers the perfect complement to our fresh-cut veggies: pasture-raised local meats!
Farm to school is about more than the food on the cafeteria line–it’s also an educational opportunity! For schools that want to engage their students and staff in learning about the local crops on the menu, we offer Core Curriculum-aligned elementary lesson plans and cafeteria display materials through our What’s Growing On program–contact us to learn more!
Are you in a school district that’s hungry for some convenient fresh-cut veggies? Learn more and connect with us through our ByWay Foods site.
Farm to Senior Services
We are dedicated to providing healthy local food to our community throughout life’s journey. That’s why we love feeding local seniors! We prepare meals in the Main Street Kitchen. Each one features local ingredients, including pasture-raised meats. Want to try one? They are served weekly at the Warren County Senior Center–contact them to learn more
North Carolina Food Hub Collaborative and Eastern Food Hub Collaborative
When food hubs work together, everyone benefits! That’s why Working Landscapes is a proud member of both the North Carolina Food Hub Collaborative, which brings together hubs across our state, and the Eastern Food Hub Collaborative, which represents hubs up and down the East Coast.
Kerr Tar Regional Food Council
Working Landscapes is a dedicated supporter of the Kerr Tar Regional Food Council, which aims to strengthen the food system of North Carolina’s Kerr Tar region (Warren, Franklin, Granville, Person, and Vance counties). Gabe, our Director of Strategic Initiatives, is currently the Council’s Co-Chair. The Council is working to implement the goals of the Kerr-Tar Regional Food Policy, which Working Landscapes helped to develop
Food safety consulting
Put our team’s food safety expertise to work for you! To safely supply local, minimally-processed food to schools and other institutional customers, Working Landscapes developed and maintains a state-of-the art food safety program. Three of our staff members are certified as PCQIs (Preventive Controls Qualified Individuals). Our team is available to consult with organizations who are looking to design or improve their own food safety programs.
As dedicated advocates for regional food system development and skilled researchers/stakeholder engagement practitioners, Working Landscapes’ team has led or collaborated on food system planning projects over the years, including the one that guided the development of the Kerr-Tar Regional Food Policy (see above). Our research/consulting team is available to consult on your project–if you’re interested, please get in touch!
Working Landscapes’ leadership developed the Community Voice Method, an innovative stakeholder engagement/participatory research approach that uses film to represent stakeholder perspectives. Here are some examples of our past work:
Check out the film we produced for Growing Opportunities, a 2018 CVM project connecting food system stakeholders across northeastern North Carolina.
Local Motivations, Regional Implications–a research article that we published based on the Growing Opportunities project.
Working Landscapes’ original CVM project: we talked to 170 Warren County residents about how to build a healthy, local food system in the county. Their responses have guided Working Landscapes ever since. Watch the film that launched our work.