Asheville Project Puts Locally Produced Food on the Menu
Published Mar 23, 2009
The signs of success for the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project are easy to spot.
Its signature bumper sticker, “Thousands of miles fresher,” is everywhere. Its first Local Food Guide, published about eight years ago, listed fewer than 100 farms, contained perhaps 30 pages and had a press run of 5,000.
The newest directory is up to 84 pages, 261 farms and 250,000 copies.
“We’ve seen this come from an idea on the edges to a full-fledged movement,” says Charlie Jackson, executive director. The project got its start in 1999 and became a nonprofit organization in 2002. Its mission remains to help local farms and create connections that increase access to locally grown, fresh food.
Ten years ago, that meant launching farmers’ markets and connecting restaurants with local growers. Today, the organization also works with school systems, hospitals, colleges and traditional grocers. “It has always been part of our mission that local food be for everybody,” Jackson says.
Students at Buncombe County Schools now can grab Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, and Gala apples from Apple Wedge Packers and CL Henderson – both apple farms in Western North Carolina. “Growing Minds,” another program, uses pesto making and potato digging to get elementary school students interested in nutrition and agriculture.
Fifty restaurants in the region, many of them in Asheville, have committed to featuring food from local farms, and once a month the public is invited to tag along as a chef shops at the new Asheville City Market.
Deborah Knight, wellness director for Blue Ridge Health Care, hopes to have a fresh market at least weekly in the new atrium area or parking lot of Grace Hospital in Morganton.
After meeting Jackson at a conference in Asheville, she’s also got designs on getting more local food into the system’s cafeterias.
Blue Ridge runs two hospitals, two nursing homes, a retirement community and a wellness center.
“I am looking at it from a health-promotions perspective,” Knight says. “There is no part of it that is not good.”
Holly Hill Farm, a certified organic operation in Tranyslvania County, got help setting up its tailgate market in Brevard. Diane Hill goes through rolls of the project’s “Appalachian Grown” stickers to mark the farm’s produce. Holly Hill already sells to five restaurants and two co-ops, and Bill Hill’s gotten some grants with the project’s assistance.
The Hills have 65 acres and farm 10 of them. They got started in 1999 and certified in 2003. The project has been especially helpful with marketing.
“The Local Food Guide has gotten us lots of customers,” Diane Hill says.
Customers also get a better idea of where their food comes from. The project’s “Who Grows Your Food” feature provides profiles of local farms and the people who run them.
“At the very least, when people think about food, they eat better,” Jackson says. “We are focusing on scaling up and getting more local food into places where people shop.”
Story by Pamela Coyle
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