About ASAP

We want local food to become the default choice. Our vision is of strong farms, thriving local food economies, and healthy communities where farming is valued as central to our heritage and our future. We want a food system that:

• builds local wealth, strengthens communities, supports health and wellness, and sustains the environment;
• ensures everyone involved in growing and producing food can earn a living and afford the food that they grow, process, or serve; 
• allows kids to grow up not learning about food from advertisers, but from their parents, teachers, and local farms.

ASAP’s equity statement builds shared language and values internally, reflects our commitment externally to our community, and is a touchstone for guiding our programs and internal practices. 

We have an opportunity to create a local food system that is equitable, environmentally sustainable, economically viable, and health promoting. To achieve a diverse, inclusive, and equitable food system, our mission must serve and include the voices of our entire community, across constructed lines of race, ethnicity, gender, class/income, sexuality/sexual orientation, age, and physical ability. We acknowledge that we do our work in a society and culture with deeply rooted biases, and in a dominant food system built on historical and present-day oppression.

ASAP’s work builds on the power of social movements and on the premise that communities have the power to enact positive change. Our hope is that in the future, a person or group’s identity does not affect how they benefit from the local food system. Engaging all members of our community to be agents of change can help us get there. 

To achieve our vision, we commit to the following:

• Fostering a culture of learning and unlearning the policies, practices, and norms operating within local food systems that perpetuate oppression and injustice. This includes examining our role and our work in contributing to an equitable food system internally and externally.
• Centering and celebrating the voices, experiences, and contributions of groups that have been marginalized by structural oppression in local food movement building. Creating intentionally accessible, diverse, and inclusive local food experiences. 
• Building community connections by strengthening relationships rooted in respect and mutuality. Leaning into challenging and uncomfortable conversations and co-creating solutions that are transformative, community-driven, and intersectional. 
• Being transparent in our commitment and efforts to center equity in our work so that we may be held accountable by one another and the community members with whom we collaborate and serve.

View a timeline of ASAP’s work from 1995 to 2022.

ASAP has been a leader in the local food movement for more than two decades, building connections between local agriculture, economic development, and health. In 2002, ASAP officially incorporated as a nonprofit, though the effort to promote local food and farms in our region began well before that. 

The rise of the local food movement in Western North Carolina is inextricably linked with the loss of Burley tobacco as the dominant cash crop. Since the Great Depression, Burley tobacco, buttressed by federal quotas and price support programs, provided a stable and resilient crop that kept many mountain farms in production. In 2004, the Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act (more commonly called the tobacco buyout) effectively put an end to that way of life.

Anticipating the devastating effects the loss of tobacco could have on small farms, a group came together in 1995 to look for community-based solutions. This effort, which would become ASAP, launched the Local Food Campaign in 2000 to raise awareness about local agriculture, educate consumers about the benefits of buying local food, and create viable market alternatives for local farmers. The origins of that campaign can still be seen today in the now-ubiquitous “Local Food: Thousands of miles fresher!” bumper stickers. ASAP printed the first Local Food Guide in 2000, listing 58 local farms, 32 farmers markets, 19 restaurants sourcing local ingredients, and 12 CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) programs. Today, the Local Food Guide has more than 1,200 listings.

The impact of ASAP’s work is evident in the region’s vibrant and growing local food economy today. Two decades ago, local food mainly meant fresh produce. These days, more farmers are producing a greater diversity of foods, including locally raised meats, artisan cheeses, eggs, honey, mushrooms, herbs, artisan beverages (wine, beer, cider, soda), value-added products, and more. The area’s restaurant scene is nationally recognized, drawing visitors and residents, and in turn creating more viable market outlets for farmers. Farming in the region has become more resilient with this shift toward producing food for local markets.