Report Content

This paper discusses the findings of research conducted by ASAP’s Local Food Research Center with entrepreneurs of local food in Appalachian Western North Carolina and Upstate South Carolina. The research investigated the experiences of local food entrepreneurs to understand their motivations for working with local foods, the challenges they experienced, and the strategies they used to make local food-centered endeavors financially viable. For this study, local food entrepreneurs are individuals who operate a food related business such as restauranteurs, food retailers, artisan food producers, and wholesalers with a focus on local food and a commitment to sourcing from local farms. The concepts of “market embeddedness” and “non-market values” are used to bring understanding to entrepreneurs’ motivations for working with local farms and to frame the challenges they encounter and strategies they employ. This paper also builds on an earlier study of the region’s emerging local food system, which in large part looked at ways food buyers in retail and institutional settings negotiate the tensions between locally grown food and larger market-based realities.

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This report discusses the findings of research conducted by ASAP’s Local Food Research Center, which investigated the impact of place-based food and farm experiences on participants in a local food system building effort in Western North Carolina. The research focused on experiences at farmers markets and on farm tours. As organizers deeply involved in this effort, the research was informed by ASAP’s perspective that local food system building can be a catalyst of food system change. The transformative potential of local food lies in its capacity to engage people with food and farming in ways that activate an interest and desire to be active food system participants. Consistent with literature on food democratization, the effort in Western NC is grounded in the idea that expanding participation is vital to creating food systems that align with values and that support the health and wellbeing of the communities and environments in which they are embedded.

View the entire report at the linked pdf.

In ASAP’s mission to support Southern Appalachian farms and build a local food system, we developed the Appalachian Grown (AG) branding program in 2007 with the goal of expanding local market opportunities for farmers by providing a way for the public to easily identify products from local farms. We send a survey to all AG farms annually to assess the impact of program services and support and gather feedback to shape the program’s future direction. In addition, this year’s survey contained a new section specific to the COVID-19 pandemic. This report contains the findings from the survey sent to 775 Appalachian Grown farmers in November of 2020.

View the entire report at the linked pdf.