New Roots Community Farm

Farmer support services: nrcf and project partners focus their support efforts on area farmers spanning the spectrum of knowledge, experience, and resources. From aspiring farmers to seasoned owners and operators, the overarching goal of past, current, and future programs is aimed at increasing the viability of farms in the region. Nrcf operates a 6-acre production demonstration Farm that offers paid apprenticeships giving aspiring and beginning producers experiential learning opportunities on diversified, intensive, profitable productino farms that showcase conservation-based growing techniques that are appropriate to the topography and geographic challenges of applachia. New Roots Community Farm was able to offer their apprenticeship program to aspiring farmers and had four apprentices complete the 6 month program in 2022 and one apprentice joined later int he season who will continue their six month program into 2023. Apprentices had access to online learning modules in addition to hands-on day to day instructions and mentorhsip by our production managers and Farm directors. Nrcf also offers support services to farmers through their land access initiatives. In 2022 nrcf worked with the agrarian trust and wv agrarian commons to host a training on land access and tenure issues for farmers in the region. They invited services providers and had 34 attendees at the virtual half day training. Additionally nrcf supported strategic planning efforts of the wv agrarian commons to indentify next steps for the expansion of land access initiatives connected to the nrcf programming.

Market development services: New Roots engages in a market first approach to farmer support services. We aim to create New market opportunities for our region's farmers. We do this in partnership with the turnrow appalachian Farm collective, a regional food hub partnership. Nrcf operated weekly satellite aggregation and distribution services and was able to support over 500k in sales for local and regional producers through the online retail market, niche wholesale, and food access markets. Nrcf began planning for the launch of a brick and mortar farmers market to expand opportunities for producers to sell products year round.

Community education and food access: through collaborative Farm to school programming, nrcf works with the fayette county board of education's nutrition department to coordinate local procurement to increase the amount of healthy local food served to fcboe students, 88.9 percent of which qualify for free and reduced meals. Accordingly, during the 22-23 school year, nrcf and wvu extension's family nutrition program (wvu ext) together held fifteen, no-cost, pop-up farmers markets at fcboe pk-8 campuses to distribute 21,223 lbs of local produce to nearly 2,800 fcboe students and families resulting in $26,8662 of sales for local growers. In fall of 2022 nrcf began hosting Farm field trips for fayette county board of education students, with many students served. Nrcf hosted a nourishing network which included partners, organizations and individuals in the Community to discuss food access and food security issues in our Community. The convening identified Community assets, goals, and projects to support Community food access initiatives in the region.