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Each week, BRWIA makes the purchases for the LocalFAM program using the High Country Food Hub. Products are typically purchased between noon on Thursday when the market opens through the end of the day Friday. A small amount of funding is left over for weekend market excess, that can be spent on Monday morning.
Producers who have products that they would like to be purchased for the program need to communicate this as soon as possible, so BRWIA can determine if there is funding available. This is particularly important for producers who wait until the weekend to list their products. BRWIA prefers to purchase items in bulk. Some of our distribution partners ask for products to be packed into boxes to distribute to individuals, whereas others prefer to receive the products all together to be distributed as needed. When purchasing for this program, we seek out producers who list products in quantities of 10 or more. A benefit of this is that producers can save on packaging costs and cut down on the use of disposables. |
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BRWIA works with a host of different nonprofit distribution partners to make sure that the products purchased through LocalFAM are getting into the hands of folks who need them most.
Once BRWIA receives the products each week, they are packaged according to each distribution partners’ needs. Sometimes this means creating individual, multi-farm “CSA” boxes, which BRWIA packs using the help of volunteers and staff members each week. These boxes are then loaded into the BRWIA delivery van, and dropped off at our partner’s facilities. Other times, BRWIA is able to provide the product in bulk, in which case products are packaged together in large bags or boxes, and either delivered, or they are picked up from the High Country Food Hub by partner organizations. In other cases, BRWIA may deliver to the homes of individuals in need who are selected by partner organizations. |
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Months of planning, coordination, and teamwork goes into finding organizations to partner with and successfully meeting the needs of the populations they serve. BRWIA works hard to conduct surveys of recipients on the kinds of products they need, create recipes and coordinate weekly ingredients to make the products easier for recipients to utilize, and work with producers to incorporate these products into their production plans. Additionally, BRWIA is constantly seeking out new funding sources to grow this program and establish it as a reliable market channel for local producers.
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Funding for this program comes from a variety of sources including Resourceful Communities, Impact Health (a Healthy Opportunities Medicaid Transformation pilot program), FarmsSHARE, UNC Health, Second Harvest Food Bank, and others, in the form of grants, which fluctuate throughout the year and from year-to-year. BRWIA actively works to recruit long-term funding partners, who can work with BRWIA, producers, and community distribution partners to establish this new market channel as a viable model.
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Local Food As Medicine (LocalFAM) is a food access program operated by Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture (BRWIA) that is based on the idea that access to healthy, nutritious food is a form of healthcare. Our philosophy is that healthy food is a right, not a privilege reserved only for those who can afford it. Since 2020, BRWIA has been able to connect folks in the High Country to free, healthy, locally produced food by partnering with neighboring non-profit organizations. This program helps support a thriving local food system while connecting our food insecure neighbors with high quality, healthy food.
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