Each week during this season we are sharing a story about our inspiring members and how our work together is accomplishing our mission. It is your financial support that fuels and sustains the work we do across both North and South Carolina. Your support is more important now than ever. Please give today.
You can donate at carolinafarmstewards.org/give, call us at 919-542-2402 or mail a check to CFSA, PO Box 448, Pittsboro, NC 27312.

Your gift to CFSA is one of the best ways you can
support local farmers and champion food
that is good for consumers, good for farmers and farmworkers,
and good for the land.

Thank you for being an important part of the sustainable food movement!

Where does our food come from?

This simple question started Jillian and Ross Mickens of Open Door Farm on their journey toward becoming farmers. The lessons they learned about the state of farming and our food system in the Carolinas alarmed them.

What they learned:

Lesson One: Less than 10% of the food we eat in the Carolinas is grown in the Carolinas. Most of our food is shipped here, losing nutritional value in transit or processing. Food produced elsewhere also contributes less to our local economies and employment, has less benefit to our neighborhoods and communities, and furthers our dependence on petroleum.

Lesson Two: Poor diet is a major contributor to the leadning causes of chronic disease (including heart disease, diabetes and cancer). More and more studies confirm links between healthy food and healthy bodies, as well as the harmful effects of additives and residues of pesticides, herbicides, and chemicals in our food.

Lesson Three: Although there is a growing demand for organic produce and pasture-raised meat and poultry, there are not enough farmers with the training and skills to successfully meet the consumer need for these food products.

Lesson Four: Unsustainable agricultural practices present the greatest immediate threat to our environment – our wildlife, soil, air, and water.

The journey to becoming sustainable farmers is a
difficult and complicated one,
and success is far from assured.

Starting a farm is complicated because it encompasses so much – learning to grow a wide variety of produce (including soil science, irrigation, disease and pest management, cover cropping, harvesting, handling, etc.), business planning, marketing, sales, equipment and infrastructure, food safety, water and land conservation… and making a sustainable income. About 40 percent of U.S. farms exit the farm sector (that is, go out of business) between agricultural censuses, which are taken every five years.

Now, in their sixth season of farming Open Door Farm is:
• Creating a sustainable farming system which is producing healthy vegetables and microgreens in a manner which is increasingly better for the environment each year.
• Making more local, fresh, healthy, chemical-free food is available to their community.
• Contributing to the economy and their community for decades to come through their farm business
• Regenerating 43 acres of abandoned, degraded tobacco land.

Open Door Farm is a model of the kind of sustainable, profitable, organic farms we need more of in the Carolinas.

Without your help:

• Carolina farmers will not receive the training and support they need to succeed and to grow organic.
• Our communities will continue to lose farms and access to fresh, local, healthy food.
• And the opportunity to steward and care for our precious natural resources will be lost.

Your gift today will keep organic farming growing in the Carolinas.

Please give today.

You can donate online at carolinafarmstewards.org/give

or mail a check to CFSA, PO Box 448, Pittsboro, NC 27312

or call us at 919-542-2402

Read more of Jillian and Ross’ story at: Where Does Our Food Come From?