Carolina Farm Trust – Zack Wyatt

Time	Subject
0:00:07	Introductions.
0:00:48	Mr. Wyatt introduces himself.
0:01:12	Mr. Wyatt discusses his personal history with farming.
0:03:53	Family’s farming history.
0:05:09	Moving to Cornelius, NC.
0:05:42	College education and business administration.
0:07:27	Starting Carolina Farm Trust.
0:10:37	Importance of personal farming history in beginning Carolina Farm Trust.
0:12:58	Mr. Wyatt discusses the Lomax Incubator Farm PSA.
0:13:24	Past and present goals of Carolina Farm Trust.
0:18:47	Geographical focus of Carolina Farm Trust.
0:20:02	Acquiring and leasing land for the Trust.
0:22:36	Acquiring funding as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
0:25:52	Mr. Wyatt’s interest in creating The Farmer that Feeds Us.
0:31:21	Mr. Wyatt discusses the planned Three Sisters Market in West Charlotte.
0:33:37	Differences and challenges between black-owned farms and white-owned farms.
0:36:52	Mr. Wyatt describes challenges farmers he works with face.
0:42:37	The importance of urban farming and educating urban communities.
0:49:16	Carolina Jubilee, its purpose, and its accomplishments.
0:52:05	How Charlotteans can support local farmers.
0:53:17	Mr. Wyatt directs a question at the interviewer.
0:56:46	Conclusion of interview.

[00:00:01]

>> QW: Okay, so my name is Quinn Whittington and I am interviewing Zack Wyatt on April 1st, 2019. I’m conducting the interview at Summit Coffee Company in Davidson, North Carolina. Zack is the executive director of the North Carolina Farm Trust. This interview is part of the Queen’s Garden Oral Histories of the Piedmont Food Shed.

[00:00:21]

An oral history project conducted by graduate students from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s public history program. This project seeks to collect the stories of those who grow, cultivate, produce, and distribute fresh foods in the greater Charlotte region. So first off, can you just introduce yourself, and maybe say your birthday, and where you were born?

[00:00:41]

>> ZW: Yeah, my name’s Zack Wyatt, and my birthday is January 12, 1980. And I was born in Midland, Texas.

>> QW: [LAUGH] So I actually don’t know much about your personal history. I didn’t even know exactly where you were born. So, but with your personal history with farming, could you tell me where that interest develops, do you think?

[00:01:06]

>> ZW: Well I was born in Midland, which is in West Texas. And my family moved to Northern Virginia when I was five. So we moved to a 300 acre old dairy farm. So, the guy had died in the late 70s, I think early 80s, and then there was an attorney my dad knew that handled the property from a group of investors that bought it.

[00:01:29]

So, we were just kind of caretakers of it, but 300 acres is a lot. So we had to bush hog it every year. The state of Virginia actually paid them not to farm it. But we had a large garden, pigs and chickens, tons of horses. So that was kind of my childhood as you know, kinda growing up in that environment.

[00:01:53]

Not work and our neighbors had cattle. So that was my world in common sense for a long time. And I think when we all kind of grow up, that’s just the common sense that we have. And so it was the greatest restore was definitely they supported our eating habits but I grew up on venison and pork.

[00:02:27]

And feed from the friends of ours and stuff like that. So the only thing we really bought at the store was just produced that wasn’t in season, and chicken.

>> QW: So you have had a like a deep connection with organic foods and locally grown foods since you’re-

>> ZW: Yeah I mean, wasn’t organic.

[00:02:46]

I mean, the term organic is just such a vague term these days and I feel like there’s more than a marketing point and anything. But yeah, it wasn’t organic in our eyes at that time, it was just normal. [LAUGH] I think that’s kind of a hard part of trying to differentiate conventional, organic and you need to, and we do as a family.

[00:03:13]

But it’s interesting just looking at the whole concept and saying, here’s food grown this way, and here’s food grown this way. And it’s such a critical part of our health, and the variance between them is huge. And how society looks on it, I always find it very interesting.

[00:03:36]

>> QW: So was your family into farming prior to the time you were born or was this-

>> ZW: No, and again, I would say, I grew up on a farm. We were not farmers, by any stretch of the meaning. Like I said, we just had a big garden, we had chickens and pigs.

[00:04:03]

We used the land, but I don’t wanna portray something that’s not true and kind of understanding farmers who receive 100% income from farming, there’s a big distinction. But my dad was from West Texas, my mom was from White Plains, Hartsdale, kind of New York, a little bit West of the New York City.

[00:04:30]

But my mom left there right at 18 and went out west. So my mom’s always been kind of big horse nut. But it was a great way to grow up. It was a lot of hard work and I was glad to go to college, and I knew I didn’t want to be out in the field everyday.

[00:04:48]

[LAUGH] We all have our roles. But it’s something that I have a great amount of respect for.

>> QW: So did you move from Texas to, I mean, you’re in Cornelius, right?

>> ZW: Yeah, so we moved from West Texas in 1984 to go to Virginia. And so I was four and a half, five at the time.

[00:05:13]

And then I was there until I graduated high school. And then I went down to Old Dominion University for about a year, and then transferred to Coastal Carolina, down in Myrtle Beach. Graduated in 2003 and then moved to Charlotte that summer, so I’ve been in the Charlotte area for about 15 years or so.

[00:05:34]

>> QW: What did you do in university and what did you originally go for?

>> ZW: I was always business administration, I’ve always been very entrepreneurship in nature and always wanted to own my own business. And kind of catalyst of all this starting, I had kind of a business partnership back in 2010 to about 2014, that as partnerships sometimes in most the time do kind of blew up on me.

[00:05:59]

And I kind of got on the losing end of it, and it was kind of a redefining moment. And all this kinda just happened by accident with Carolina Farm Trust. But it is interesting to create something, and build something that you never own. There’s part of it I don’t like, but then there’s a larger part that I do like it.

[00:06:24]

It’s somehow mean, and I didn’t know it at the time.

>> QW: So, you moved to North Carolina for University, right? And then-

>> ZW: Well, graduating from Coastal, going back to Northern Virginia meant moving back in with my parents. And that was just not going to happen. So I could take the nickels and dimes to Charlotte and kind of make my way on my own, but I could not do that going from Virginia.

[00:06:55]

The cost of living was just too expensive. So that was kind of the big deciding factor. We had some college friends that moved here, so it was kind of a collective migration.

>> QW: So do you think going to creating Carolina Farm Trust, it was kind of unexpected for you that you would do that?

[00:07:20]

>> ZW: Yeah, I never thought ever, I would even work for a nonprofit, let alone start one. When my business partnership kind of blew up, I mean, I went from making about 110,000 a year, one-family income of seven. I mean, my wife and I have five kids, to go in zero all in one day.

[00:07:50]

So I had to get on EBT and SNAP and kind of go through all that process. And it was just the bubble popped, our bubble popped. And it was just Scary, and very difficult time. And there was just kind of a PSA one morning. My wife was on the computer, and there was a PSA around Lomax Farm, which is an incubator farm in Concord.

[00:08:18]

And it just stuck with me, and then it just kind of started something, and little smolder of a fire. And there was a lot of TED Talks going on in that early 2015 around food, and the issues we were having, and kinda how crazy our food system was.

[00:08:35]

And it just kinda got mad, and more mad, and cuz it was just all this talk and millions and millions of dollars around advocacy and litigation and lobbying, and in education. But there was nothing, there was no alternative systems really going in. And so, I’m always a business guy and it’s just, are we gonna solve this problem through policy, or are we gonna go solve this by kinda working with our small farming community?

[00:09:09]

And so, I just went and found some farmers and started talking and started making commitments, I had no business making. And then I needed a vehicle to go do it. And that’s kinda what happened and it’s evolved a lot over the three and a half years that we’ve been around.

[00:09:27]

But other than my children, probably the proudest moment for me personally kind of getting this thing off the ground and the successes that we’ve had, and the challenges that we face. And it really looking at it from systematic change, and that’s really hard. There’s a lot of great organizations working really hard on very specific problems but they’re band-aids.

[00:09:59]

But they’re very much needed band-aids. But the approach that we’re trying to take is foundational and systematic change.

>> QW: So how much of you being, I don’t know, growing up in at least gardening or farming, how much of that influenced your jettisoning you into starting a farm trust?

[00:10:26]

How important was that experience of growing up like that, for you?

>> ZW: A lot, so kind of in the 90s is when the real estate boom was just uncontrollable and Loudoun County, the county that I grew up, is the most northern part of Virginia. It’s kind of like the backwards L that kind of juts up into Maryland.

[00:10:49]

But Northern Virginia really consists of Loudoun, Fairfax, and Arlington and I was in three counties. And Loudoun was about 80% rural in the 80s, and then kinda getting into the 90s, it just flipped on a dime. And so, kind of seeing all the farmland just being gobbled up by local and national developers and turn into subdivisions.

[00:11:15]

In a decade, you’ve just completely transformed the whole county. And when you have developers handing farmers millions of dollars for their land. It’s a no brainer from the farmer just because it’s hard work, and hey, it doesn’t happen every day. But when you look at it from kind of a food system perspective, and take a little bit more of a macro approach, so yeah.

[00:11:44]

How much can we really afford to this keep letting all this happen? So experiencing that land grabbed was, I mean my dad was a local builder, so kind of understanding all about it and that’s kind of where, if you kind of start talking to farmers, especially cattle farmers or livestock, they wanna do it right, you need a lot of land for it.

[00:12:09]

And that was just kind of something that kind of just triggered and triggered and triggered, so the land is a piece of it, but it’s only the first step. So there’s a lot of conservation land trusts and stuff out there, and it was more for my approach of, let’s get the land into the trust, and then make it accessible out there to the small farming community.

[00:12:31]

>> QW: So it sounds like what you witnessed in Virginia, maybe we’re seeing that happen in Charlotte. And I’m also wondering, you mentioned the Lomax PSA. What did you mean by that?

>> ZW: That was just a public service announcement that Cabarrus County was defunding them. So it’s just kind of a public service announcement around the issues they were having and some steps for fundraising to make sure they can still operate.

[00:13:10]

>> QW: So could you kinda describe what your early goals for the Farm Trust were and how they might have evolved over the years?

>> ZW: Yeah, I mean, the mission initially was to protect farmland and fostering an ecosystem of sustainable farming, and we’ve kind of added on to the end and to build the next generation of Carolina farmers.

[00:13:32]

So the average age of the farmer right now nationwide is around 60. And from the moment we began until now, it’s very much how can we help our small to medium size farmers get the equipment they need, the infrastructure they need. And the resources that they need to be successful and more sustainable.

[00:13:59]

Understanding that the profitability side of the sustainability equation is the most important. So it’s evolved to more of understanding of the bigger picture of the entire food system and maybe more where we need to play. Distribution is a big issue. Regulation is a big issue but it’s not our mission to go try change regulations.

[00:14:29]

There are other organizations that do that and we wish them the best of luck to do it. Our job is to understand the environment around us and try to, especially with milk, dairy is a prime example of regulation just wanting to keep small farmers small. There’s a very small network of farmers who,

[00:14:58]

>> ZW: Sorry, what do you mean? Go ahead. So regulation is a big issue. But it’s not our job to go change it. So it’s illegal to sell raw milk to humans in the state of North Carolina, cuz they say it’s gonna hurt us or kill us. But when you go to a seafood restaurant and wanna eat oysters and get sick, it’s on you.

[00:15:24]

But for milk, for whatever reason, and mainly just because of the amount of money that’s in it. The milk, they don’t want a lot of individual dairy farms being able to sell to public. So our role with that would be okay, how do we get a dairy farm pasteurization balance system to sell direct in public?

[00:15:48]

I said one thing, I really want to figure out how to do in the next year or two because the dairy industry is just being wiped out locally by global supply and driving milk prices down, and So, if we don’t act and try to make sure that our local dairy farms survive, then we won’t have them anymore.

[00:16:14]

And then kind of what does that look like, with our food system in general, are we comfortable here locally to rely on a feed system that’s 3,000 miles plus long? And then backtracking your head on all the little things that can go wrong. And then what happens? And I think a big wake-up call for me was just when Katrina hit New Orleans.

[00:16:41]

One day, it’s a functioning society, within 24 hours it was completely anarchy. With our food system now, every grocery store is about two to two and a half day turn from being fully stocked to being fully sold out. And then any emergency arises, that two and a half days turns into a couple of hours, what happens if the trucks stop coming?

[00:17:09]

Where do we eat? There’s no answer to that. So really, what we’re trying to do is create that answer. And not really trying to completely eradicate the current food system that we have but making sure that we have a regional one. That if we had to, we could rely on it, and does that infrastructure exist?

[00:17:32]

And as of today, it does not, but I think that’s an ultimate goal of ours, over the next many decades to come to try to do.

>> QW: So you definitely want the Charlotte to be a self-sustaining city in the case that something happens and global food network is cut off or whatever but I mean, is that kind of what you’re getting at?

[00:17:57]

>> ZW: Yeah, Charlotte I think is a great leader, I think Charlotte could be a global leader in food sustainability. And we want Charlotte to be that leader but our reach is the region in North and South Carolina. So within the Carolina boarders, can we feed ourselves town by town, city by city?

[00:18:20]

That is the ultimate goal.

>> QW: Okay, that actually leads into one of my other questions is, it is called Carolina Farm Trust.

>> ZW: Right.

>> QW: And based on your website it is focused on both the Carolinas. Is a lot of your work spread out throughout the Carolinas or is it, at this point, primarily focused in the Charlotte region?

[00:18:41]

>> ZW: Primarily focus on the Charlotte region just because we’re just so small and we’re still kind of in a very neophyte phase. But we’ve done events in Winston and Reedsville and the triangle. So we’re definitely trying to have as much impact as we can as we grow, but we have 20 acres under management right now and seven acres in East Charlotte, two acres is in Statesville.

[00:19:06]

And then we have 11 acres over on the Union County and Mecklenburg County border. But on the urban farm side, we are just taking the opportunities as they present themselves. Right now Charlotte, we’re wanting to kind of create an urban farm network in Charlotte. But if someone said, I mean like the two acres in Statesville.

[00:19:28]

We got a call and said hey, we have this would you want to get under the lease? And the answer is yes, and will always be yes. So if we get something in Asheville tomorrow, we’ll get it and we’ll figure out something to do. But it’s just really just taking the opportunities as they present themselves.

[00:19:45]

>> QW: And by get it, do you mean you have to go and purchase the land for, and keep a hold of it and until what do you do?

>> ZW: Well right now, all because we have our own release. The seven acres in East Charleston, the two acres in Statesville are both leased with other nonprofits.

[00:20:02]

So I’m confident those will be perpetual. The 11 acres in Union County is the private landowner. And we have a ten-year lease on it with an option to buy the first right of refusal. So our hope is to buy that before our lease term is up, that would be a big goal on that front.

[00:20:23]

But ideally, any way we can get it. If it’s donated to us, fantastic. Once we’re bigger and have more funding going out and strategically buying, it will be a focus. And then just turning in land that’s not being used. And leasing that from either corporations, nonprofits, city, county, state governments, private individuals.

[00:20:53]

Whatever we can do to kind of get that land under control and into production. And the vision on land use, is if they’re in urban areas, we want to make sure we’re utilizing every ounce of social capital that we can. So those will be kind of underneath our umbrella.

[00:21:15]

On rural farm cases, we will lease those back right back out to another farm. Ideally, we would not want to get in the weeds on anything. But it would be irresponsible of us to lease a parcel in an urban area to a farmer. And then say by the way, you have to do all this social capital work.

[00:21:43]

And not doing a social capital work is not an option. So we hope to hire some farm managers that will manage that, and we will operate them kinda independently from the outside looking in but internally, we’ll be there to support them in all their efforts. [BLANK AUDIO]

>> QW: So your organization is 501(c)(3), a nonprofit and you obviously are gonna need a lot of money to bring about a lot of these changes that you want to see.

[00:22:23]

How are you getting your funding and how do you hope to increase the funding over time?

>> ZW: Well, right now, corporately. Accenture’s probably our biggest funder for the last two years. Micro Realty’s been a pretty big funder. We’ve been courting a few corporations, and they’re starting, $500 turned into $1,000, $1,000 turned into 5,000.

[00:22:49]

We have Carolina Jubilee and music festival we’ve been doing, going into our fifth year. Last year was the first year we’ve kind of broke even on that. We’re hoping that will be a big fundraising arm for us, so it’s a crowded nonprofit world out there. As with anything higher, affluent donors, all wanna see track record and see how you’re, they don’t wanna fund new nonprofits.

[00:23:21]

And so, it’s been a big challenge on the funding side. That will to succeed and strive has to be very strong to kind of get through the early years. But we’re starting to talk to some more folks and we’re excited about the opportunities in 2019 and the potentials.

[00:23:48]

So long-term, we really wanna diversify and work with corporations 33% of the time, and generate our own revenue from an operation standpoint. Chronologically, I’m hoping to do that. We have a docuseries that we’re working on called The Farmer That Feeds Us. That can be a very good money generator.

[00:24:11]

And also, proving to the rank-and-file population that we need to exist for their own self-interests. I think the more we can get the average person to do 5, 10, 25, $30 a month with us, that’s I know, when we’ll be able to do a lot of what we want, that engagement.

[00:24:40]

But we have to earn that. That’s the critical piece, proving to the community, and then to the region, why we need to exist.

>> QW: So actually, you mentioning The Farmer That Feeds Us, that’s where I wanna turn to next, because I actually saw it on Thursday, last Thursday.

[00:24:59]

>> ZW: Cool.

>> QW: So Ricky Hall came over and showed us the new videos. It was fantastic. So for anybody listening it is primarily about the food desert in West Charlotte, and gentrification in the area. And how that might impact urban farmers and even farmers in the areas around Charlotte.

[00:25:24]

But West Charlotte is predominantly black, and it has very high poverty rates. Now I was just wondering, as you are white and live in Cornelius,

>> QW: How did your interest in that project begin?

>> ZW: Well I did again, going back into the bubble. Basically there’s in the terminology if you’re kinda looking at public health and it’s a crescent.

[00:25:58]

It’s a crescent moon is what they kind of call it which starts in West End and then goes North Charlotte, and then kinda goes into East Charlotte. So it’s that northern crescent moon of where a lot of the food insecurity, food access issues, crime, that’s the crescent where, that is typically has a negative aura around it.

[00:26:24]

So I think it was 2016, I got roped into doing kind of this bus tour of West End. And shamefully, I’d never been there prior to. So going on ten years, and just passing it, and going on 77

>> ZW: And it was just a complete, I have this image in my head of what Charlotte was, and it was very much uptown kind of the lake area, South Charlotte, Valentine, Myers Park, South Park, and South End.

[00:26:58]

>> QW: So the super wealthy areas as well.

>> ZW: Pretty much, I mean, I knew South Boulevard. I lived off South Boulevard when I first moved here, but it was just night and day. But then it took another year and a half for me to kind of get the courage to engage, mainly cuz I was white, and

[00:27:25]

>> ZW: And the approach was important, and Randy Singleton was one of the first guys I met, and then he introduced me to Natania, and to Dr. Rowe, and Ricky. But it was mainly engaging by listening and not talking. And I think that was just the key of building some of those relationships.

[00:27:53]

Because as in the film, there’s a common theme of white people coming into West End and saying well, you need to do it this way. And have this, we’re gonna save whatever, that’s not received well. So what we tried to do,

>> ZW: When I was kind of talking with Reggie, we have a dinner series that is predominantly used to kind of execute our mission as we’re trying to grow.

[00:28:28]

We’ve done quite a few but I’ve never done one with a black farmer before and it was starting to weigh on me, that we haven’t diversified on that. I had asked Reggie, does he know anyone? And, I was going to the Rosa Parks Farmers Market, I met Paul Bloomington.

[00:28:49]

And then kind of talking where do we wanna do the event and, we want to do it in West End, and then we found the Washburn Estates that Judge Fulton was graciously enough to let us use. So once all that, okay, we have to film it. [LAUGH] We can’t not film.

[00:29:07]

Cuz there’s just too much there. There was a lot of stories there once I started kind of meeting everyone. And so, we approached Ortho Carolina [INAUDIBLE] funded the first one and they came in and fund the second one, and John C Smith kicked in a little bit. And so everyone was just extremely nice and, again, it’s just built up fear and perception, with all of us, that make us afraid to do things.

[00:29:43]

And I was that way for two years, cuz I just didn’t know how I would be received. And it is nerve-wracking, it still is nerve-wracking, when we kinda show it, and. But it’s made it more clear of making sure that you don’t let fear prohibit you from engaging.

[00:30:08]

And there’s a lot of ways to engage. And the one thing I would say is if you’re wanting to engage with the community, and you don’t know too much about, just shut up and listen. Just don’t walk in and have all the solutions. And also it’s not about someone coming in, and having solutions of bringing them.

[00:30:26]

It’s more of getting to know a community, and understanding the initiatives that they’re trying to move forward. And then offering assistance to help them meet their initiatives, and not try to create new ones, or alternative ones, or anything like that. That was just kind of a critical piece of the whole, on why it happened, and how it happened.

[00:30:53]

And very lucky of Ricky, and a lot of different players that were involved, that just treated me so graciously in the process.

>> QW: So actually Ricky also told us about The Three Sisters Market that they’re planning. Are you working with them at all related to that?

>> ZW: No, not directly.

[00:31:18]

I mean, I hope that we can play a role, eventually maybe being a supplier. And we gave Ricky the docuseries, the episode in editable format and they can use that however they want in their fundraising efforts. I mean, I wish we were big enough where we could drive action a little bit harder around that, but we’re not yet.

[00:31:47]

But as we grow as an organization, whether it’s our project or not, it’s irrelevant. We want to help,

>> ZW: I’m excited to see what he can make of it and if he can get it off the ground, I mean there’s a few grocery stores in the triangle that are very successful.

[00:32:13]

I think the one in Winston or Greensboro just closed. I’m not, I can’t remember if that actually happened or not. But Charlotte, but that’s kind of the thing. The whole thing with all of these social and political problems, it’s, do you have the will power to make the change on your own?

[00:32:35]

It’s not about **** about the grocery store is not coming. Okay, if they don’t wanna come, make them pay for it, that’s my attitude. I think that’s Ricky’s attitude too. If you don’t want to come, don’t. We can figure it out on our own. It presents itself a whole other layer of challenges but we want to be more of an asset as we grow to help Ricky and organizations like West Boulevard Neighborhood Coalition on some of these projects.

[00:33:09]

>> QW: So I actually want to redirect a little bit back to the voices I heard in the documentary. I mean, in what ways are Black on farms in Charlotte, any different than the one like you grew up on or the ones that you’ve witnessed that are primarily run by white people?

[00:33:31]

>> ZW: I don’t think any any difference, I’m not, I mean, Bernard Singleton is a black urban farmer. That was in the docuseries, and he’s done a tremendous amount with different parcels in West End. He’s actually the one that we leased out the 11 acres that we have over in Eden County, so it’s him and I think Ben Case and Steve.

[00:33:57]

Marengo’s an african herb that’s very popular, it’s a big cash crop in its tea and spices, a lot of medicinal purposes and Bernard is certified to grow it and there’s just a market right now for it that you could never grow enough to meet the demand. Getting this 11 acres over there, they’re putting 5 acres in Maringa.

[00:34:22]

And it’s gonna be a, hopefully, a big asset to Bernard’s growth, and Ben’s seeds. And then an outlet to grow produce, to go back to West End in a bigger scale. So as far as the, I mean, Paul Brewington, with Brewington Farms in Concord. Is his farm any different than Rowan Road Farm in Gold Hill, with Joanie and Danny Rowan, who are both white?

[00:34:54]

Is there any difference to them, no. I mean, they’re both awesome people, they both work harder than probably anyone we know. I think the challenges, that’s the thing. Are the farms different, no, are the way are they able to sell different, maybe. That I don’t know, I don’t wanna assume anything or project anything that’s in

[00:35:28]

>> ZW: But Paul Bernard’s I think they’re both successful, I would say. In my talks with, Paul kind of referenced back into the 70’s and 80’s, trying to take advantage of some government programs that were out there, and being extremely discriminated against on those, and he has a lot more closeness to that story than I do but today, it’s my sincere hope that they’re on the same level playing field.

[00:36:11]

>> QW: So, generally, I’ve gotten in these interviews, prior ones, just farmers talking about a lot of different challenges, primarily that relates to climate or trying to find a market to sell to or finding workers. Through your work, I mean you are aiding farms that are in need. What are the primary challenges that you’re seeing?

[00:36:46]

>> ZW: Well, if you weren’t born into a farming family or very wealthy. It’s almost impossible to do it. I mean it’s just so challenging. I mean in the infrastructure, the land cost equipment. All of that is so expensive, the margins are so thin, the work is so hard.

[00:37:17]

Mother Nature is your biggest business partner, which you have no control over. And from a farmer, you have to be a great farmer, you have to be a great business person, a marketer, organizational. I mean, there’s a lot wrapped up into just, okay, I’m gonna go be a farmer.

[00:37:36]

>> QW: Mechanic.

>> ZW: Mechanic, being out in the middle of a field with limited resources and having to think outside the box to fix something that broke. Or I mean, all of it, the timing that everything, how much time everything takes. The lack of a workforce that’s willing to go out and do that hard work.

[00:37:59]

The scalability challenges, the distribution side of the business, whether it’s direct or wholesale.

>> ZW: All those are just huge challenges and barriers. A comment that always kinda gets brought up, especially in funding conversations, well then, why would anybody want to do it? And that’s the surprising part. Is there are a lot of people that want to do it.

[00:38:35]

There’s a lot of people that are doing it. Cuz it’s something bigger than going into uptown and punching a clock and it’s just a different life choice. So, the cool thing that I look at is, with all those negatives I just kind of talked about, there’s still a part of the percentage of the population that is dedicated to go do it.

[00:39:08]

There is even more percent of the population that would be willing to do it if they had a little bit of help getting started. That’s the role we wanna play as an organization.

>> QW: It’s funny that you mentioned being asked, why do farmers wanna do what they do?

[00:39:25]

I actually interviewed Elizabeth Andover in Concorde, and I-

>> ZW: She’s on our board.

>> QW: Yeah, yeah, I, I, she was saying a lot of the same thing you’re saying and near the end of the interview, I just said, why you do this? And she says cuz it’s fun.

[00:39:41]

>> ZW: Yeah, [LAUGH]

>> QW: And I think that’s kind of the impression I’m getting from a lot of farmers in the area, who are, I mean she has a, her family has been in the area for a very long time but she kind of started her own thing.

>> ZW: Yeah, I mean there’s a lot of And we’re doing a dinner this Sunday, for Fair Share Farm in Bathtown, which is just near Winston-Salem.

[00:40:09]

Again, they’re doing really well, 100% of their income comes from the farm. And we need hundreds more farms like that. So how does technology kinda play a role? How do we do more with less workers? How do hydroponics kinda play into it? How do we make it easier for consumers to buy direct?

[00:40:41]

Back to the farmer’s markets, there’s a lot of them popping up and there is a lot of neighborhoods that want them, there’s just not a lot of farms to support them. There’s not enough infrastructure, if your a farmer going into a farmer’s market, that’s your livelihood. You don’t have time for that market to develop a base of people that come every week, it’s either there or not there.

[00:41:14]

It’s hard for farmers to continue to go to one where they’re not seeing the revenue. And that’s kind of why you have Davidson and Matthews in either account of being the stronger markets and some of the other ones that are cobblestone, not cobblestone but and even Rosa Parks.

[00:41:36]

There’s these challenges because if the farm can’t see the revenue almost immediately, it’s almost a non starter. Even though they would love to help the food market to get up off the ground and all that. It’s just when revenues are that tight, it’s just hard.

>> QW: So with Charlotte being such a rapidly growing city.

[00:42:01]

I mean, you’ve touched on this already, farm land is being encroached on by suburbs of Charlotte very rapidly. And land is becoming prohibitively expensive for farmers to purchase. So I was just wondering, is urban farming kind of becoming the new thing? Is it becoming kind of necessary for a city like Charlotte to obtain this locally grown food?

[00:42:31]

>> ZW: Yeah, I think it’s the future. We’re kinda looking at Europe, and certain Detroit, Boston, the Northeast. We’re a species of necessity. So why is Europe a lot farther along with us on food sustainability? Because they had to be, they don’t have this luxury of just moving, sprawling as much as we want.

[00:42:58]

They took the ocean pretty quick. [LAUGH] And within their own borders, so it’s kind of having to kind of rethink, okay, how are we gonna do this? The Netherlands are doing some really cool things over there. So on our side, the conglomerates are paving the way, mainly because of their trials and tribulations of the constant recalls

[00:43:33]

>> ZW: Lettuce, and greens, and avocados, and beef. And I think every week, we hear some sort of large recall of food. And then also, the misinformation of how they’re growing it, the pesticides, all the antibiotics and drugs that’s in our meats. It’s getting to a point of, the whole system is getting stretched, and it’s gonna collapse on itself eventually.

[00:44:08]

So how do you know for a fact what you’re eating? Gotta go meet the guy who’s growing it or the woman who’s growing it. And Charlotte is just very lucky in my opinion, that we do have a strong population density, but we still have a tremendous amount of greenspace within the city limits and even within Mecklenburg County.

[00:44:31]

So we want to utilize Charlotte as a leader of okay, well how do we build a certain farm network? Is it feasible to say, okay we’re gonna feed 1% of the population within the city from a produce perspective. Then how can we get that to five or ten.

[00:44:48]

And also again, we’re asking people to make a behavioral change. And that is the hardest thing to do, and how do we build this relationship back to food. We’ve gotta bring it to them. You’re not gonna get the rank and file population out to just understand rural farms, and how important they are.

[00:45:06]

You’re just not gonna be able to do that. So it’s different mediums of the farm that feeds us. It’s [INAUDIBLE] Jubilee, and it’s working with corporations and green teams and families and schools. Where they don’t have to drive a half hour, 45 minutes. They can drive 5 to 10 minutes and go, okay, this is cool.

[00:45:26]

And once you get someone on this local buying pattern, a potato is monumentally different in taste if you get it from Barbie Farms, per se, than at the grocery store. Now Barbie Farms- at the grocery store you might buy two cuts for 2$. But it’s also what you’re supporting too, and part of the job that we have is to put a face to all of this.

[00:46:10]

There will be a part of the population where it’s, I don’t care, just give me the cheapest eggs you got, it’s a commodity. And the hard part of treating a very big piece of survival as a commodity.

>> ZW: It gets devalued, over time. And especially if you look at a animal as a commodity,

[00:46:42]

>> ZW: It doesn’t work out, it’ll end up being kind of what it is. What it is now. So it’s building this relationship back to food. It’s bringing this taste. We just had some celery over the weekend like holy crap. It’s just unreal, the difference. Most of the nutrient in industrial ag is about half of what it used to be in the 20s and 30s.

[00:47:12]

And I think it’d be even more than that. Just because of all the artificial inputs with the soil being just continuing to be taxed on all of it. And it’s, am I gonna go to the grocery store and spend $5 on a dozen eggs? No I’m not. But I won’t think twice about doing it when I’m making that transaction to a farm that I know I’m supporting them and their family in this overall system that I know we, as a community, need.

[00:47:52]

It´s not a luxury, it´s a need. That’s kind of where, I mean, it’s also trying to think kind of where we are in the market, and how many people just don’t know. As a society, we have given away the responsibility to feed ourselves. We just gave it away.

[00:48:18]

And what we’re hoping to do is show every individual that we’ll have to take the responsibility that. That does not necessarily that everyone has to have their own garden and stuff like that. But it’s also to show them that they need their food supply chain as close to their front door as humanly possible.

[00:48:43]

>> QW: So you mentioned Carolina Jubilee, which that was one of your first big ventures with non-profit. Can you kind of describe what that was? I mean, with everything that you just said, the importance of making people, maybe in the urban Charlotte environment realize the importance of local food.

[00:49:04]

How did the Jubilee achieve that, do you think?

>> ZW: Well, it hasn’t achieved anything yet, really.

>> QW: Okay.

>> ZW: We were still, it was an investment over time. I knew it would be. But again, it’s a kind of going back to that behavioral change and we need to get the masses engaged.

[00:49:23]

And we had to do it. And there needed to be a very subtle way to do that. And we needed to, I mean, I get asked all the time what’s our demographic. Well, if you have a pulse, you are our demographic. So we’re trying to build the Carolina Farm Trust how it’s gonna operate 100 years from now.

[00:49:45]

And so Carolina Jubilee, by design, is kind of this social contract with the region. It’s a music festival, it’s camping. It’s in a northern Iredell County, which is an extremely heavy agricultural community. And we needed something that we could get people to come to. Music, camping, hey, I like all that, let’s have fun.

[00:50:08]

And then, by the way, you have to be from the Carolinas to be a vendor. You have to be on mission to be a vendor. Music, we go outside the region. But everything else, from beer, wine, distilleries, chefs, if you go, you’re gonna be trying something from a Carolina farm by default.

[00:50:31]

So it’s making it normal. There’s not a little corner of it, it’s the whole thing. So we’ve been growing that and we wanna utilize that as we grow and we show more. And again, kind of proving to the community that we’re worth of existing. That is an event we can do in the masses to showcase that.

[00:50:53]

And our goal year over year is to get more people to come and support that and support us and have a good time doing it. But also being very comfortable that it’s not elitist, or judging, or preaching. You won’t find any of that there. The messaging is just very subtle.

[00:51:17]

And as we grow, if we’re asked, yes, but we don’t wanna preach about it. We want it to kind of be on its own and let people approach it at the speed that they want.

>> QW: So actually, I just have a couple more questions and then we’re done.

[00:51:40]

But kinda see, I mean, even talking about how local urban farming, what it can do for people in urban centers like Charlotte. But what do you think Charlotteans could do to help local farmers, beyond just buying the goods that they’re selling?

>> ZW: Well, buying from the local farms is the biggest thing they can do.

[00:52:06]

And go to farm-to-table events, go out and volunteer on the farms, and talk to their neighbors and support kind of the movement. But where you spend your dollar every day is the biggest impact you’re going to have, plain and simple.

>> QW: And are there any other questions that I should’ve asked or is there anything you would have liked to talk about that I didn’t ask about?

[00:52:40]

>> ZW: I guess from your classmates in your generation,

>> ZW: How do you feel like you’re different?

>> QW: [LAUGH]

>> ZW: Kind of going into this, and obviously, you’re taking the class. And what’s your interest level in food systems? And what role, I guess, do you see yourself going forward, kind of like career paths and stuff like that.

[00:53:10]

>> QW: So not necessarily, I can’t necessarily speak for my classmates, but I went to university in Boone, North Carolina, I went to Appalachian State. And there’s a huge emphasis on local food there. A lot of restaurants there purchase from local producers. They make their food from them. I mean, there’s a new store or a new market.

[00:53:43]

I can’t remember what his name is, but he used to sell on the back of a truck, just the produce from local farms. He’d go around, gather it, and then sell it. Now what he does is he has a store right on basically Boone’s main street. It’s right there, right in front of everybody, and people can just go purchase food there.

[00:54:03]

Now in Boone, I felt very connected to the local food. I moved to Charlotte, not so much, and I was kind of disappointed about it. What this class has done, though, has made me realize that I was just missing the local food movement here in Charlotte. I’m not sure how I was missing it.

[00:54:21]

Part of it, I think is just Charlotte is so big. And it wasn’t as noticeable for me, living in the North Charlotte area around the university. I feel like if you really wanna get more involved in local food, you need to go down towards like NoDa or some of the wealthier areas, actually, which is kind of an issue I can see.

[00:54:47]

But beyond that, I mean, what this project has done to help me is it makes me wanna purchase from local farmers instead of going to the Harris Teeter that’s just down the road. And I think once I get a better paying job or whatever, that’s what I’m gonna start doing.

[00:55:08]

Now for the purpose of this project, I mean, we’re gonna be publishing all the oral histories online. Now for oral history, this is new. Somebody 50 years in the future can look back at these interviews and be like, here’s what Charlotte was at this point. And then 50 years in the future this person can say, okay, what has changed?

[00:55:34]

Has West Charlotte, is it no longer a food desert? How significant is urban farming in the Charlotte area, stuff like that. It’s more just a place to put these interviews up as a repository for people to look at in the future, but also currently. I mean, these are gonna be on a website that will be published at the end of the semester.

[00:56:03]

And the public will have free access to listen to what farmers and producers and people like you are going to be able to talk about. So that’s kind of where I see this. And my interest in local food started in Boone, didn’t stop in Charlotte, and it’s not gonna stop anytime soon.

[00:56:22]

And I’m sure the same sort of thing is happening with my colleagues, so yeah.

>> ZW: Yeah, I hope to come back to this in ten years and see what progress you’ve made.

>> QW: [LAUGH] Yeah, hopefully it’ll look a lot different.

>> ZW: I hope so, too.

>> QW: So this concluded my interview with Zach Wyatt.

[00:56:43]

And I just wanna thank you so much for your time.

>> ZW: Thank you.

>> QW: All right.