Best Agricultural Association Wilmington Near Me

4worldlovers: 31,600 people in New Hanover County don’t know where their next meal will come from.

Rise Up Community Farm uses sustainable and chemical-free farming practices to produce healthy fruits and vegetables and to ensure that our community has access to fresh produce, while empowering local youth.

At Rise Up Community Farm, we cultivate land and community as we grow healthy food together.

We teach farming and gardening skills to youth, volunteers, and families.

We nourish our neighbors experiencing food insecurity in our community by providing fresh and seasonal produce to local food pantries.

4worldlovers: 'Three Sisters' farming was how First Nations people did sustainable food production for many generations. They would develop a small roughly circular highly productive piece of ground per household or family group to grow nutritious native plants. The method was to use plants with high stalks and deep roots that would break up the soil (such as corn) to serve as a support for a climbing nitrogen fixing legume (such as pole beans). They would then plant a full foliage low growing shade plant (such as squash) to conserve moisture and protect the roots of the companion plants. The method would build soil that was rich in nitrogen, easier to work each year, and pH balanced. Protein and fiber from the beans, carbohydrates from the corn, and vitamins and minerals from the squash would provide sufficient nutrition for the household. Production surpluses would be traded with other households. If the household needed to move to another homestead, replication of the plots was easily done from seeds from the prior year's harvest. In addition to the three sisters method, many households would plant perennial fruits and berries along with nut trees close to their three sisters plots to supplement their diet. These were the early version of perennial edible landscapes. Finally, they would forage both annuals and perennials of greens and root vegetables to provide a fully balanced diet.

Benefits and opportunities accrue from using the three sisters method. It can leverage underutilized small plots in urban settings to satisfy the growing demand for unadulterated non-gmo organic food. It can evolve an expanded ecosystem of diverse adaptable heirloom and native foods; maintain and increase genetic diversity and resilient healthy soil; limit equipment costs and use of chemicals and fertilizers when contrasted with industrial agriculture; have a small, albeit real impact on global warming; significantly reduce fuel usage to transport food; improve the nutritional content of food; reduce the risks of widespread pest or insect contamination; and increase the resilience and distribution of pollinators. If edible landscaping is included with three sisters farming, the tree canopy is improved and carbon sequestration increases.

The belief in the last century that industrial agriculture, where food was grown in what became 'factory farms' is no longer tenable. Consequences of factory farming of soil depletion, massive environmental damage due to use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, decreased genetic diversity, and loss of small farms and the businesses and communities that made for a well woven sustainable social fabric; all suggest that expanding a network of small local producers will be beneficial.

A major objective of this project is to recruit local producers into a 'micro-economy' to evolve a wide, distributed, redundant, and resilient network for food production. It will reduce the number of food deserts in our cities and towns.

Food deserts result from grocery chains seeing little benefit or profit from locating large stores in neighborhoods with residents who earn below the median income. Since small scale retail stores selling fresh produce are not profitable, residents in food deserts have to rely on convenience markets that sell packaged processed foods at high margin; further impoverishing them, damaging their health, and shifting capital from the local community to national or regional retail food production corporations and food distribution supply chains.

Solutions that have also addressed the problem of food deserts have included shipping low cost produce to food deserts to be distributed through CSA's and pop-up neighborhood stands, etc. These solutions, however, offer none of the environmental or social benefits of three sisters farming. Some community gardens do address more of the environmental issues, but they are seldom sustainable over the long term because they depend on volunteers rather than people who are financially and personally vested in their own plots. Another alternative of cities or towns assigning a piece of land by lottery to individuals ('allotments'), has limited scalability, though traction is relatively high. Changing food preferences takes time, but fortunately three sisters production which is centered around corn, beans, and squash is already embedded into the diets of the urban poor.

4worldlovers: Dock Street, between 2nd and Water streets in historic downtown Wilmington

We are Wilmington's longest running Downtown Farmers Market and we are working hard to make sure you have the best experience possible every time you shop with us.

Thank you, Wilmington, for all the support you have given us over the years.