When people talk about hunger relief, health equity, and food systems, the farmer’s perspective is often missing. Yet farmers are at the heart of these conversations. We are the ones planting, harvesting, and delivering the food that programs like the Healthy Opportunities Pilot (HOP) have helped put on family tables across Western North Carolina. HOP helped address non-medical health needs of many rural North Carolina residents on Medicaid, like healthy food and safe housing. It proved that fresh, locally produced food could be a legitimate part of health care — an intervention that improves health outcomes while strengthening local economies.
Through HOP, farms like mine have been able to provide healthy food directly to people who need it most through a range of local businesses and nonprofits. That connection has been transformative. It has allowed us to deliver the highest-quality food we can grow —fresh, local, nutrient-dense — to families who otherwise would not be able to afford it. For us, that is the deepest measure of success: nourishing people well, while also caring for the land and building community resilience. It reminded us that good farming and good health are inseparable, two halves of the same work of caring for place and people.
At Wild East Farm in McDowell County, we raise organic vegetables, pastured poultry, and perennial crops on 45 acres. Over the past two years, organizations like Equal Plates Project and Mother Earth Food enabled us to supply thousands of pounds of produce and protein to families through HOP. Those sales mattered. They helped us pay employees, invest in soil and infrastructure, and keep our business stable in the face of unpredictable markets. They also kept farmland in production rather than at risk of development—a reality many farmers in our region face…