Mother Earth Food: Bridging the Gap in Local Food in Western NC and Upstate SC Written by: Rosa Linda Fallon
For ten years, local food hub and grocery home delivery company Mother Earth Food has been pioneering the way of bringing local, healthy, sustainably grown food and wellness products to the front doors of their customers. Founded by Asheville residents Andrea DuVall and Graham DuVall in 2012, the company bridges the gap between local residents and local farmers to create accessibility to locally raised and produced food.
It all began when Graham and Andrea recognized the lack of convenient accessibility to local food sources in the area. After moving from Atlanta, GA to Asheville, NC, they were not able to get to their local farmer’s market due to their hectic work schedules. They thought that there must be a way to have local food delivered to their front door. After all, it’s Asheville. They soon discovered that there was no such service available, which planted a seed of inspiration. “It inspired us, and we realized we needed to find a way for our local community to support our local farms,” Andrea says.
Andrea and Graham were not chefs or farmers themselves, yet this didn’t stop them from moving forward with their vision. “We actually didn’t have much background in the food industry,” Andrea says. “We had a mentor up in D.C. who had a similar business, and he taught us the beginning phases, but we really learned as we went. We had a lot of failures and a lot of successes, and made a lot of mistakes, but we just kept going.”
Andrea credits the company’s beginning successes to teamwork, coupled with the strong belief in their overall mission. “We had an incredible team, and there were only four of us in the very beginning,” Andrea recalls. “We got it off the ground through a lot of hard work and by really just believing in this mission more than anything.”
Now, Mother Earth Food works with over 300 small farms and local businesses to bring high quality, locally sourced food and wellness products to their customers in Western North Carolina and Upstate South Carolina. Customers can choose from over 1,000 items including organic and sustainably-grown vegetables, meats, eggs, dairy, baked goods, prepared meals, wellness items, beer and mead, and pantry items.
By partnering with local and regional farms and small businesses, Mother Earth Food is not only making an impact in the lives of customers, but also in the lives of small business owners. “Between 2020 and 2021, we put over 3.7 million dollars back into our local economy, which is powerful,” says Janelle Tatum, CEO of Mother Earth Food. During the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for food delivery services only increased, creating an opportunity to strengthen the bridge between the company, local businesses, and customers. In the beginning of the quarantine, Mother Earth Food experienced a 450% growth in a span of six weeks. “This couldn’t have been possible without our amazing community of local vendors, farmers, employees and customers,” Tatum says.
Many of Mother Earth’s food products are grown using regenerative farming practices. While most consumers are familiar with organic farming practices, regenerative farming techniques may not be as familiar of a concept. While the definition of regenerative farming continues to evolve over time, regenerative agriculture is a holistic approach to agriculture that focuses on the interconnection between the ecological system and farming systems. This concept was used by indigenous communities centuries ago, long before the practice of industrial agriculture was introduced.
Mother Earth Food Director of Marketing Simcha Weinstein describes regenerative farming from a historical perspective. “Humans have been farming for more than 10,000 years, and many of the farming methods we’ve adopted over these years have had a significant and detrimental impact on both our environmental and human health,” he says. “In the mid-20th-century, organic farming methods gained popularity because they eliminated the harm inflicted on the environment by the standard intensive industrial agriculture of the time,” he continues, “and organic farming does exactly that, it reduces the harm to the environment.”
While organic farming reduces the harm to the environment by keeping the land clean and our food system healthy, it does not go far enough, according to Simcha. With the global impact of carbon emissions, Simcha says that agriculture needs to do more than just provide us with clean, healthy food. “We need our farming systems to be a force in battling climate change, to help sequester carbon and mitigate, and even help reverse the damage that we’ve created since the industrial revolution,” Simcha states. “And that’s where regenerative farming excels.”
Currently, regenerative agriculture is the only agricultural system defined by the creation of beneficial ecological outcomes. Weinstein shares what it involves:
Minimizing soil disturbances - using farming practices such as limited or no-tilling that minimize physical and biological soil disturbances.
Soil coverage - Instead of relying on tilling, regenerative farming practices focus on keeping the soil covered with vegetation and natural materials through mulching, cover crops, and pastures.
Increased plant diversity - Diversity is an essential component in building healthy soils that retain excess water and is beneficial to other wildlife and pollinators.
Keeping living roots in the soil as much as possible - Having living roots in the soil ensures that fields are never bare. It can be done by farming practices such as planting winter cover crops or having land in permanent pasture. Keeping living roots in the soil helps stabilize the soil, retaining excess water and nutrient runoff.
Integrate animals into the farm as much as possible - Manure produced by livestock can add valuable nutrients to the soil, reducing the need for fertilizers, and increasing soil organic matter. Healthy soils capture large amounts of carbon and water and reduce the amount of polluted runoff.
In the spring of 2021, Mother Earth Food applied for the USDA Local Food Promotion Grant and received it in the fall of that same year. This grant will enable the company to bring their mission even further. “The purpose of the grant is to continue our work of serving our community by strengthening our ability to be the bridge between local food vendors, farmers, and the customers,” Janelle Tatum states. “Almost less than 1% in Asheville and surrounding area populations are supporting locals,” she continues. “There is a huge gap in the awareness of the need to support locals, and how buying from your neighbors and within the community helps keep our community vibrant as a community and viable as businesses.”
Andrea says she is looking forward to educating the community about where their food comes from and how it is grown, and to helping to create relationships between local farmers and customers. “What I am looking forward to the most is more education on connecting our local farms to our customers, and removing the veil of where our food comes from,” she says. “This is how change begins.”
For more information on Mother Earth Food, visit their website at www.motherearthfood.com
