PARTNERS AND PROJECTS
Laying the groundwork together.
Appalachian Cellar: A cooperative, wholesale marketplace and distribution hub designed to connect West Virginia’s small-scale producers with institutional and commercial buyers, Appalachian Cellar provides essential support to aggregation, cold-storage and logistics to ensure local products reach markets. Their mission preserves Appalachian heritage by turning traditional generational passion into a modern, sustainable, economic engine.
Black by God the West Virginian: As a community-led news organization, they provide vital narrative and cultural context to the collaborative. They center the stories of Black farmers and underserved communities in Appalachia, ensuring that values-based procurement efforts are equitable. Their role is to amplify diverse voices and document the social impact of food system changes on West Virginia’s marginalized populations.
Center for Dairy Excellence: While focused on the dairy sector, this center collaborates by providing specialized business technical assistance. They help dairy producers navigate the unique challenges facing dairy farmers. Their role ensures that West Virginia’s dairy industry is not left behind in the shift toward values-based and health-focused institutional procurement.
Economic Development Greater East (EDGE): EDGE cultivates food system transformation by supporting land-based entrepreneurship. They work with farmers to navigate financing and business innovation, helping them leverage resources for long-term growth, job creation and food access in rural communities in McDowell County.
Facing Hunger Foodbank & Mountaineer Food Bank: As the state’s primary emergency food providers, these food banks are evolving into "health hubs." They collaborate by sourcing fresh produce from local farmers for their "medically tailored" food boxes. By shifting their procurement toward local growers, they ensure that the state’s most vulnerable populations receive high-quality nutrition while simultaneously supporting the local agricultural economy.
Farm to Institution New England (FINE): FINE serves as a strategic advisor to the collaborative, sharing proven frameworks from their six-state network. They provide data-driven insights on how to transform institutional food systems. By sharing lessons learned in New England, they help West Virginia partners avoid common pitfalls and implement successful models for increasing local food in schools and hospitals.
Food Systems Leadership Network (FSLN): A national peer learning community that connects current and emerging leaders, strengthens individual and collective leadership capacity, FSLN provided the spark for the collaborative through the Institutional Investment Accelerator. This foundational program equipped WV leaders with the strategic frameworks and mentorship required to shift institutional spending towards local producers. They provide national expertise to transform concepts into permanent, scalable models.
Greenbrier County Health Alliance: This community partner is a boots-on-the-ground leader in reducing health disparities through community engagement. They collaborate by implementing pilot projects, such as asset mapping and local food programs, at the county level. Their strength-based approach ensures that the collaborative's statewide goals are successfully adapted to meet the specific needs of rural neighborhoods.
Health Care Without Harm (HCWH): A global leader in sustainable healthcare, HCWH provides the "anchor mission" framework. Facilitating deep, trusting partnerships among community-based organizations and health systems in order to build and test replicable models for collaborative action that advance climate mitigation, resilience and equity. They work with the collaborative to rethink institutional investment as a tool for community health.
Healthy Kids, Inc. & Project Healthy Kids: A collective of social entrepreneurs, visionaries, chefs and farmers united by a mission - to make healthy, from-scratch, locally sourced meals, Healthy Kids Inc. implemented the state’s first central kitchen food project. In partnership with their sister organization, Project Healthy Kids, they work together to create a reliable market for farmers while establishing lifelong healthy eating habits in children across the state.
High Rocks Inc. A leader in empowering West Virginia youth through leadership development, educational opportunities and community-based health initiatives, High Rocks is pioneering a fair pricing for farm to school model, which creates transparent, sustainable price floors to ensure farmers are paid a livable wage while providing high-quality, local nutrition to school aged children across the region.
Twelvepost Trading Co: As a private-sector partner, Twelvepost offers insight into the logistical and retail realities of the food system. They collaborate by providing expertise in supply chain management and product distribution. Their perspective helps the collaborative understand how to make local food "trade-ready" for commercial and institutional buyers, ensuring that the movement is grounded in market-driven sustainability.
Virginia State University Cooperative Extension Small Farm Resource Center: As a regional partner, VSU brings expertise in heirs property, small ruminant production, specialty crop production and urban agriculture. They share training and best practices with the collaborative, particularly regarding outreach to southern West Virginia. Their participation fosters a regional network of support, helping Appalachian farmers adopt innovative growing techniques that are highly suitable for local institutional markets.
West Virginia AHEC (Area Health Education Centers): AHEC focuses on the human capital of the healthcare system. They collaborate by training current and future health professionals on the social determinants of health, specifically the role of nutrition. By educating medical students and practitioners on "food is medicine," they build the clinical demand for the local produce grown by West Virginia’s small-scale farming community.
West Virginia Department of Agriculture (Marketing Service): The WVDA drives support for the Fresh Food Act, which mandates state-funded institutions to obtain a minimum of five percent of its food from in state producers and the WV Grown program–the official state branding and marketing initiative designed to identify and promote agricultural products that are produced or processed within the state. These programs are uplifted and strengthened by data-driven decision making supported by the state university partnership between WVDA and Nourish WV.
West Virginia Farmers Market Association (WVFMA): The WVFMA strengthens the retail and community-facing side of the collaborative. They advocate for farmers markets as vital aggregation points for food access programs. By providing training and technology to market managers, they ensure that small farmers can efficiently process healthcare vouchers and SNAP benefits, deepening the connection between local clinics and the community’s food hubs.
West Virginia Food & Farm Coalition: This partner leads the policy and advocacy arm of the collaborative. They work to pass state legislation that supports small farmers and expands food access programs. By amplifying the voices of the farm community in the state legislature, they ensure that values-based procurement becomes a permanent, codified priority for West Virginia’s government and institutional leaders.
West Virginia Military Authority Patriot Guardens Program: This unique partner provides hands-on agricultural training specifically for veterans and active-duty members. Within the collaborative, they help create a pipeline of "new" farmers entering the workforce. By transforming vacant land into productive urban and rural farm sites, they increase the total local food supply available for the state’s values-based procurement initiatives.
WVU Extension Small Farm Center: A critical technical assistance partner, the center works directly with producers to support and scale their operations for markets. They provide essential training in business management, production techniques, and market readiness. Within the collaborative, they ensure that small-scale farmers have the skills and infrastructure needed to meet the rigorous volume and safety demands of anchor institutions like hospitals.
WVU Institute for Community and Rural Health: Acting as the backbone of the Good Ground collaborative, this institute integrates clinical expertise with community outreach. They bridge the gap between healthcare systems and local food producers by conducting research on the health impacts of local food and managing the Nourish WV initiative to create sustainable, "food is medicine" clinical pathways that benefit rural West Virginia residents.
WVU Parkersburg Riverhawk Farm: This campus-based farm acts as a "living laboratory" for the collaborative. They demonstrate how educational institutions can produce food for their own students and local communities. By integrating student labor and academic research into production, they serve as a model for how other West Virginia colleges can become active "anchor" participants in the local food system.
WV Department of Education Farm to School: This partner manages the massive procurement power of the state’s K-12 school system. They collaborate by creating streamlined pathways for farmers to sell produce to school cafeterias. Their work focuses on "transforming school food" through both procurement and education, ensuring that the state’s largest food provisioner is a primary customer for West Virginia’s small farms.