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The Farm Prosperity Project is made up of seven regional, state and national organizations, led by North Carolina State University, that have teamed together to launch a grant-funded study intended to preserve western North Carolina farmland and farm heritage. The Farm Prosperity Project will identify crops and farmland preservation methods that help sustain the longevity of farmland in our region.

The Farm Prosperity Project, in active collaboration with the Farmland Values Project, looks at solutions to the loss of farmland in western North Carolina by combining new and promising crops with land protection measures such as those offered by local land trusts.  The overarching goal of the project is to save farms and farmland in western North Carolina by directly aiding farmers in increasing their economic prosperity.

In order to ascertain the combined effectiveness of land preservation techniques and growing new crops, project leaders are working with a group of 30-50 farmers in Buncombe, Madison, Henderson, Haywood and Transylvania Counties.  These growers have recently transitioned into new crops or enterprises like organics or agritourism, have adopted or are considering adopting land preservation measures, or have done neither.  By evaluating the effects of these ventures on the farms’ families, finances and the economic situation of the community around them, the project will formulate a decision-making model to help individual farmers in the future navigate their choices of crops to grow and preservation measures to implement.  The decision-making tool, which is expected to be available both in paper and online formats, will guide growers through a series of questions to ascertain the best combination of growing practices or crops and land preservation for their individual farm.

The project emphasizes education as well as direct aid in decision-making.  Many growers in the project area may not even be aware of their options in farmland preservation, or may be confused as to how land preservation assistance would impact their farming practices.  While the Farmland Values Project investigates the significance of farmland largely from the viewpoint of surrounding communities, the Farm Prosperity Project is meant to help farmers in western North Carolina understand options of assistance that are available to them from their communities.

This three year project is led by Dr. Jeanine Davis of NC State University with a team of cooperators from Land of Sky Regional Council, the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project, Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy, American Farmland Trust, Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, and Warren Wilson College. It is funded by a USDA-NRI grant. This project also collaborates with a complementary project led by University of NC– Asheville.

Both projects are funded by grants from the "Agricultural Prosperity for Small and Medium-Sized Farms Program" of The National Research Initiative of the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, grants #2005-35618-15647 and #2005-35618-15645

Description provided in part by Ginger Kowal of Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project.