Growing Community Through Farming

Business development

Farming does mean business. Inadequate business planning is a leading cause of small business failure across multiple types of enterprises, including farms and food businesses. From marketing and branding to financial tracking and understanding regulations, Farm Campus will include a focus on developing short- and long-term business skills and planning to help new and existing farm and food enterprises meet with success. Food production represents a viable economic opportunity, as does employment within existing agribusinesses and culinary businesses. Having stronger local agribusinesses further supports our local economy and food supply.

“Having access to the Farm Campus would be something amazing for younger farmers to be able to get experience while they work on building a business.” — Jason Bdzula, Wolfberry Hawthorn Farm

Incubator Farms

An incubator farm will train and support the next generation of sustainable urban farmers by providing land, access to equipment, and education for multiple new and beginning farmers at Farm Campus. The incubator farm will have areas for on-farm demonstrations of small and urban-scale agriculture techniques, sustainable intensification and diversification, regenerative agriculture practices, and controlled-environment and precision agriculture.

Post Harvest Education

A post-harvest food education facility will serve incubator farmers on farm campus and potentially other local farmers. The facility will offer cold storage and aggregation space to facilitate aggregation, storage, processing, distribution, and marketing, The facility would address documented shortages of cold storage and aggregation space in our area. 

Shared Kitchen and Meeting Space

A value-added production facility will provide a shared kitchen/commissary and meeting space to enable producers, entrepreneurs, and community members to develop skills in value-added agricultural production, such as turning bruised tomatos into salsa with a longer shelf life for sales.

It is hoped that the facility willplans to include multiple commercial kitchens to help address the shortage of commercial kitchen access in our region and could serve food entrepreneurs as well as farmers.

Healing Garden

A healing garden will provide Durham residents with opportunities to connect with the land – and the plants and animals that live on it. Opportunities for therapeutic horticulture will be offered, in addition to offering a space for environmental and ecological education. This space will be open to all in Durham county, not just those involved in the farm campus, and will have an emphasis on flowers for pollinators, culinary and medicinal herbs, and ornamental plants.