Administered by WNC Communities and funded by the NC Tobacco Trust Fund Commission, the program funds projects ranging from processing equipment and cold storage to infrastructure improvements and new production systems. The grants are designed to help farms remain viable at a time when land pressures, weather challenges and slim margins make farming increasingly difficult.

Jennifer Ferre, executive director of WNC Communities, said the program was originally created to help farmers transition away from tobacco production, but its mission has evolved into supporting the long-term sustainability of family farms.

“At the core, we want to keep farms farming and we want to keep farms and farmland existing,” Ferre said. 

The program receives roughly 100 applications in a typical year, though applications nearly doubled for the current cycle after the program paused in 2025 following Tropical Storm Helene. Ferre said applicants must demonstrate how a proposed project will improve the sustainability and profitability of their operation.

“We want them to make money, and we want them to continue to contribute to the overall agriculture and food system of Western North Carolina,” Ferre said. “These are folks that are trying to make money and be profitable and be sustainable and viable just like any business.”

For many farms, the grants provide access to equipment or infrastructure improvements that would otherwise take years to afford. Lyric East of Wild East Farm has received two WNC AgOptions grants in 2024 and 2026. The farm’s first project focused on improving its poultry processing operation, while this year’s grant funded upgrades to its vegetable wash-and-pack facilities, including expanded cold storage and a root washer.

“The grant programs for us have been a great way to just do these quick pulses of equipment upgrading so that we can continue being self-sustaining financially,” East said. “Once we’re in this more efficient system that we can set up through the grant funding, we can sustain ourselves.”

East said the investments dramatically improved workflow and storage capacity on the farm.

“We got a larger cooler, which I just hugged this morning,” East said. “We were just bursting at the seams storage-wise and now we have such ample storage.”

The new equipment also reduced labor demands during vegetable processing.

“This root washer is hugely more efficient than literally washing every single bunch by hand,” East said.

Grants are especially important for small farms trying to improve efficiency without taking on debt.

“A lot of farmers don’t want to take out loans,” Ferre said of the program’s applicants. “Having the opportunity to have a grant that might put them ahead two or three years where they would have had to save up to do something like that—that can double somebody’s production.”

At Ivy Creek Family Farm, owner Anna Littman is using grant funding to address a growing challenge for Western North Carolina growers: excessive heat inside high tunnels.

“As the years get warmer, it used to be that the challenge was keeping them warm in the winter,” Littman said. “Now they’re getting way too hot in the summer.”

After heat stress damaged crops including peppers and cucumbers, Littman began exploring new cooling systems that could work for small farms operating without access to electricity. Littman’s project will install solar-powered fans designed to cool tunnel structures that are increasingly overheating during summer months.

She said the project reflects the broader role the grants play in helping farmers adapt to rapidly changing conditions.

“Farming is inherently a gamble,” Littman said. “We have the same challenges that everyone else has with labor and labor costs, but for a farmer it is a bigger gamble than every other business because the weather is such a huge factor for us.”

Littman added that grant funding gives farmers the ability to invest in long-term resilience rather than simply surviving season to season.

“A farmer’s profit margin is so low that it’s really, really hard to save up for infrastructure improvement,” Littman said. “Having a grant fund that helps us get a leg up and address problems that we see is incredibly critical to the survival of small-scale agriculture.”

Ferre said the agriculture industry in Western North Carolina continues to evolve, with a younger generation of farmers increasingly approaching farming as both a lifestyle and a business opportunity. In 2012, the average age of applicants was 56 years old, and in the most recent application round, it dropped to 43. 

“I’ve seen that shift of those younger, very business-minded farmers that are wanting to come and make a viable business,” Ferre said. “They’re connected to the land, they love what they’re doing, but they’re not just doing it because that’s what their family has always done. They’re doing it because that’s what they want to do as a living.”

She said keeping farms viable is about more than food production.

“You cannot separate agriculture from rural communities,” Ferre said. “It’s not only supplying the food supply that’s helping Western North Carolina. It’s providing that cultural connection to the land that is a very key part of the history and pride of our rural communities.”

Learn more at WNCAgOptions.org.