At Sustainable Food Center, we believe in empowering Texas farmers and ranchers to achieve their business and regenerative farming goals. Our Farmer Support Program provides personalized technical assistance, facilitates market matchmaking, and creates convening opportunities.

Grow Local Resilience

Small and mid-sized farms are the backbone of our regional food system, ensuring food security and sustainability. At Sustainable Food Center, we offer rancher and farmer support in our Central Texas network to assist them in achieving their business and regenerative farming goals. Our work helps farmers operate more effectively, find buyers, and network, enabling them to improve operations, connect with buyers, and succeed in an ever-evolving food system.

Why Farmer Support Matters

For small-scale Texas farmers, access to land is a pressing challenge. Urban development is claiming arable land once used for farming, and it, along with expansion of industrial farming, are driving concerns about cost and availability of land for small-scale farming. At the same time, industrial farming and ranching practices have depleted topsoil and have relied heavily on chemical inputs, leading to environmental problems like agriculture runoff and water pollution.

Small-scale farmers need the skills to adapt, including a transition to regenerative practices for long-term sustainability. Sustainable Food Center supports farmers by providing essential resources such as business guidance, expertise on sustainable agriculture techniques, often referred to as regenerative farming, and market opportunities. These efforts help farmers overcome barriers to startup, growth, and consistent success in a changing agricultural landscape.

Grow Local Resilience

Our Farmer Support Services

We assist Central Texas farmers and ranchers in our network to help them achieve their business and regenerative farming goals. We do this with 1:1 technical assistance, market matchmaking, and convening farmer listening sessions. We provide the support and resources necessary to help farmers grow.

Cultivating Success with Farm Visits

We visit every producer that vends at SFC Farmers Markets and upon request other local farms. These visits allow us to assess production practices and offer tailored recommendations based on identified opportunities and best practices. We review your operational and business practices to enhance operations and business opportunities.

Growing Connections with Matchmaking

Building strong, trust-based relationships is key to transforming the food system. We foster collaboration among producers, buyers, and stakeholders, enhancing Texas’ food system by empowering farmers in the wholesale market. This increases accessibility to locally grown, sustainably produced fruits, vegetables, and proteins across Texas.

Harvesting Collaboration with Farmer Convenings

At SFC, we understand that change starts with listening. We host farmer listening sessions across Texas to bring farmers together to share their priorities and insights, informing our policy and advocacy work. By fostering collaboration and understanding, we work towards systems-level change that supports our farming communities.

“It is through Sustainable Food Center’s programming that we build resiliency. If I had not gotten help [after Winter Storm Uri], we would not have been able to so quickly replant and get business up and running again.”

—Germaine S., Owner of Munkebo Farm

Partner with Us and Grow Your Operation

Whether you’re a farmer looking for support or a business seeking fresh, local produce, Sustainable Food Center is here to help. Email us at farmersupport@sustainablefoodcenter.org to start a conversation and discover how we can work together to strengthen our local food system.

We have a simple evaluative process to identify if we are a good fit for your farm, grocery store, distributor, or agricultural broker. We look forward to getting to know you and your role in the Texas food system.

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