A Community of Farmers Helping Farmers

Jones Valley Teaching Farm uses food as a foundation so young people can lead, create, and grow a healthy future for themselves and their community. JVTF’s flagship program, Good School Food, is a Pre-K-12 food-based education framework rooted in academic standards delivered to Birmingham City School students by JVTF Instructors. Through cross-curricular experiential lessons during school, after school, and at home, students use food, farming, and the culinary arts as a foundation for academic exploration, leadership, and pursuit of pathways to full-time employment or higher education.

The Deep South Food Alliance (DSFA) is a network of organizations, producers, and aggregators in southeast, central, and west Alabama and eastern Mississippi. Organized in 2012, DSFA is a coalition of individuals and organizations across the Black Belt who share a guiding objective: to advance historically disadvantaged rural communities by supporting agriculture economies, particularly low-resource smallholder farmers of color.

Over a decade ago, community leaders and members of the Cullman Chamber of Commerce Agriculture Committee had a vision of a facility that would showcase the importance of agriculture to future generations. In 2000, the Alabama Legislature established the North Alabama Agriplex Board. Its purpose is to educate and create awareness of agriculture in Alabama.

EAT South educates about, gathers people around, and grows good food. We empower people to change the way food travels from the ground to our plates.
Proud to be a part of Alabama’s sustainable agriculture tradition rooted in the work of George Washington Carver and Booker T. Whatley, they envision a food system where people can access fresh food from farmers, grow and prepare their own food, and are healthy as a result. They believe that a thriving local food system includes: healthy soil, air and water, profitable farms and other food-related businesses, access to seasonal produce, access to information about growing and preparing your own food, a healthier community, access to land, capital and resources by people previously excluded from food and farming systems.