As developers pave over Charlotte, a local farm gets $1.4M boost to grow dramatically

A small northwest Charlotte farm is growing more than six times its size as Carolina Farms Fund saves land from being gobbled up by development in one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S .

DeepRoots CPS Farm , a nearly 7-acre Black-owned urban farm, grows more than 60 seasonal crops of herbs, vegetables and mushrooms each year behind a wooden split rail fence off Primm Road . The farm also has chickens, ducks, goats, beehives and even a palomino horse named Major.

But after just three years, DeepRoots owners Cherie and Wisdom Jzar said they need more land.

“We have requested demands we can’t fulfill right now,” Cherie Jzar said. “Access (to land) seems to be getting further away.”

With the Carolina Farms Fund’s first farm partnership, DeepRoots is expanding to 44 acres at 810 Macedonia Church Road, about five miles south of Monroe in Union County. Carolina Farms Fund bought property through an agricultural conservation easement for more than $1.4 million, Carolina Farms Fund program director Aaron Newton told The Charlotte Observer. The Jzars will lease the land for four years with the option to buy.

“With their commitment to building trust and inclusivity, especially for new and beginning farmers who have faced challenges and inequities in gaining the support needed for business development and growth, Cherie and Wisdom are exactly the kind of partners we are looking for,” Carolina Farm s Fund board chairman Tim Belk said. The Carolina fund is an extension of the nonprofit The Conservation Fund founded in 2020 in Atlanta.

Saving farmland

The Charlotte region is expected to lose 19,400 acres of farmland by 2040 because of development, according to American Farmland Trust , an organization that tracks farmland lost in the U.S.

Carolina Farms Fund plans to raise $17 million in private funding over 10 years to preserve 5,000 acres within 75 miles of the city. The fund will raise $16 million in public funds for easements to preserve the properties as working farms, Belk said. The former CEO of Charlotte-based Belk department store now co-owns a 12-acre organic farm called Wild Hope Farm in Chester, S.C.

Since the Carolina fund was formed last November, it has raised $4 million, Belk said.

The Carolina Farm Fund supports small- to mid-sized farmers with about 75 acres or less who lease land to move into ownership or increase the amount of land they have to meet market demand, fund program director Newton said.

“As you think about Charlotte growing and developing, I’m really passionate about conserving green space in this region and doing it in a way that conserves the property as working farms,” Belk said.

In 1950, 30% of the U.S. population farmed for a living, Newton said. Now it’s less than 2%, which drastically reduces the number of people who have access to the land they need to start a farm business.

Like the Conservation Fund’s Farms Fund program, Belk believes that “conservation of land will go further faster if it’s aligned with business interests.”

To farm, producers need access to land and capital financing .

“There is a demand for folks who want access to land to start farm businesses, but don’t have that family access, or ownership to make permanent improvements,” Newton said. “That’s where we come in to help with that transition.”

Breaking barriers

For Black and minority farmers, access to land and financing has been a barrier throughout American history .

In the U.S., 1.2% of farmers identify as Black or African-American, according to the USDA 2022 Census of Agriculture report.

In North Carolina, the number of farms with Black producers is 1,372 out of 42,917 statewide, according to the Census of Agriculture . Data is not available by county.

“We’re willing to work with everyone but we recognize that there are certain farming communities that have been underserved in the past and we would love to help with that,” Newton said. “What we’re doing simultaneously is we’re permanently conserving farmland and we’re making farmland affordable to next-generation farmers.”

The need for land ownership

Finding land to farm is a struggle that resonates with first-generation farmers like the Jzars.

The Jzars lived on less than a quarter of an acre with their five children when they started growing vegetables and herbs in the backyard. At the time, Wisdom Jzar owned a custom apparel business and Cherie Jzar was an urban planner.

“We started as homesteaders wanting to grow food for our family and ballooned to producing enough that we could share with our neighbors,” Cherie Jzar, 47, said.

In 2019, the Jzars opened DeepRoots CPS Farms. The CPS stands for “community planning solutions.”

Local farms provide communities fresh food and bring people together, Cherie Jzar said.

Through connections, they secured five plots of land throughout the city for growing seasonal vegetables and herbs.

“We were spending almost four hours in a day just to travel,” Wisdom Jzar, 49, said.

Then, they started losing that land to development pressures, the Jzars said.

“We had put so much of our labor and resources into farming the land we were on, land ownership was where we needed to be,” Cherie Jzar said.

In 2021, the Jzars bought the Primm Road farm that had a brick house and a 100-year-old barn.

“We chose the northwest side of Charlotte because this is one of the ZIP codes that has been deemed to have food insecurity ,” Cherie Jzar said. “We want to open our farm to the community so they can interact with the land.”

About 38% of Charlotte’s Black residents — compared with 25% of its white residents — live more than 1 mile from a grocery store, a Charlotte Observer analysis found.

The Jzars have since cleared several acres, added a pavilion that can be used for events, a storefront for selling DeepRoots goods like eggs, meats and teas, and four temporary greenhouses. They primarily sell to customers at farmers’ markets.

Expanding the farm

The Jzars dreamed of expanding into wholesale supplying to restaurants and institutions, and even opening a one or 2-acre pick-your-own strawberry patch. Now, they can.

About 24 acres of the Union County land can be farmed along Little Richardson Creek with mixed hardwoods and wetland, Newton said. The land includes an old shop and storefront that will be restored, two pole barns for dry storage and events, a residential property that can be rented and a two-story brick home.

“So there’s a little bit of trepidation, but we’re excited,” Wisdom Jzar said.

The Jzars’ first crop of garlic will be planted in late fall.

The Jzars have four employees, including their 19-year-old son Alvamir Jzar. He studied a year at North Carolina A&T State University but decided to return home and learn about agriculture firsthand on the family farm. At one time he wanted to go into engineering or sound sciences but after they got chickens, he decided on farming.

“I wanted to do either cattle or some type of animal farming,” he said.

Farming, as Belk said, can bring a family together. The Jzars have one daughter working for the USDA as a soil conservationist and another studying community health at Howard University.

“We were intentional about being farmers because we know that the number of Black farmers is significantly declining across the country,” Cherie Jzar said. “We built this farm because we wanted it to serve as an example to the community about the possibilities.”