The food is already here. This is how we move it.
Our plan for southern New Hampshire: connect the farms to the buyers that can purchase from them, grow the people who keep those pathways running, and show every dollar in the open.
The problem isn't supply. It's distance.
Southern New Hampshire grows food. It just doesn't reach the people who need it. In Rockingham County, 43% of residents live far from a supermarket, the highest share of any county in the state, in a place where the poverty rate is only 4.8%. The barrier isn't money. It's distance.
And distance, in a rural state built around the car, is a wall: for the nearly one in four New Hampshire residents who are 65 or older, and for everyone the bus doesn't reach. Most of Rockingham County has no fixed-route transit at all. The farm is fifteen minutes away. The food it grows leaves before the people nearby can buy it.
Two pillars, one system.
We work on both sides of the gap at once, because fixing one without the other doesn't hold.
Move the food
We build the standing orders that connect local farms to the restaurants, schools, and institutions that buy. Steadier markets for small farms. Fresher food for the community. A truck, a buyer, and a recurring order do more than a study.
Grow the people
Pathways don't run themselves. We train residents to keep them running as community food-system navigators, and we shore up the small farms and food businesses that are the most fragile link in the chain.
The programs, built in the open.
We start small and founder-funded, in southern New Hampshire, and build each piece as funding allows.
Local Food Pathways
Connect local farms with restaurants, schools, and institutions. Steadier markets for small farms, fresher food for the community.
Community Food Equity Hub
Fresh-food distribution, culturally responsive nutrition education, and regenerative micro-gardening. Meeting people where they are.
Leadership & Sense-Making Cohort
A 12-week program training residents as community food-system navigators who keep local sourcing running.
Community Sunday Dinners
Partner with shelters, churches, and community organizations to host shared Sunday dinners. Locally grown food on the table, belonging alongside access.
Business Durability
Help small farms and food businesses build the systems to grow, stabilize, or pass down to the next generation.
What we're building toward.
Goals for the first year, as funding allows. Not promises, and not results yet. Targets.
- A Community Food Equity Hub serving at least 150 households.
- Household food security up by at least 20%, measured the way the USDA measures it.
- A 12-week leadership cohort: 15 residents trained as food-system navigators.
- At least three standing farm-to-buyer partnerships moving local food.
- Monthly Community Sunday Dinners, locally sourced.
When the year is up, the real numbers go on the ledger and in an annual report: what we did, what we spent, what worked, and what didn't. We'd rather post a miss than hide it.
We do it in the open.
Most nonprofits report their finances once a year, in a document almost no one reads. We publish ours live. Every dollar in, every dollar out, itemized on a public ledger, posted within seven days, with the overhead rate shown, not hidden.
A neighbor, a donor, a skeptic, a reporter: anyone can see where the money goes, anytime, without asking. That isn't a feature we added. It's the whole point.
Help us close the distance.
We're founder-funded and building in the open. However you help — a donation, a farm, a buyer, an hour — it lands on the public ledger like every other dollar.
Granite State Food & Leadership Alliance is a New Hampshire nonprofit in formation. Until our 501(c)(3) status or a fiscal sponsor is in place, contributions are not tax-deductible. We'll update this the moment that changes.