Summary:
Welcome to another great episode of Startup Junkies!
On this episode, hosts Caleb Talley, Jeff Amerine, and Victoria Dickerson sit down with Kelton Hays, executive director of Cobblestone Farms. Cobblestone Farms is a local nonprofit committed to cultivating a community free from hunger by ensuring all people have access to fresh, nutritionally dense foods that are produced through sustainable agriculture practices. Throughout this episode, Kelton discusses the deeper mission of Cobblestone Farms and how important addressing food insecurity is to uplifting the community.
Show Notes:
(0:53) Introduction to Kelton
(1:34) Kelton’s Background
(5:20) Why Cobblestone Farms Needs to Exist
(11:03) Food Insecurity in Northwest Arkansas
(15:41) Being Unburdened by Shame
(17:35) Growing Food for Hunger Relief vs. Donating Food
(21:45) Raising Money
(30:54) Engaging Bigger Players
(37:51) Getting People Involved
(41:34) Advice to Younger Self
Links:
Quotes:
“If somebody were to ask us what we do at Cobblestone Farms and I wanted to be a little ethereal, a little heady, I would say we give people dignity. Food is a lot more than calories. We want people to have dignified access to great food in the same way any of us sitting in this room would have.” – Kelton Hays, (6:34)
“That’s the big picture. We want to give people dignity. We want people to feel dignity because your quality of life, your health outcomes, and your ability to thrive as a human being, if you do not possess dignity and live in shame, is going to be a negative outcome .” – Kelton Hays, (14:46)
“My heart is to mobilize individual community members. We all have such potential…We often get so intimidated by the magnitude of an issue or by our perceived inability to meet the issue that we think, ‘Well, I can’t do anything.’ Yeah, you can.” – Kelton Hays, (20:02)
Farm-to-Table Meals for the Community with Kelton Hays
On this episode, hosts Caleb Talley, Jeff Amerine, and Victoria Dickerson sit down with Kelton Hays, executive director of Cobblestone Farms. Cobblestone Farms is a local nonprofit committed to cultivating a community free from hunger by ensuring all people have access to fresh, nutritionally dense foods that are produced through sustainable agriculture practices. Throughout this episode, Kelton discusses the deeper mission of Cobblestone Farms and how important addressing food insecurity is to uplifting the community.
Fighting Hunger One Plant at a Time
Cobblestone Farms aims to cultivate the land and feed the community by growing produce and raising animals on its twenty-five-acre farm. The farm contributes a substantial portion of its harvest towards local hunger relief, and the remainder gets sold into Northwest Arkansas’s food system in an effort to elevate the use of locally grown products. With over seventy thousand individuals in NWA unable to obtain nourishing food, Cobblestone Farms is committed to raising up the next generation of NWA farmers to help combat food insecurity for years to come.
“That’s the big picture. We want to give people dignity. We want people to feel dignity because your quality of life, your health outcomes, and your ability to thrive as a human being, if you do not possess dignity and live in shame, is going to be a negative outcome .” – Kelton Hays, (14:46)
Cobblestone Farms has strong beliefs pertaining to its love for the community and how to improve it. And it believes we have a responsibility to care for our environment as we produce food because preserving our environment is the best way to deliver long-term prosperity to the community. Cobblestone Farms’ three core values are:
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Collaboration: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
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Regeneration: All things work together.
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Innovation: Never settle for doing things the way they’ve always been done.
Providing Dignified Access to Food
Cobblestone Farms works alongside local businesses, like Airship Coffee Roasters, and mission-driven organizations, like the Walton Family Foundation and the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, to collectively make the community, and the state, a better place. About one in six households in NWA struggle with food insecurity, and Arkansas has always ranked in the top ten food insecure states, even though the number one industry is agriculture.
“If somebody were to ask us what we do at Cobblestone Farms, and I wanted to be a little ethereal, a little heady, I would say we give people dignity. Food is a lot more than calories. We want people to have dignified access to great food in the same way any of us sitting in this room would have.” – Kelton Hays, (6:34)
Cobblestone Farms’ food is not for anything other than to feed individuals in the community who are experiencing hunger. Because of this, Cobblestone Farms is adamant it’s not a donor of food but rather a grower of food because to donate something implies it was intended to have a higher use. In an effort to continue to educate the surrounding community, Cobblestone Farms is passionate about engaging with locals through volunteering opportunities and its apprenticeship program.
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