November 08, 2024
Organic Growth: The Carolina Farm Trust and Trane Technologies
The Carolina Farm Trust increases access to locally grown produce and drives growth in the regional food economy.
Communities need a lot of things to grow: access to essentials like healthy food and a strong economy, and also intangibles like connection and purpose. Charlotte-based social entrepreneur Zack Wyatt saw a way to connect them all.
The Carolina Farm Trust (CFT) is a non-profit dedicated to strengthening our local food systems by working alongside partners, farmers, markets and consumers to increase access to healthy food. Their vision is to make the Charlotte region a global leader in local food production. Trane Technologies is proud to be a founding partner.
Organic Growth: The Carolina Farm Trust and Trane Technologies
Over the last 80-90 years as humans have pretty much given the entire responsibility of feeding ourselves away.
The Carolina Farm Trust is all about building systems and we are really using food and agriculture as the backbone of this vision of regional resilience. The thing that we're really trying to accomplish is how do we make supporting a regional local food economy easy?
So today we're at the urban farm at Aldersgate. This is a location where you get nutrient dense foods that are grown with farmers that you know. And so we're building that connection in that community where they will come and support us. I would love to provide this model where farming is not just for profits. It can be profitable, but it serves the people.
Trane Technologies has been one of our largest private funders since the very beginning. The greatest thing about our partnership with Trane Technologies is that it's a relationship.
We have a number of partnerships with nonprofit organizations around the world. They are the ones that help us to execute our corporate citizenship strategy. The work they're doing is on the ground in the trenches, providing critical support to people. We ideate with them constantly. We're brokering relationships across the region together, so it is a true partnership.
That is exactly what we're looking for is not just one time partners that come just do a transactional deal. But someone who will walk alongside us, see where we can grow and have areas for improvement because there's a lot of things that we can gain from Trane Technologies.
I think the vision of Carolina Farm trust is to continue to evolve, to make impact in a lot of areas throughout the community, much like Trane Technologies began as - let's save a farm - has moved into how do we work together to increase access to fresh food. That is a much bigger purpose. If you can attach what you do for the greater purpose that's where impact begins.
And that's kind of what CFT market is all about is getting wholesale, retail or commercial kitchen event space, teaching kitchens, our meat processing facility is developing kind of a new system that we can participate in that actually works for us, that works for our natural environment in a positive way.
I mean sustainability is about a systems change. Their approach was not a linear approach to solving an issue. They recognized that we solved problems in a community and a company by looking across the system of things that need to be adjusted. That's how you make huge change. Whether it's for a community through Carolina Farm Trust or whether it's a company like Trane Technologies, we have to go deep to make big change.
There are limitless possibilities to where this could go. We are proud of the work they're doing and really happy to support that moving forward.
Sustainable and resilient food systems
CFT is an innovative and holistic model, truly working from farm to market to table to support people every step of the way. The non-profit offers programming to support local farmers, supports land conservation efforts and operates an urban farm and a market.
At the Urban Farm at Aldersgate, CFT director of urban agriculture Mariah Henry and her team grow a dozen varieties of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers. They offer a neighborhood market on Fridays, and host educational tours for students and volunteer opportunities for community members. A classically trained chef with a passion for community engagement, Mariah sees Aldersgate as a blueprint for sustainable, equitable and profitable urban farm systems.
The team at CFT is also in the process of building the CFT Market, a new concept that combines a commercial kitchen, event space, meat processing facility, culinary education center, and wholesale and retail for produce, dairy, meat and prepared foods. Located in East Charlotte, CFT Market will offer farmers, butchers, bakers, chefs and neighbors a place to come together to build community and support the local food economy.
The Carolina Farm Trust is all about building systems, and we are really using food and agriculture as the backbone of this vision of regional resilience.
Walking alongside our partners
Trane Technologies is proud to walk alongside our partners at CFT. In addition to financial support, we share our expertise in a range of functions, from finance to marketing and operations. Our employees volunteer at Aldersgate and CFT Market, and CFT provided catering and joined in the conversation for our Purple Teams Summit this year, the gathering of our global employee-led volunteer network. Our shared goal is to increase community access to fresh, healthy food and agricultural jobs and education.

Trane Technologies Director of Global Citizenship Deidra Parrish Williams and her team members Amy Younger and China Antoine volunteering at the Urban Farm at Aldersgate.
What began as a conversation over breakfast between CFT founder Zack Wyatt and Trane Technologies VP of Sustainability Scott Tew two years ago has grown into a strong partnership between two organizations that believe in the power of transforming systems to make a positive impact on our communities.
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