Based in Central Virginia, Local Food Hub was founded in 2009 to work with Virginia farmers to increase community access to local food. We bought, aggregated, and sold food from small, independent farms; provided technical assistance to growers; and created programs to increase food access. In 2019 we transferred our distribution operation to the mission-aligned company 4P Foods, allowing us to concentrate on the nonprofit programs that serve as the foundation for a more resilient food system. These became even more important during the COVID-19 pandemic, and grew to include the area’s first contactless farmers market and greatly expanded food access programs.

Local Food Hub recognizes and rejects discrimination in all forms. We believe that racial and economic inequities in farming and food access, which mirror larger systemic issues dating back to our country’s founding, need to be addressed head on. The Black, Indigenous, Latino and immigrant people who built and still power this country’s agricultural sector continue to face loss of land, discrimination, and unfair and harmful labor practices. Hunger and diet-related health problems in the United States fall mostly along racial lines. 

Local Food Hub seeks to apply the lessons learned over a decade of work with small Virginia farms to improve the prospects for marginalized farmers, build a food system with diverse, independent farms at its center, and promote equitable access to fresh, nutritious, locally grown food — while honoring the ancestral and indigenous farming practices that can help us renew the land. We are working to reflect these values in the composition of our staff and board, and to do the internal work necessary to recognize and reject racism in ourselves and in the food and agriculture system.