Hero Funding Without Systems Assurance

A Farmer's Perspective: Response to 'A Big Idea for Charlotte's Food System is at a Crossroads'

By Cherie Jzar Co-Founder & Managing Director, Deep Roots CPS Farm

A recent article in Charlotte Optimist, ‘A Big Idea for Charlotte’s Food System is at a Crossroads,’ chronicled the challenges facing Carolina Farm Trust and its founder Zack Wyatt. I read the piece with great interest, both as one of the farmers mentioned and a long time resident living in West Charlotte. My partner Wisdom and I operate Deep Roots CPS Farm with locations in Charlotte, NC and Monroe, NC.

I believe the article tells an important story, and I appreciate the willingness of a journalist to evaluate what’s happening with public dollar investments intended to address food insecurity in West Charlotte. I’d like to offer a different lens, one that shifts focus from personality to structure. In fact, if I were on his team and was offered the chance to write the story, my headline would have been: ‘Hero Funding’ Without Systems Assurance.

I would encourage us to see this differently. The failure here isn’t just about Zack Wyatt/CFT’s leadership, or the building not being finished, or money drying up. It’s about how the system was designed to fund a single “hero” organization without securing the ecosystem needed to make this actually work.

The Problem Isn’t the Person, It’s the System

The article frames this as a story about Zack Wyatt becoming a ‘lightning rod’ and losing the trust of his peers. He is described as a former ‘local darling.’ I’d gently ask us to consider: a darling to whom? To funders? To the county manager and commissioners? Is the media drawn to a revolutionary narrative? These are not accusations. They are invitations to examine whose perspective shaped this from the beginning, and whose perspective was missing.

And here is what I noticed: the article does not include a single voice from the west Charlotte community the project was meant to serve. No residents of Thomasboro-Hoskins. No community members experiencing food insecurity. No one who might actually provide the produce, shop at the market or benefit from its existence. The story is told through commissioners, county staff, and unnamed peers in the food space. The community itself is talked about, but not heard from.

This raises questions worth sitting with: Who has the best big idea? Is it someone with proximity to power, or someone who has lived in a disenfranchised community and knows the challenges of accessing healthy food firsthand? Is it someone who can command a room of commissioners, or someone deeply connected with local farmers, other nonprofits, and the neighbors who will actually use what gets built?

I raise these questions not to blame any individual, but to name a pattern. There are many perspectives on Charlotte’s food system, and they are not all equally heard. The perspective that matters most is the people in the community, and in this case residents of west Charlotte and other neighborhoods systematically denied access to fresh, healthy food. Their voices should be at the center of any solution, not an afterthought.

What I see in this story is a structural pattern worth examining. Food systems are networks, not hierarchies. They run on relationships, not org charts. When you fund a single organization to lead change in a networked system without first building the collaborative infrastructure to support that work, The set everyone up to struggle. You also risk missing the wisdom that already exists in community.

In January 2022, Mecklenburg County commissioners unanimously approved over $7 million in ARPA funds and entrusted a single nonprofit, led by a single individual, to transform the region’s food system. The article notes that then-county manager Dena Diorio acknowledged the risk but asked, ‘If not us, then who?’ That question deserves a different answer: not who, but how.

There was no requirement for multi-sector collaboration. No community governance structure. No phased approach tied to relationship-building milestones. No assurance that the people meant to benefit, including west Charlotte residents, local farmers, and food-insecure families, would have decision-making power over how this community asset would be built and operated.

I’ve come to think of this pattern as ‘hero funding.’ It is not just directing dollars to a single organization, but entrusting that organization to lead systemic change without the multi-disciplinary, collaborative infrastructure needed to succeed. It’s understandable why this happens: it’s easier to tell a story about one visionary with a big idea than to narrate the slower, messier work of coalition-building. But this approach concentrates responsibility instead of distributing it, and leaves everyone, including the designated ‘hero,’ without the support they need.

Commissioner Griffin grilling Wyatt in a public meeting is an understandable response when outcomes don’t match expectations. I’m sure he was propelled to do so by the people in the community. I would offer some harder questions, the ones that could help us learn about the structure of all this: Why did we structure it this way? Why didn’t we require “proof”of concept and relationships?

The article noted that people began having quiet conversations about CFT behind closed doors. I was one of the people approached with questions about CFT. And when asked for my perspective, I did what I always do: I told the truth. Not a personal critique. Not a whisper campaign. A structural concern. I asked about accountability. Whomever is being funded for whatever reason, why is it that we all aren’t clear on what is actually happening?

I shared these same perspectives directly, with all who asked, private funders, nonprofit leaders, to farmers, county staff, etc. My message has been consistent: why are we asking questions after the money was approved, and if the intent is not matching up the reality, the funder should be accountable. Accountability in community-based work must be shared, not concentrated. The goal must guide us more than any single organization or individual. And trust cannot be built in silence or secrecy.

Those private conversations were not evidence of betrayal. They were evidence of a system that lacked a public, collaborative structure where concerns could be raised constructively and addressed transparently. In a healthy network, accountability is collective, and conversations like those happen in the open, not behind closed doors.

What Systems Assurance Looks Like

The article mentions several examples of ‘what’s working’ in the local food system: Davidson and Matthews farmers markets, the Three Sisters Co-Op, the Barbee family farm, Freshlist, and our partnership with Carolina Farms Fund. What these examples share is not better leadership or smarter strategy. What they share is community trust built over time, distributed ownership, and deep relationships.

Consider the Uptown Farmers Market as a model. Established in 2020 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, its stakeholders include the local government, corporations, healthcare organizations, churches, community partners, and local food access organizations. Its Community Table Fund donated over 4.4 tons of fresh produce in 2024. Individuals and Corporate entities provide funding. It partners with CATS to shuttle seniors from food desert communities. It coordinates with Nourish Up’s Harvest Haul program and participates in the SNAP Double Bucks program. No single person is the gatekeeper. The structure itself distributes accountability across multiple stakeholders who share ownership of the mission.

This is what systems assurance looks like: multiple stakeholders with shared governance, distributed accountability, and community ownership built into the structure from the beginning. But underneath these structural elements is something that cannot be engineered or purchased: social capital. Trust. The slow accumulation of relationships that makes a food system actually work.

The Farmers’ Perspective according to Cherie

Here’s what the article didn’t explore: the ecosystem of farms in Mecklenburg County already producing food for the community. Urban farms, family farms, micro-farms, hydroponic operations, multi-generational farms, immigrant-led farms. They sell at farmers markets, supply restaurants, run CSAs, and partner with food hubs. They are Black farmers, Latino farmers, white farmers, first-generation farmers, fifth-generation farmers. They sustain their communities through relationships built year after year. Yet many people in positions of power have no awareness of this landscape.

These farmers don’t need public dollars allocated to an entity to build a facility for them. They need patient capital, land access, technical assistance, relief from local regulatory barriers, market access and buyers who will commit to purchasing their products at fair prices. They too need journalist to tell there stories. Some are operating on the edge, one bad season away from losing everything. Others have the capacity to scale but lack infrastructure support because agriculture is nearly invisible in Mecklenburg County. Many were a life line to some for food when COVID restrictions shut down local grocery stores or provide produce to food pantries to ensure that the most food insecure in our community has access to fresh produce as well.

And here is something worth considering: these small farms are small businesses. When public dollars fund an organization that enters the market to buy, distribute, and sell produce, functions that farmers and farmer-led cooperatives can and do perform, it can inadvertently undercut the very people it aims to help.

I ran into Zack at a meeting last month. He shared that he’d secured an agreement with a local food buyer to purchase produce from farmers and wanted to connect me to this opportunity. I thanked him but explained we already had our own relationship with that same buyer. This exchange illustrates a broader pattern: when we don’t deeply understand the existing landscape, including who already has relationships and what infrastructure already exists, we risk duplicating efforts rather than strengthening them.

A farmer deciding whether to plant an extra crop of carrots doesn’t need a new nonprofit distribution center. They need a reliable market with individuals, families, institutions, and government buyers who commit to purchase at fair prices. This is just one example. There are many needs and one only discovers what they are by building relationships with the farmers in this community.

Do We Truly Understand the Landscape?

This is the question at the heart for me.

Yes, Mecklenburg County has studies on food insecurity. Yes, we have data, reports, assessments, community surveys, and recommendations. But do we actually understand the landscape? Have we mapped who is doing the work and who are those local farmers? Have we deeply listened to the communities most impacted? Have we examined which solutions people trust, and why? And before investing millions in a single organization, did anyone assess the social capital, the relationships and credibility required to carry out this kind of work?

Food insecurity is not merely a problem of distribution. It is rooted in structural racism, economic inequality, land dispossession, health disparities, and decades of systemic disinvestment. No single organization could solve a problem this complex alone and no single organization should have been expected to.

Moving Forward

This is not the time to throw any one person under the bus or bring in another lone savior. Let’s all take accountability for achieving the goal. People still do not have the promised grocery store. Healthy food remains inaccessible for many families. Local farms are being lost at an alarming rate. And communities that have spent decades fighting for food sovereignty are still waiting to see real change.

But moving forward requires restructuring toward collaborative, multi-disciplinary governance, the kind of approach that has made the examples cited in the article successful.

An Invitation

I share these reflections not as criticism, but as an invitation to widen the conversation. There are many perspectives on Charlotte’s food system, and they all have something to teach us. But ultimately, the perspective that should guide our decisions is the people in the community. Their needs, their wisdom, their leadership should be at the center.

I would welcome the opportunity to continue this dialogue in community with any stakeholders and those in our community who feel strongly that this resonates. The local food system deserves better than hero narratives and scapegoat stories. It deserves honest reflection on what we can learn, and a genuine commitment to building something that belongs to the community it serves.

If you’re interested in exploring this further, including hearing directly from farmers and community members about what they actually need, I’d be glad to help facilitate those conversations. Not because I have the answers, but because I believe the answers are already out there, where farmers and community members are doing the quiet, faithful work of building trust. This should be a public conversation, not a backroom deal. As Commissioner Leake spoke: this is something our future generations will benefit from.

What I have learned is this: the most critical infrastructure in any food system is not buildings or coolers or distribution centers. It is social capital, the people, the relationships they hold, and their trust. Trust takes years to build and moments to lose. It is built through showing up, honoring commitments, and being accountable to the community you serve, not just the funders who write checks.

In community,

Cherie Jzar

Co-Founder & Managing Director, Deep Roots CPS Farm

www.deeprootscpsfarm.com