Grant Funds Expand Capacity for the Kearsarge Area Food System
FEED Kearsarge Coalition secures funding to develop Farmer Advocate and Gleaning & Food Recovery Project Director Positions
As backbone leaders of the FEED Coalition, Kearsarge Neighborhood Partners and Kearsarge Food Hub are thrilled to share that generous grant funding from the Helen Gurley Brown Foundation will help us significantly expand our regional food security efforts.
The grant will fund two positions to further efforts that increase local food access, enhance farmer support, and meaningfully distribute food that might otherwise go to waste. Specifically:
A Farmer Advocate: An ongoing staff member of the Kearsarge Food Hub working to understand the needs of local farmers and integrate their needs and voices into hub and coalition operations.
A Gleaning and Food Recovery Project Director: A 6-month contracted position to lead Phase One planning for a regional food recovery and distribution program serving the greater Kearsarge area.
One of the key barriers the coalition has identified this year in getting more food—especially healthy food from local farms—onto more plates in the Kearsarge region is a lack of capacity and infrastructure. These grant funds are essential to increase capacity for advocacy, relationship-building, and action-oriented planning that will help move more food from farm to table for the benefit of both producers and the community.
Farmer Advocate
The Kearsarge Food Hub is hiring a Farmer Advocate to serve as a dedicated partner and voice for the working farms that feed the Kearsarge region. This is a full-time employee position compensated at $49,000 to $53,000 per year, focused on building and sustaining trusted relationships with farm partners across Warner, Bradford, Sutton, Newbury, New London, Springfield, Wilmot, Andover, Danbury, and Henniker.
The Farmer Advocate is first and foremost a trusted relational bridge between local agricultural producers, Kearsarge Food Hub leadership, and the broader FEED Coalition. Built on the belief that a resilient regional food system depends on farmers with viable operations who are genuinely valued as co-creators, this role centers on deep listening, systemic advocacy, and trust-building.
The Farmer Advocate will listen to the needs of producers and capture real-time farm insights to help actively shape how Kearsarge Food Hub and the FEED Coalition grow to serve both producers and the community.
Gleaning & Food Recovery Project Director
The Kearsarge Food Hub is seeking a Gleaning and Food Recovery Project Director to lead Phase One planning for a regional food recovery and distribution program serving the greater Kearsarge area. This is a contracted position compensated at $40 to $50 per hour for approximately 25 to 30 hours per week over 30 weeks, with a total contract value of up to $36,000.
The Project Director reports to the KFH Executive Director, supervises the Farmer Advocate, and serves as the lead for the Gleaning and Food Recovery Work Group under the FEED Coalition. The role is responsible for turning regional food access data into a concrete operational blueprint — surveying every grocery store, market, restaurant, school, hospital, and food service institution in the region to assess recovery potential, designing the distribution channel mix, evaluating storage and vehicle needs, finalizing legal templates and food safety compliance, and building the volunteer infrastructure and funding strategy the program will run on. The Project Director also consolidates farm surplus data from the Farmer Advocate with grocery and institutional recovery data into a single, unified recovery estimate that forms the foundation for Year One implementation.
The ideal candidate is an experienced project manager who is equally comfortable negotiating a recovery agreement with a regional grocery chain, presenting to a funder, and resolving a logistics bottleneck in the field. A background in food systems, food recovery, or rural community development is strongly preferred, as are existing relationships within the Kearsarge region's food, agricultural, and institutional communities.