Highland Harvest LLC Food Processing and Marketing Economic Development Cluster

The project centers on the Highland Harvest Limited Liability Corporation (HHLLC) as a high value- added food processing and marketing cluster for building social and economic capital and community wealth in five contiguous eastern West Virginia counties. The region is rural, remote, mountainous, and predominantly agricultural in character, and economically depressed. Participants include family farmers, food banks, schools, development agencies, and community-based organizations serving low- income individuals. The HHLLC will enable farmers to share in the profits in producing, processing and marketing high value-added food products into niche markets from locally grown food. Members of the HHLLC include Diversified Nature Associates (General Manager of HHLLC), family farmer-producers, and Lightstone CDC. Objectives include: 1) Perform market research on 10 high-value-added food products that will enhance the social and economic development of rural mountain farming communities. 2) Foster development of income and employment opportunities in rural areas by stimulating new agricultural enterprises to improve farm profitability. 3) Apply social science and resource management methods to strengthen and diversify small family farms through value-added food processing in their own communities. 4) Build community wealth by recycling capital in the community, and creating new institutional frameworks for community collaboration.