What is the NBC?

The Nutty Buddy Collective is an Asheville-based agricultural business established in 2014 with the goal of working with community partners to bring native crops to local tables at an economically viable scale, in an ecologically viable way.

We are a mission-driven, limited liability partnership, for-profit agricultural company. We’re working for the profit of our planet, our community, and future generations. While there are many branches to this effort, our primary service is the conversion of underutilized land in the Asheville area to diverse, native nut-centered orchards, secured under long-term lease agreements.

Our Mission and Work

As a collective, we are trying to emulate the forest ecosystem we so admire. Productive, generous, regenerative, interdependent, stable, low-input, non-exploitative. We share work, investment, and profit, and each of us fills a niche in the ecosystem of our organization. We work cooperatively with landowners and community members to secure land access and to build a culture and economy of perennial crops. We are dedicated to exploring the idea that forest agriculture can be a life-giving force for both community and ecology.

Our work is to:

• Establish and maintain long-term plantings of native and well-adapted nuts, fruits, and other perennial crops
• Partner with conservation-minded landowners who have underutilized land to develop long-term lease agreements
• Collect, cultivate, and breed improved varieties of underutilized native crops
• Explore and develop models of resilient, ecological, economically viable agriculture, agricultural training, and long-term land access