Madison Woodruff – WS Entrepreneur Profile
Natalie Sevin Profile
From harvesting mangoes in West Africa to farming organic vegetables in Winston-Salem, Natalie Sevin, 2004 Wake Forest graduatee, has a passion for sustainable agriculture.
Sevin managed to turn that passion into a successful business. In 2014, after studying, interning, and managing other people’s farms Sevin created Sungold Farm where she harvests various organic vegetables to sell fresh produce to the Winston-Salem community and is now a leading producer of local and sustainably grown vegetables.
Sevin wasn’t always as intrigued with farming as she is now. At Wake, she majored in anthropology. But through studying so many different cultures, she quickly began to understand the power of food.
“Food is the underlying system for everything to operate,” Sevin explained, “Only once you have food can you go to the next level.”
During her senior year, a professor who served in the Peace Corps encouraged her to do the same.
That led her to spend a few months doing internships on farms after graduation, and soon after Sevin was sent to Mali in West Africa. For two years she served as a natural resource management volunteer, working in agriculture.
There, Sevin learned intensively about sustainable agriculture. Because the village didn’t have much money, there was virtually no waste. Everything was being used for something. After seeing first-hand the possibilities of sustainable agriculture, she knew she wanted to pursue this back in Winston-Salem.
“It just really made sense to me to continue working in agriculture, and to do so sustainably” Sevin said.
Sustainable agriculture aims to produce food in a way that protects the environment and creates the least amount of waste of water and produce as possible. It omits the use of any herbicides or pesticides, and tries to create the least amount of carbon emissions as possible through various different methods.
Sustainably grown agriculture was virtually non-existent in Winston-Salem a decade ago, but Sevin was determined to change that. First, she wanted to learn more. After Sevin left Mali, she became a research intern at The Rodale Institute studying sustainable agriculture.
Sevin quickly came to the conclusion that a large part of her passion for sustainable food lies in the production. She wanted to be able to do things with her hands instead of working with numbers in her research. To continue learning more, Sevin interned at Cherry Valley CSA in Pennsylvania and then Serenbe Farms in Georgia.
Eager to return to the Winston-Salem area, Sevin began managing Sugar Creek Farm, a sustainable farm on the outskirts of Winston, to learn more about the business side of farming. Through this experience, she learned how to run a farm while making a profit on the produce she was growing.
By 2014, Sevin decided she was ready to launch her own farm – Sungold Farm. She started out renting three acres of land on the edge of Winston-Salem.
Sevin does almost everything by herself including finances, marketing, cultivating, seeding, irrigation, and harvesting.
It’s often difficult for people to conceptualize a woman running a start-up farm. People often assume she is just an assistant on the farm, not the one in charge.
“It’s more about just fixing people’s assumptions, but after that there’s usually no further conversation,” Sevin said.
Sevin carries the main load, but she does have help. Her parents sometimes pitch in for harvesting and her brother serves as a substantial help with marketing at farmers markets. Sevin has two part time employees from Burma she met through her father’s church. She particularly appreciates how well they understand the land, plants, and weeding.
She pays her part-time employees considerably more per hour than she pays herself. Nonetheless, she receives more many benefits because about 80% of the food she eats is from her farm.
“Everything can be improved upon,” she said. “I will say that much about this business, but I have learned so incredibly much”
Sevin grows a variety of crops which are mostly vegetables, but she also grows herbs and some fruits. She grows almost every vegetable imaginable including radishes, lettuce, broccoli, kale, turnips, spinach, eggplant, pepper, zucchini, potatoes and many more.
Sevin sells her produce to a few restaurants, at two farmers markets every weekend, and also participates in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). With CSA, customers pay $500 upfront and then Sevin provides them every week with a box of in season veggies.
Through Sungold Farm, Sevin is having a significant impact on the Winston-Salem community by providing a way to receive healthy, organic, and fresh produce in a sustainable way.
As Sevin sells her produce, she is able to show people the importance of eating organically and the effect it can have on one’s health. Allowing people to eat healthy serves as a preventative approach to many health issues.
Because Winston-Salem is one of the largest food deserts in the nation, Sevin also works with others to provide less affluent areas of Winston-Salem with fresh produce. She hopes to take greater measure in the future, but she currently donates all of her unsold produce to local food bank which primarily benefits people within the food desert.
Sevin also continues to make remarkable strides to farm sustainably to positively impact the environment locally, and for the entire planet. Everything including weeding, irrigation, protection from pests, and harvesting aims to leave as little of a footprint on the earth as possible.
Because of the popularity and demand of Sevin’s produce, she recently bought 17 acres of land inside Winston-Salem and plans to move her farm onto her new land.
To grow her business, Sevin wants to focus more on the business side so that it becomes much more efficient. She also intends to hire more people and create higher quality produce. Despite this, she still wants to spend most of her time cultivating and harvesting herself.
“I feel like most people who become big spend more time in the office, but I don’t think that’s a good goal to have,” Sevin said. “I like spending my time outside.”
