New Hampshire Community Loan Fund Helps Create Roadmap for State’s Food and Agriculture Systems
(Photo: Charlene Andersen with farm owner Andal Sundaramurthy, of Nalla Farm, at a loan closing in April 2025.)
Earlier this year, the New Hampshire Food Alliance released the 2025 New Hampshire Food and Agriculture Strategic Plan — and the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund played a critical role in its creation.
“The plan is an actionable roadmap toward positive change, streamlining our collective efforts to obtain funding, pass policies, develop programs, invest in infrastructure, and build networks to increase farm, fish, and food business viability and foster equity across our food system,” according to the NH Food Alliance.
The Community Loan Fund’s Food Systems Business Resource Specialist, Charlene Andersen, was the lead author for the Access to Capital brief, one of 27 briefs that were created as part of the strategic plan. She also serves on the Alliance’s Network Leadership Team. The brief lays out the ability of farmers and food businesses to find and acquire financial resources, such as loans, grants, or other investments, in support of the long- term viability of their businesses.
The brief begins: “There are many federal, regional, state, and local funding opportunities to help farmers and food producers invest in their businesses. But understanding and applying for these opportunities is onerous and technically challenging, while grant writing and development support in New Hampshire is extremely limited. Improving access to that funding would transform the ability of our farms and food businesses to invest in their futures.”
Charlene said the Alliance is a network of people who come together to learn, share best practices, and look at ways to collaborate on everything from food access to increasing consumption of locally grown food.
“The Community Loan Fund has been involved in this since the very beginning,” she said.
When the time came to put together a strategic plan, access to capital was identified as a barrier to sustainability for farms.
Charlene led a team that included Joel Moyer, Director of Investments, Fair Food Network;
Rebecca Davis, Farm Loan Manager, Farm Service Agency, United States Department of Agriculture; Ben Amsden, Initiative Lead, New Hampshire Charitable Foundation; and
Hannah Vargason, Senior Project Manager, Center for Impact Finance, Carsey School of Public Policy, University of New Hampshire.
The team thought through out-of-the-box strategies for farms and food businesses to access capital.
“The finished product does identify some different challenges that can be worked on,” she said. “How can we seek out some lower cost financing?”
Charlene said that another barrier is technical assistance for food businesses. For example, coaching from an expert that would help food business place their product in big stores.
“It's a huge undertaking for our small food businesses in New Hampshire to try and do that on their own, or to pay a high-price consultant to do it” she said. “When they have that knowledge, that's going to enable us to do more lending to those businesses, because it's going to help them grow.”
It’s a model that the Community Loan Fund has long championed — including coaching and advising in loan services improves borrower success.
Charlene said the Community Loan Fund can also share lessons learned since its founding more than 40 years ago.
“Through the process, I think we are able to bring a broader lens to the conversation, just based on all of the types of lending that we do,” she said.