September 2015 — NC Growing Together is supporting efforts to promote local seafood in North Carolina. NCGT support is helping project partner NC Catch create two brochures designed to help consumers find local seafood in fresh seafood markets, grocery stores, stands, and farmers’ markets across the state. The brochures will be distributed at the NC Seafood Festival in Morehead City, the State Fair in Raleigh, and other fall outreach events. The brochures will also be available on the NC Catch website at nccatch.org.
NC Catch, in partnership with the seafood industry, local Catch groups (Brunswick Catch, Carteret Catch, Outer Banks Catch, and Ocracoke Fresh), the NC Department of Agriculture and other organizations, works to strengthen the North Carolina seafood economy through promotion and education. NC Catch is also debuting a new “Real Local Seafood” label to help consumers identify local seafood in the marketplace.
Says Ann Simpson, NC Catch Interim Director, “NC Catch is a relatively new organization, and we appreciate tremendously the supply chain expertise and assistance that is available to us through the NCGT project. NCGT has great contacts and broad knowledge of how small farming and fishing communities can tie into profitable, larger markets throughout North Carolina.”
For the last two years, NCGT has also organized wholesale buyer panel discussions and tours as part of the annual NC Catch Summit. In 2014 the panel featured Lowes Foods and MDI, and in 2015 it featured Pate Dawson-Southern Foods.
The NC Seafood Festival is October 2-4 in Morehead City.
Information and resources about North Carolina seafood can be found on the Research page of the NCGT website.
This article originally appeared in the September 2015 NC Growing Together Newsletter.