July 2018: North Carolina is lucky to have a long growing season, but even with season extension techniques, tomatoes can’t be grown profitably year-round. For restaurants that want to source all of their tomatoes locally, that presents a challenge. A different challenge is faced by farmers, who, when faced with a seasonal glut of tomatoes, have to find markets for a highly-perishable product that does not ship well. When markets cannot be found, a potentially profitable product is left in the field.

Enter Whole Crop Harvest (WCH). When the SARE-funded project began in 2017, Program Director Rebecca Dunning reached out to Juan Esparaza, Commissary Director for Ashley Christensen’s AC Restaurants, to see if it would make economic sense for the restaurant group to source all of their tomatoes locally in-season and preserve them for year-round use. Dunning recruited a team of senior undergraduate business students from NC State’s Poole College of Management to investigate the issue.

The team created a cost model to examine the effectiveness of purchasing, preserving, and storing the tomatoes for year-round use. They found that purchasing 100% North Carolina tomatoes in season reduces the restaurant group’s cost by nearly half, accomplishes the goal of sourcing exclusively local tomatoes, and will likely reduce on-farm food loss.

The cost model is adaptable to plug in other products as well, says Esparza. “It’s extraordinary. It helps us realize that when we have our ducks in a row we could knock out 9-10 months’ worth of a crop in 2-3 months, and save money doing it,” he says. “It most definitely will be a tool that we’ll use to utilize space and labor efficiently and save money.”

Visit the  NCGT website  for the students’ analysis, and the Whole Crop Harvest website for information about the project.

This article originally appeared in the July 2018 NC Growing Together Newsletter.

July 2018: Whole Crop Harvest (WCH) is bringing together partners from across the supply chain to reduce on-farm produce loss and increase farmer profitability. This summer, the initiative is working with Eastern Carolina Organics (ECO) and Bon Appétit Management Company at the SAS Institute on a pilot project to market “Grade 2” produce, sometimes known as “ugly” produce. This is produce that is edible and nutritious but, for cosmetic reasons (size, shape, surface scarring) fails to meet the USDA’s Grade 1 standard, which is a requirement of most retail and food service buyers. Finding markets for Grade 2 produce has been identified as a step towards reducing on-farm food loss, increasing farmer profitability, and enhancing the overall sustainability of our food system.

“ECO is a mission-based company, we’re a B-Corporation, so anything we can do to increase farmer access to as many markets as possible and eliminate food loss, we’ll do,” says Bridgette Thurston, ECO’s Sales and Marketing Manager. The company was already looking for ways to market Grade 2 produce when WCH Project Director Rebecca Dunning proposed a summer pilot program with Bryan Little, Executive Chef of the SAS Atrium Café. It was an obvious fit. In 1999, Bon Appétit was the first foodservice company to require their chefs to purchase 20% of their food from within 150 miles (500 miles for seafood) of their kitchens.

The pilot, which wrapped up its first month in June, offered Little a way to plan his menus around available Grade 2 produce. Availability lists were sent out each Friday for the following week’s deliveries. “I’m a big believer in supporting local community,” says Little, who had previously worked on farms and says he “knows the hardship” of farming. He was already purchasing local produce, meat, and dairy, and welcomed the chance to add Grade 2 produce to the list. Bon Appétit has a Grade 2 purchasing initiative called “Imperfectly Delicious Produce (IDP)”, but most IDP produce is from California. “I wanted more local options,” he says. Feedback will be collected after the pilot, and if deemed successful, become a regular ECO offering to all its customers.

Another benefit of Grade 2 produce is that, because of its imperfections, it is sold at a lower price point – potentially making local, organic produce more affordable. “We hope to bring on new customers to participate in our Grade 2 program. Healthy fresh produce should be accessible to everyone,” says Thurston.

“No farmer likes leaving produce in the field or the packing shed,” says Dunning. “If we can help make the seconds marketable for the farmer, everybody wins.”

For more information on Whole Crop Harvest, contact Rebecca Dunning: rddunnin@ncsu.edu.

This article originally appeared in the July 2018 NC Growing Together Newsletter.

July 2018: CEFS’ Farm to Early Care and Education (NC Farm to ECE) Initiative is partnering with state- and local-level childcare experts to lead Farm to ECE efforts in North Carolina. The initiative is working with cross-sector stakeholder groups to develop local food procurement systems, connect resources and people across food and early childhood education systems, and provide children with experiential ways to engage with food. (This video does a great job of explaining how the initiative engages and convenes different stakeholders across the state!)

“Through this initiative we are networking early childhood and food system folks together to provide local, fresh food into centers’ meals and snacks. We are developing models and learning from them, sharing best practices for linking farmers and child care centers for the health of our kids, families, and communities,” said Caroline Stover, Program Director of the NC Farm to ECE Initiative.

Part of NC Farm to ECE’s work is to support children’s understanding of where their food comes from, including who grew it. In collaboration with early educators, the initiative created a series of eye-catching posters for young children that portray farmers and the vegetables they grow for their community – specifically highlighting women farmers and farmers of color. The posters are now hanging in childcare centers around North Carolina to serve as learning materials for our youngest eaters.

For more information about the NC Farm to Early Care and Education Initiative, please visit the CEFS website.

This article originally appeared in the July 2018 NC Growing Together Newsletter.

March 2018 — NC Choices, an initiative of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems in collaboration with NC Cooperative Extension, is supporting efforts to increase whole animal purchasing in North Carolina. Whole animal purchasing is when a farmer is able to sell his or her entire animal to one buyer — for example, a meat aggregator, meat buying club, or butcher. That buyer then finds end markets for the animal’s various cuts and parts.

Whole animal purchasing benefits farmers in that they don’t have to spend time marketing their meat, and is especially beneficial for rural farmers who don’t have ready access to markets outside of urban centers. It puts the responsibility on the buyer or aggregator to move all the parts, and reduces waste by allowing the buyer to utilize fat, bones, and trim that might have otherwise been lost in further processing.

“A 250 pound live pig might yield only about 125 pounds of packaged meat. The more the meat is broken down, the more of the animal’s weight is lost. Farmers can’t afford to just sell the popular cuts — to be profitable, they need to sell as much of that meat as possible at a premium,” explains NC Choices Director Sarah Blacklin.

In February, NC Choices partnered on a retailer training at Weaver Street Market, a cooperative grocery store with three locations in North Carolina’s triangle. The staff training focused on understanding how the retailer fits into the larger context of whole animal buying, and how employees can talk about their pasture-based meat program to customers. Other speakers at the training included farmers from the NC Natural Hog Growers Association, Emily Moose from A Greener World’s Animal Welfare Approved certification agency, and meat aggregator Sam Suchoff from The Pig Restaurant and Lady Edison Meats.

“The idea for this training came to me while I was meeting with Sam [Suchoff] to talk about improving the local meat supply chain,” says Carolyn Twesten, Weaver Street Market Produce and Meat Merchandiser.  “In listening to Sam talk about his processes I realized how much effort goes into whole animal utilization, especially at his scale. In retail the staff just see the product come out of the box, they don’t see the whole process of what it took to get the product to the shelf. I am trying to connect our staff with that process as much as possible, to engage them and in turn have them engage our customers.”

“Weaver Street Market is playing an integral role in making whole animal buying possible – they’re purchasing various parts so aggregators can move whole animals,” adds Blacklin. “It’s a really great model we like to see when we talk about scaling up local meat.”

NC Choices, with support from NC Growing Together and the Golden Leaf Foundation, has also created a suite ofconsumer-focused resources to build awareness of and demand for pastured meat on the consumer side of the supply chain.

This spring, the NC State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences will feature NC Choices’ meat label claim resources as part of its Homegrown video series! Look for it to appear here: https://cals.ncsu.edu/homegrown/

For more information about NC Choices, please visit www.ncchoices.com.

This article originally appeared in the March 2017 NC Growing Together Newsletter.

March 2018 — The Center for Environmental Farming Systems has announced a new Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE )-funded initiative to tackle produce loss at the farm level.

The goal of the Whole Crop Harvest initiative is to discover ways to recover and utilize produce that would otherwise not leave the field or packing shed. The project complements CEFS’ other supply chain initiatives, particularly NC Growing Together and UFOODS . All of these projects strive to build supply chain capacity and profitable relationships between small/mid-scale food producers and conventional retail and food service markets.

Food waste is a major challenge in the U.S. food system. It’s estimated that 40% of food is lost across the supply chain, from the farm through distributor, retailer or food service, and to the consumer. However, those estimates leave out farm-level losses.

“A significant amount of healthy, nutrient-dense fruit and vegetables is left unharvested, representing losses of water, inputs, and land,” says NC State University graduate student Lisa Johnson. Measuring, understanding the underlying reasons for, and ultimately reducing farm level production losses can benefit the environment and the profitability of the grower.

Johnson, a Ph.D. candidate in the Horticultural Sciences Department, is part of Whole Crop Harvest’s interdisciplinary project team of horticulturists, economists, sociologists, and agricultural engineers. Based on Johnson’s trials in 107 fields on 10 farms, the team developed an easy-to-use protocol enabling farmers to more accurately estimate quantities of unharvested produce in their fields. Based on that information, farmers can inform buyers or food donation sites and then make an informed decision on the costs and benefits of continuing to harvest the field.

“We’re examining what is actually economically feasible for the grower — and what needs to happen further downstream in the supply chain — to move more product out of the field,” says project PI Dr. Rebecca Dunning.

For more information about Whole Crop Harvest, please visit: http://go.ncsu.edu/whole-crop-harvest

This article originally appeared in the March 2017 NC Growing Together Newsletter.

Farmer Millard Locklear of New Ground Farm, Chef Glenn Reynolds of UNC-P, and Davon Goodwin of Sandhills AgInnovation Center (L-R).

March 2018 — The goal of the University Food Systems (UFOODS) initiative is to contribute to the building of local food systems in North Carolina by demystifying complex university food purchasing systems, identifying entry pathways for local foods, and building supply chain connections to bring products to campus. The initiative, a project of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems and the NC 10% Campaign, is working with six partner universities in North Carolina, including the University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNC-P).

This past year, UFOODS worked with UNC-P Executive Chef Glenn Reynolds and produce wholesale/distributor FreshPoint to increase local sourcing for campus dining. The result of this collaboration? UNC-P more than doubled their year-over-year percentage of local produce (defined as sourced within 250 miles) purchased through FreshPoint, from 3.35% to 8.9%. This increase in just one year shows strong potential for increasing local procurement on a larger scale.

It helped that UNC-P has a supportive administration. UNC-P Executive Chef Glenn Reynolds says that he had support from as far up as the Chancellor to pursue local foods sourcing for campus dining halls. The challenge was finding it, and figuring out how to get it through their authorized produce vendor, FreshPoint.

UFOODS project staff facilitated meetings and ongoing follow-up over the course of a year to connect farms located within 10 miles of campus into the produce supply chain serving UNC-P. The UFOODS team also included a local foods intern, Julia Sampson, funded through UNC-P’s Sustainability Office. “Julia has really been instrumental to all this,” says Chef Reynolds. “She is constantly speaking with farmers, recruiting farmers – she’s definitely persistent.”

Julia Sampson and UNC-P students at a UFOODS meeting.

Student advocacy was also a critical ingredient. ” With agricultural fields so close to campus, UNC-P students understand how strong local food systems can support the local community, and are committed to connecting the dots of local economic development with sustainable farming practices. We have always been so impressed with the students at UNC-P, as well as the dedication from UNC-P’s Sustainability Office and faculty who go above and beyond to support these students and raise up UNC-P as a statewide and national model of sustainable programming,” says Robyn Stout, statewide coordinator of the NC 10% Campaign.

Because UNC-P’s Sodexo-managed dining operations hold exclusive contracts with particular authorized vendors, one strategy to increase local food in dining is for local farmers to sell to FreshPoint, which then supplies the produce to UNC-P. “The farmers meet the [FreshPoint] truck at UNC-P on Friday, and the produce is back here on Monday,” says Chef Reynolds.

FreshPoint’s Lauren Horning and Millard Locklear.

“Trucking the product to FreshPoint’s warehouse and then back to UNC-P might seem inefficient,” says Rebecca Dunning, UFOODS team lead. “But it complies with the university and distributor practices, saves farmers the expense of trucking the product to Raleigh, and creates the opportunity for local farmers’ products to be sold to other FreshPoint customers.”

To share insights learned over the past year, Dunning, Chef Reynolds, and FreshPoint’s Local and Organic Marketing Specialist, Lauren Horning, presented a session entitled “Dining and Distributor Collaboration for Authentically Local Sourcing” at the National Association of College and University Food Services Southern Regional Conference on March 6 in Denton, Texas.

For more information about UFOODS, please visit www.ufoodsnc.com , or for general resources on farm-to-institution procurement, visit the NC 10% Campaign.

This article originally appeared in the March 2017 NC Growing Together Newsletter.

Hubs & Kitchens: Food Hubs, Commercial Community Kitchens, and Copackers in NC 

Produced by NCGT and UFOODS.

Food hubs, commercial community kitchens, and copackers are intermediaries vital to the successful operation of supply chains connecting food that is grown in one area to consumers in that same area. This directory is designed to inform farmers and other food businesses of the location and services offered by these intermediaries.

The directory also provides grocery and food service buyers – including restaurants and institutional food service at universities and hospitals – with information on where they can find North Carolina food and farm products packed for retail and wholesale markets.

Download the directory here.

Food Business Road Map

Here’s your online kickstarter for starting a food business! This is intended to be a resource-dense, high-level view of your path.

Originally created by Taylor E. Hayes, 2017 NCGT  Local Food Supply Chain Apprentice, with Eric Hallman and Sue Ellsworth.

Find the Food Business Road Map on the CEFS website, here.

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2017 NC Growing Together Newsletter.

 October 2017 – NC Growing Together’s Local Food Economies project engages local and regional governments in the work of building local food systems.  In September, Local Food Economies and the NC 10% Campaign organized three Innovations in Economic Development through Local Foods gatherings to showcase investments that local and regional governments can make to support small and mid-scale food and farming businesses.  These events were attended by officials from over 46 local, regional, and state government agencies in 89 of North Carolina’s 100 counties.

“The goal of these events was to inform decision-makers and planners in local and regional government about how local agriculture is successful as an economic development driver,” said Laura Lauffer, Project Coordinator, Local Farms and Food, N.C. A&T State University Cooperative Extension Program and NC Growing Together.

Each of the filled-to-capacity events – held in Waynesville, Ellerbe, and Henderson – highlighted successful examples from around the state of local governments supporting local food and farm businesses.  There were networking opportunities with representatives from the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the North Carolina Rural Center, North Carolina Department of Commerce Rural Planning Division, and the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.  The American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) offered Certification Maintenance credits to its members who attended.

Local Food Economies’ outreach has helped bring food and farm business development to the economic development agendas of North Carolina’s county and municipal governments.  Nine of the sixteen regional Councils of Government now include agricultural economic development as a goal of their comprehensive plans.

Don Belk, a Community Economic Development Planner with the Rural Economic Development Division of the North Carolina Department of Commerce, attended the gathering at Vance-Granville Community College in Henderson.  “This was a great networking experience for me.  As the planner for North Carolina’s ‘North Central Prosperity Zone’, this introduced me to the dedicated individuals and innovative efforts going on in the area,” he said.

“One of the more interesting things I learned was that we as a state are still struggling to build the local foods ‘infrastructure’ needed to really expand opportunities for farmers and greater, economical food options for citizens.  Here is where regional collaboration is vital.  We need to look at the local food infrastructure and the agricultural capacity of the land at the regional scale to determine what is needed,” he added.

All of the presentations from the Innovations in Economic Development events can be found on YouTube, here.

NCGT and Local Food Economies has created a suite of resources to support local government engagement in local food systems development.  Visit the Local Food Economies website for County Agriculture Infographics , Local Food Economic Development Videos , and A Government Guide on Building Local Food Economies.  The new GIS version of NCGT’s Local Food Infrastructure Inventory Map can be found here .

The response to the gatherings was so positive that the LFE team is exploring additional regional events.  Contact Emily Edmonds for more information on outreach and events in western NC (west of I-77) and Laura Lauffer for areas in the Piedmont and Eastern NC (east of I-77).

This article originally appeared in the October 2017 NC Growing Together Newsletter.