NCGT's Trish Tripp during a GroupGAP practice audit. April 2016 -- In April 2016, the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) announced a new food safety certification program called GroupGAP. The program allows small farms to share the cost of certification across a group of growers, and was developed in partnership with the Wallace [...]
FreshPoint's Dan Batchelder explaining grading requirements to a producer at a recent Postharvest Handling workshop. April 2016 -- NC Growing Together is bringing together small-scale farmers and food service and retail buyers for capacity-building along the local food supply chain. Events such as Grower-Buyer Mixers and Postharvest Handling Workshops provide opportunities for peer-to-peer [...]
March 2016 -- NC Growing Together and partner NC Choices are collaborating on a series of upcoming events and tools for pasture-based meat producers and businesses. Funded by USDA Rural Development, the NCGT/NC Choices' Meat Quality Project is developing a software interface that allows meat processor Acre Station Meat Farm to collect meat quality data for [...]
March 2016 -- NC Growing Together and NC Cooperative Extension have released a new guide entitled Selling Fluid Milk to Grocery Stores through Direct Store Delivery. The guide is intended for small to medium-scale North Carolina fluid milk producer-processors who are interested in expanding their markets to grocery stores. The publication includes information on what producers [...]
March 2016 -- NC Growing Together partner Pate Dawson-Southern Foods (PDSF) is helping to move more local fish and shellfish in North Carolina. As featured previously in the NCGT News, PDSF Director of Marketing Joel Sullivan met Valee Taylor, co-owner of Cedar Grove-based Taylor Fish Farm, at the 2015 NCGT Annual Meeting. The two quickly [...]
February 2016 -- NCGT Partner Piedmont Grown is a certification program that identifies and promotes farm products that are grown, raised, and made in North Carolina's 37-county Piedmont Region. Their label identifies local agricultural products and helps consumers make informed buying choices that benefit local farms and our local economy. NCGT is sponsoring Piedmont Grown's [...]
February 2016 -- NCGT will be sponsoring several educational workshops and events in March and April: March 30, 2016 | Adding Value to Local Food | WEBINAR April 4,6,7, 2016 | Postharvest Handling for Improved Shelf Life Workshops | Durham, Henderson, and Rowan Counties April 11, 2016 | Good Agricultural Practices One-Day Workshop: Navigating the [...]
January 2016 -- NC Growing Together and project partner Supply Chain Resource Cooperative at NC State University's Poole College of Management are sponsoring MBA students to investigate supply chain issues across the local-to-mainstream food supply chain. Last fall, a team of four students - Jazmine Davis, James Hollifield, Kaitlyn Sutton, and 2016 NCGT Supply [...]
January 2016 -- Lowes Foods is bolstering its commitment to buying local by seeking local value-added products for its stores. Says Krista Morgan, Lowes Foods Locally Grown Accounts Representative and Liaison to NCGT, "we'd like to find canned or packaged goods such as sauces, jams, relish, dressings, etc. that are produced with all NC-grown ingredients, [...]
Fresh Produce GAPs Workshop. Photo by Diane Ducharme. November/December 2015 -- NC Growing Together is helping to advance fresh produce food safety work statewide. Working in partnership with North Carolina State University, North Carolina Cooperative Extension, NC Cooperative County Centers, and the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, NCGT has been sponsoring Fresh Produce [...]
