June 2015 -- Over the past four years, NC State Horticulture Science PhD student Drew Marticorena has been studying the "Local Multiplier Effect", the economic ripple effect that occurs within a community when consumers spend their money at independent, locally-owned businesses. While there are databases that contain standard multipliers used by economic developers across [...]
June 2015 -- The NC Growing Together Summer 2015 Local Food Supply Chain Apprentices are on the ground and ready to get started on their 8-week assignments! Meet them below: Josie Walker is from Trenton, NC and is currently an Agricultural and Environmental Systems student at North Carolina A&T University. She will be working [...]
Photo by Debbie Roos. June 2015 -- NC Growing Together has released a baseline survey on North Carolina's growing farmstead creamery industry. A "farmstead" creamery, by definition, is one that manufactures on-farm, value-added dairy products made exclusively with milk from that farm. The survey summarizes data on 13 goat creameries and 10 cow [...]
March 2015 - NC Growing Together has updated several pricing and quality control resources for growers. To supplement its popular guide Wholesale and Retail Product Specifications: Guidance and Best Practices for Fresh Produce, NCGT recently released a new Slide Set with additional photos to illustrate product quality and information from quality control specialists on proper [...]
March 2015 - Mike Burris, who served as the Director of Produce for 27 years at Merchant"s Distributors, Inc., the Hickory-based grocery distributor that online casino is a sister company to NCGT partner Lowes Foods, has a new role, focused specifically on increasing the amount of locally-grown North Carolina produce distributed by MDI. "I"ll be [...]
March 2015 - The economic success of fruit and vegetable production is highly dependent on postharvest quality preservation. When marketing fresh fruits and vegetables, understanding the processes affecting product quality during storage and transportation is essential in obtaining a premium price for the product. To assist growers in developing skills that will provide a competitive [...]
March 2015 - On March 2 at the Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, approximately 20 North Carolina growers and buyers sat across tables from each other, in a kind of business development speed-dating. They had eight minutes to decide if they were potentially a good fit for each others' business. Attendees included produce farmers from all [...]
February 2015 - This spring NC Growing Together, NC State University, and the Cooperative Extension Service are partnering to offer Post-Harvest Handling for Enhanced Shelf Life workshops for small and mid-sized growers. Half-day workshops will be held April 14 in Duplin County and May 21 in Catawba County. An advanced, full-day workshop will be held June 2 in [...]
February 2015 - NC Growing Together is partnering with NC Farm Bureau, NC State University Department of Horticultural Science, and NC Cooperative Extension to offer the Farmer Idea Lab, a new "Lunch-N-Learn" webinar series designed to offer farmer-to-farmer sharing of success stories and lessons learned. The first webinar, Farm Smarter Not Harder, was held on February 5. [...]
February 2015 - Food distributor Cornucopia Cheese & Specialty Foods Company was founded in 1980 in the back of a community grocery store in rural Alamance County. It is now one of the leading cheese and specialty food suppliers in the Southeast, providing over 1,000 products to customers in North Carolina, Virginia and surrounding states. Working [...]
