To have your name added, contact Amber Polk at amber_polk@ncsu.edu.
Notes from the SUMMIT breakout sessions can now be found on the WIT pages linked below.
- F2F Core Team
- Game Plan
- Advisory Committee
- NC Food NETwork: a North Carolina Food System directory
- SUMMIT
- Working Issues
- Communications
- Community Gardens
- Direct Marketing
- Farm to School
- Local Government & Land Use
- New and Transitioning Farmer Support
- Processing & Food Systems Infrastructure
- Public Health & Food Access Disparities
- Retail & Institutional Markets
- Youth and Social Networking
- Formalizing the Initiative: Foundations & Baselines
- Regional Meetings
- How are we defining LOCAL?
- Regional Meetings Overview & Summary
- Triangle Region SUMMIT breakout session notes
- Mountain Region SUMMIT breakout session
- NorthEast Region SUMMIT breakout session notes
- Southeastern Region SUMMIT breakout session notes
- Triad Region SUMMIT breakout session notes
- Raleigh meeting
- Burgaw meeting
- Asheville
- Charlotte/Concord
- Winston-Salem
- Greenville
Golden Leaf Foundation
Z. Smith Reynolds
Ag Advancement Consortium
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
- CEFS
- Contact Information Form
- NC Choices
- NC Food Network
- Wayne Food Initiative
Mountain Region SUMMIT breakout session
Strengths/Assets
- Good land/connected to land
- Golden Leaf Funding & Tobacco Trust fund
- Respect for heritage
- Community Colleges, extension and others that are agriculture focused
- Long traditions of direct marketing
- Diversity of micro-climates & unique opportunities
- Products we can grow better/unique, like raspberries
Challenges/Needs
- Protect tobacco trust fund
- Geography makes it hard to get together
- Unsustainable development
- Price of land (must have a green house)
- Shifting demographics gentrifying economic change
- Hard to meet regulations or requirements
- Small acreage farms (expensive land and hard to meet present use value)
Opportunities & Local Action Ideas
- Meeting with new WNC Farmers market
- Tax/fee from second homes to support local agriculture
- Forest/silva/agriforestry and eco tourism- educate and lobby
- Scale appropriate support for small farms, specifically change acres required for present use
- Integrate agriculture in comprehensive land use plans
- Celebrations of specific cops- not festivals
Things we are going to do
- Listserv
- CFS Annual conf Breakfast
- Meet with new WNC Farmers Market Director
Table Top Strength/Assets
- Lots of organizations working on same cause
- Creative numerous farmers
- Long history of growers
- Large customer base - including tourists
- Ingles, Earthfare, and Green life
- Blue Ridge Food Ventures
- Almost no limited industrial agriculture
- Research stations/city Extension
- ASAP
- People are self-reliant
- Appreciation and respect for nature
- Family ties and bonds
- Warmth of interaction
- Bartering tradition
- Respect for heritage
- Water
- Food awareness
- Botanicals
- Basis for diversified economy
- Buncombe community school
- Warren Wilson
- Awareness
- Orgnizations/Services Existing
- Community colleges
- Youthful community
- Tourism markets
- Location
- Unique micro-climate
- Ag options
- Blue Ride Food Vendors
- Traditional growers
- Culture of the hills including resist and resilience
- Organic growers FoodTopia
Table Top Challenges/Needs
- $/Staff for outreach
- Region underrepresented at state level
- Very expensive of small farms
- Present use taxation greater applies only to 10 acres or up
- Communication / collaboration among organizations
- Meeting regulations
- Tourism
- Access
- Development
- Underserved demographic
- Short-share of resources
- NGO multiplicity
- Slopes/erosion
- Development without environmental criteria
- 2nd home ownership
- Limited bottomland
- Depressed economies in rural areas
- Difficulty organizing in some communities
- Youth exodus
- Insurance costs, tax lands
Table Top Opportunities & Local Action Ideas
- Mountain tailgate market association/ separate legal entity outside ASAP
- Food policy council/food working group etc.
- Engage WNC farmers market new director
- Additional mobile meat processing unit
- Region wide celebrations of individual foods
- Co-op marketing
- Toolbox retention of working lands
- Land use plan- comprehensive and including farmland
- Small farm program focus
- Take advantage of lull in economy
- Spread existing model – foundation, mt. landscape
- Demand nonprofits coordinate and report to eh community
- Working with youth to instill value of local culture
- Local economy efforts
- Education that can enable locals to stay
- Social marketing
- Land trusts
- Eco/local products marketing
- Agroforestry
- One-stop shopping for local ag products – like folk arts center
- Information bartering
- Non formal education
- Community gardens for 2nd home communities
- School kitchens