July 2017 — Ali Huber is a recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, where she double majored in Environmental Studies, (focusing on sustainability and agriculture) and Public Policy (focusing on food). Ali has worked in gardening and nutrition education, as well as local food sourcing for the Dining Halls at UNC. She says she is most drawn to the producer side of the supply chain and wants to help support hard-working farmers.
This summer, Ali is working with Claire McLendon, who served as a NCGT Local Food Supply Chain apprentice in 2016, and who is now Director of Seal the Seasons’ Emerging Commercial Farmers Program. Claire and Ali have been spending lots of time going on site visits to Seal the Season’s current berry farmer suppliers to build relationships, learn more about their operations, and see how the season has progressed this year. Seeing farms of all sizes has informed Ali’s knowledge of how each scale can fit into the local food supply chain: “From each farm, I gain a different insight about scale, what’s possible at each scale, and the types of markets that each scale is going for,” Ali says.
Ali notes that a big takeaway for her this summer has been finding out all the different resources out there to support farming, but also, “just how unevenly distributed resources are across the state.” “There’s a lot of space to provide more support especially at a financial level and investment level,” she says. “For the farmers or people doing food hubs, it’s a labor of love and I really respect that and want to be part of that, too.”
This article originally appeared in the June/July 2017 NC Growing Together Newsletter.