NC 10% Campaign – Center for Environmental Farming Systems

Engaging Videos Highlight the Local Seafood Supply Chain, Local Foods as Economic Development

Waystone Design — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 04:00:00 +0000

July 2018: NC Growing Together has partnered with the NC 10% Campaign and Vittles Films to produce videos about local foods.

What Can Be: For many rural communities it can be hard to see opportunities for growth, or even stability, in the wake of steady economic decline and the exodus of big industries. Carla Norwood and Gabe Cummings believe plenty of opportunity exists where it always has: in the landscape and people that surround them. Their rural-based nonprofit, Working Landscapes, has nurtured a local food system and a regional supply network that has proven sustainable over the past five years. What Can Be examines their economic redevelopment project in detail, the public and private partners involved and how their model could be replicated to develop complementary processing facilities and opportunities for economic resilience in other rural communities.

What Can Be was shown at a series of three Innovations in Economic Development through Local Foods events across the state in Fall 2017, in addition to its premiere in Warrenton, North Carolina and a screening at Community Food Strategies’ Statewide Food Gathering in November 2017. It has also been accepted for a screening at the NC American Planning Association’s September 2018 meeting where it will be followed by a discussion panel featuring the film’s participants. “The film shows the opportunity to support a regional food economy through efficient delivery routes and dynamic processing facilities,” says Laura Lauffer, NCGT Extension and Outreach Program Manager.

Ugly & Wild: Learning to Love N.C. Fish: Even though your mama said, “there are many fish in the sea,” we often seek out what we already know. Locals Seafood is an inland fish house in Raleigh, North Carolina, that believes love awaits those who are willing to take a chance with the lesser-known, but ultra fresh, bounty caught off their coast. Over the last decade nearly 40% of N.C. fish houses have closed due to increasing demand for imported seafood; which is familiar and cheap, but from obscure sources using unknown practices. UGLY & WILD explores how Locals Seafood is creating new connections with venerable coastal fishing families to bring one of the state’s last wild foods to a dinner plate near you. After all, true beauty is fried on the inside.

Ugly & Wild has been shown at seven screenings – including universities, restaurants, a food co-op, and the NC Catch Summit – attended by over 300 people. ” The goals of these events were to increase markets for North Carolina’s fishers by increasing consumer familiarity with underutilized species and also by increasing the willingness of consumers as well as Dining Services to seek out North Carolina-caught seafood and to source a greater variety of species,” says Robyn Stout, Statewide Coordinator of the NC 10% Campaign.

Visit the NC 10% Campaign’s website for screening toolkits, talking points, and other resources.

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

Seeking Poultry Plant Manager at Foothills Processing, LLC, in Marion, NC

CEFS — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 16:04:18 +0000

Position Announcement: Poultry Plant Manager

The ISAMPA Board is working to reopen the poultry plant in Marion, NC to serve independent poultry producers in the region. Foothills Processing is actively seeking a manager to coordinate the resumption of operations and is accepting applications for the position. The following are a sample of the job tasks and functions:

Supervise and manage the reopening of the plant and communicate with stakeholders
Restore equipment to functioning state
Repair any leaks in water system
Restore water service
Trial poultry processing line
Update USDA inspection registration
Staff plant sufficient to resume operations

Desirable qualities include: good communicator, effective manager, construction expertise, self-starter and strong initiative, financially savvy and creative problem-solver. This person would report to the leadership of Foothills Processing, LLC, the new company managing the plant. This is a contract position with opportunity for membership. Candidates should email resume, letter of interest and hourly contract rate to foothillsprocessing@gmail.com. No calls, please.

Thanks,

ISAMPA and Foothills Processing, LLC

New Resource Spotlight: How It Works Handbook

Waystone Design — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 05:00:00 +0000

How It Works Handbook: A Guide to University Food Systems & Local Food Programs

Produced by UFOODS

The How it Works Handbook: A Guide to University Food Systems and Local Food Programs is designed to showcase some of the local food initiatives of UFOODS partner schools. It also explains the structure of the university dining system, steps for successful programs, and various pathways through which locally-grown food can reach campus community members.

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

UFOODS Supports Value Chain Collaboration to Bring Local Food to Campus at UNC-Pembroke

Waystone Design — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 05:00:00 +0000

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.

NC 10% Campaign and RTI International Develop Online Dashboards to Illustrate Local Foods Spending Data in North Carolina

CEFS — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 13:34:56 +0000

March 6, 2017 | FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact | Robyn Stout, Statewide Coordinator, NC 10% Campaign | 919-515-5362 or rdstout@ncsu.edu

Raleigh, NC: Where are North Carolinians buying local foods? How much are they spending on local food per month? Which county spends the most buying local foods?

These questions and more are being answered thanks to the NC 10% Campaign and RTI International, which teamed up to develop a series of dashboards to help local farmers, consumers, businesses, and leaders make informed decisions about buying and selling local foods.

The NC 10% Campaign is a collaborative statewide initiative led by the Center for Environmental Farming Systems in partnership with NC Cooperative Extension that encourages business and individuals to commit 10% of their existing food budget to locally raised, caught, and produced foods.

“Analyzing the NC 10% Campaign’s data from 8,000 members, we found that on average members spend $30 dollars per month on local foods, and most are buying from farmers’ markets,” said Peter Baumgartner, data scientist in RTI’s Center for Data Science, who helped develop the dashboards. “We also found that members from Wake County reported spending the most on local foods, about $700,000 was spent between 2010 and 2015.”

“Being able to visualize the data by county, aggregates of counties, or Cooperative Extension districts and to overlay that over time makes the data more accessible and helps us understand how to support local food efforts across the state,” said Robyn Stout, Statewide Coordinator of the NC 10% Campaign. There were over 580,000 lines of data to analyze.

The information from the dashboards can be used to help:

Farmers determine where to sell their produce by understanding which sources – farmers’ markets, roadside stands, or grocery stores – are most popular in their county.
Consumers compare their spending to the county average.
Inform planners, educators, and local government officials on the characteristics of local food purchasing in their region.

A leader in collecting, analyzing, and leveraging data, RTI looked at five years’ worth of data on local food spending in North Carolina that was self-reported by the NC 10% Campaign’s nearly 8,000 members.*

The interactive dashboards, available on NC 10% Campaign’s website, allow visitors to search for data from individual counties, as well as view statewide totals.

*The data is from NC 10% Campaign members who chose to activate their membership and input their local foods spending data weekly.

The NC 10% Campaign is an initiative of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS), a partnership of North Carolina State University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. CEFS develops and promotes just and equitable food and farming systems that conserve natural resources, strengthen communities, improve health outcomes, and provide economic opportunities in North Carolina and beyond.

For more information, visit www.cefs.ncsu.edu.

RTI International is an independent, nonprofit research institute dedicated to improving the human condition. Clients rely on us to answer questions that demand an objective and multidisciplinary approach—one that integrates expertise across the social and laboratory sciences, engineering, and international development. We believe in the promise of science, and we are inspired every day to deliver on that promise for the good of people, communities, and businesses around the world.

For more information, visit www.rti.org.

Funding for this project was provided by a Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SSARE) grant: “Quantifying the Multiplier Effect: What sustainable local food systems can mean to local communities,” (LS12-248).

Download this press release as a printable PDF

NCGT Summer Apprentices Ready to Hit the Ground Running!

Waystone Design — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 04:00:00 +0000

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 with Feast Down East.

Virginia (Gigi) Lytton is from Charlotte, NC and is currently a Global Studies and Medical Anthropology student at the University of North Carolina. She will be working with Lowes Foods.

Eva Moss currently lives in Tennessee but has triple citizenship in New Zealand, Western Samoa, and the United States. Eva is currently an Anthropology student at Sewanee. She will be working with Firsthand Foods.

Kristen Miller is from Mooresboro, NC and is currently a Poultry Science student at NC State University. She will be working with NC Choices.

Erin Lowe is from Austin, Texas and is currently a Farm Intern at World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms in Oregon. Erin graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in Environmental Studies and Biology with a minor in Psychology. She will be working with Tractor.

Tracy Grubb is from Saxapahaw, NC and is currently a Plant and Soil Sciences student at NC State University. She will be working with the NC 10% Campaign.

Shirlee Evans is from Fayetteville, NC and is an Agribusiness major at NC State University. She will be working with Cumberland County Cooperative Extension.

This is the inaugural year of the NCGT Summer Apprenticeship. In January of 2016 we will invite applications from partner organizations that would like to mentor an apprentice for the summer of 2016.

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2015 NC Growing Together Newsletter.

NCGT and the NC 10% Campaign Connect Farmers and Buyers

Waystone Design — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 04:00:00 +0000

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 over the state and buyers including Lowes Foods and Sysco/Fresh Point.

Farmer Jeff Bender of Bender Farms in Norlina, NC, explained why he made time to attend the event. “We’re not set up to be huge growers. I’d rather raise a smaller acreage and sell it to someone I know. So much of it is relationships — something like this gives you the chance to sit down face-to-face and make a deal.”

Based on both farmer and buyer evaluations of the event, everyone agreed that their time was well spent, and the event would likely lead to new business partnerships. Kevin O’Connell of The Produce Box said, “The initial conversation is the hardest one to have. The opportunity to be face-to-face is key: you may not be able to finish

[the conversation] but you can look someone in the eye and find out if you are a good fit in a short amount of time.”

NCGT and the NC 10% Campaign will sponsor another Farmer-Buyer Connections Event in late July. For more information, or if you would like to attend, please contact Abbey Piner at NCGT partner the NC 10% Campaign.

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2015 NC Growing Together Newsletter.

NCGT to Host Farmer-Buyer Connections Event March 2

Waystone Design — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 05:00:00 +0000

January 2015 – Please note, this event was originally scheduled for February 17 and was re-scheduled to March 2 due to inclement weather.

Are you a GAP-certified farmer looking for new markets to sell your products?

Are you a buyer best online casino looking for new places to source local products?

On Monday, March 2 from 2-5 pm in Raleigh, NCGT and partner NC 10% Campaign will host a facilitated conversation to build direct connections between wholesale buyers and farmers across the state. Attendees will leave the event with direct connections to farmers or buyers and a sense of which connections are most promising for building sales/market relationships.

This event is invitation-based. Please contact abbey_piner@ncsu.edu if you are interested in attending.

This article originally appeared in the January 2015 NC Growing Together Newsletter.