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 [...]
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 - 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 [...]
February 2015 - One of the biggest challenges facing local small and mid-sized producers and large-scale "mainstream" buyers (grocery chains and wholesale distributors) is how to move smaller volumes of source-identified product from farm to point-of-sale at a price that keeps everybody along the supply chain in business. NC Growing Together is working to develop and [...]
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 [...]
January 2015 - NC Growing Together is working to connect the state's small and medium-scale dairy producers with larger markets. North Carolina is a milk-deficit state, meaning we produce only about half of the milk we consume. Strong demand for local products - including produce, meat, seafood, and dairy - creates a potential market opportunity [...]
August 2014 - On Saturday August 23, Fort Bragg held its first local farmers' market. Timed to coincide with the popular monthly 5k walk/run sponsored by the Fort Bragg MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) office, the market featured four farmers selling a variety of fresh produce and value-added products. The impetus to start an on-base [...]
August 2014 - NC Growing Together has released a guide entitled Wholesale and Retail Product Specifications: Guidance and Best Practices for Fresh Produce for Small Farms and Food Hubs. The manual was developed to assist individual growers and grower-based distributors and food hubs by outlining a clear set of descriptive guidelines for quality, size, [...]
Vince Evans of Evans Family Farm. July 2014 - NC Growing Together, in partnership with NC State University, NC Cooperative Extension, and the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (CFSA), is providing intensive, hands-on technical support to enable small-scale farmers to achieve Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) certification of their farms. The USDA-developed GAPs certification system [...]
Across NC, Networking and Educational Efforts Connect Small and Mid-sized Farmers with Larger Markets Read the Story
