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Upcoming Events
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Good Agricultural Practices (GAP)
(co-sponsored by the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association)
May 16, 2017 | 9 am - 4 pm | Henderson, NC
The Navigating the Harmonized GAP Audit workshop will combine classroom and on-farm instruction to provide producers with the tools needed to identify potential food safety concerns, as well as strategies to minimize potential contamination.
More info...
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Kitchen Incubators & Small Food Businesses in North Carolina: A Webinar for Small Business Counselors
May 24, 2017 | 10-11 am | Virtual
Presented by NCGT and the North Carolina Rural Center, this webinar will train small business counselors and developers on the opportunities available to food business clients through kitchen incubators in North Carolina.
More info...
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| About NCGT |
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GOAL | Bring more locally-grown foods - produce, meat, dairy, and seafood - into mainstream retail and food service supply chains, thus enhancing food security by increasing access to local foods and by strengthening the economics of small to mid-sized farm and fishing operations.
STRATEGY |
Identify the most promising solutions by which local production and associated value-added activities can enter local retail and food service markets, pilot these solutions in North Carolina, and evaluate and report the results for the benefit of other states and regions.
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Greetings all,
Thanks for reading our monthly newsletter and please let us know what you think.
Sincerely,
The NCGT Management Team
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Leveraging for Greater Impact: NCGT and UFOODS
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Chef Jordan Rogers (L) and farmer Johnny Blakley (R) at Wake Forest University's #TasteTheLocal event.
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NC Growing Together is working with a new "partner": CEFS'
University Foods Systems: Farm to Campus, Campus to Farm initiative (UFOODS). UFOODS seeks to network campuses with their local food communities, specifically to develop new market opportunities for producers. "These two food supply chain efforts complement each other," says NCGT Project Manager Rebecca Dunning, who also works with the UFOODS initiative. "Connections made through one initiative can often be plugged into the other."
An example of leveraging connections is Johnny and Robin Blakley of
Buffalo Creek Farm and Creamery
in Germanton, NC. Johnny Blakley attended NCGT's HACCP workshop for cheese producers, Artisanal, Safe and Efficient: The Way Forward for Dairy Producers, in Greensboro last October, and in February, attended NCGT partner FreshPoint's tour and information session in Charlotte. So when Wake Forest University's dining program, managed by Aramark, mentioned that they were looking for a local farmer to participate in a university dining event, Dunning suggested the Blakleys, who live just ten miles from campus.
The Blakleys supplied their goat cheese to the university's first #TasteTheLocal Farmer Series event on March 29. Aramark Wake Forest University's Executive Chef Jordan Rogers turned their fresh chevre into goat cheese cheesecake and their raw milk aged goat cheese was used in tomato herb tartlets. The event was a huge success. "The goal of these events is to make the students aware of the good local foods that are available in our area. This was
our first event and the students loved it. I would say we had 300 students stop by our table," says Rogers. "
We want to be sustainable on campus, support our local economy, and do the right things to preserve our environment," he adds.
Johnny Blakley enjoyed the event as well. He and Robin frequently sell out of their products at the Farmers Market and are considering expanding into ice cream production. If they do that, they might have their first market waiting for them right down the road at Wake Forest University.
UFOODS is currently creating a "How it Works" Handbook for farmers and local food advocates on how to engage in campus food supply chains, and in partnership with the
NC 10% Campaign's
Local Food Ambassador Program, is creating Campus Local Food Guides at six Historically Black or American Indian public universities in North Carolina. For more information about UFOODS, please visit
www.ufoodsnc.com
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New Grant Supports Supply Chain Approach to Reducing Farm-Level Food Waste
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Unharvested peppers in the field. Photo by Lisa Johnson
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According to a 2012 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, approximately 40% of food is wasted in the US - and shockingly, that number does not include food lost at the farm level. The grant work will focus on two types of unharvested produce: cosmetically imperfect (does not meet USDA #1 standards for scarring, size, or shape, but is otherwise edible); and produce that meets USDA #1 standards but is left in the field because harvesting costs exceed the market price of the produce. Figuring out how to "recover" this otherwise wasted produce can both improve growers' bottom line and make our food system more efficient and sustainable.
The project will take a supply chain approach-with research and education activities along the supply chain from farm through intermediary buyers and commercial food preparers-with the goal of identifying and piloting economically efficient ways to minimize production loss, and, in turn, augment farm revenues.
Minimizing food waste is a challenge along the entire supply chain. Food distributors and NCGT partners Foster-Caviness and FreshPoint both have programs to market cosmetically imperfect produce and keep them out of the waste stream. Foster-Caviness, as a produce supplier to institutional food service programs managed by Compass Group, participates in its Imperfectly Delicious Program. The program seeks to develop markets for edible produce that, for cosmetic reasons, otherwise might be tossed into a compost pile or end up as animal feed.
"We're hoping to reduce waste in the field and down the supply chain," says Jason Kampwerth, Foster-Caviness' Local Buyer and Sustainability Coordinator. The program is most successful with products (like sweet potatoes) that can be harvested without excessive labor or packaging costs. Foster-Caviness buys produce that might not otherwise have a market, at a discounted rate (that covers farmers' labor and packaging costs), then passes the savings on to their customers who want to reduce food waste and support sustainability efforts. "We're trying to find out what products are the best marketing opportunity," says Kampwerth of the growing effort. "The whole point is to get products out of farmers' fields and find a place for them back in the food chain."
FreshPoint has its own program, called "Unusual but Usable." NCGT partner Seal the Seasons also works with farmers to gather berries and other produce that might go unsold, freezing and bagging the product for sale in a variety of markets.
Lisa Johnson, a CEFS-affiliated graduate student in the Horticultural Science department at NC State University, is studying farm-level food waste.
"Growers don't really have a way to easily measure the amount of marketable and/or edible produce that is left in their fields," she says. Her research has created protocols that growers can use to take a sample and extrapolate what is left in their field that might be marketable and/or edible. "Early results show that significant amounts of marketable and/or edible produce are routinely left unharvested. For example, an average over several fields suggests over 12,000 pounds of cucumber per acre and over 4,000 pounds of sweet potato per acre may be available for recovery," says Johnson.
Johnson recently co-authored a blog post with CEFS Director Dr. Nancy Creamer for The Huffington Post on the issue.
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NCGT and the NC Rural Center Collaborate on Webinar Series to Support Food and Farm Business Development
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| Attendee map from the April 11 webinar: 67 attendees from all over the state. |
NC Growing Together and the
North Carolina Rural Center
are partnering to develop a monthly webinar series targeted towards
small business counselors and other staff who work with food and farm business development around the state. The webinars will continue through August and are designed for business counselors, Cooperative Extension agents, and the staff of other supportive agencies to learn more about the specific business needs of food and farm businesses.
The idea for the webinar series arose from a series of workshop sessions hosted by NCGT at Small Business Center and Small Business Technology Development Center events around the state, during which participants identified areas of need for future training and resource development.
 "These agencies already bring tremendous knowledge of either business planning or food production to the table for their clients. These webinars are designed to increase that knowledge, particularly around the unique legal, regulatory, and business environments of food and farm businesses," says Emily Edmonds, NCGT's Extension and Outreach Program Manager.
The webinars are led by guest experts on each topic and facilitated by Edmonds. The series kicked off with an April webinar, Start or Grow a Food Business in North Carolina, featuring Jill Willett,
Founder of Coaching for Cooks and Triangle Food Makers.
The recorded webinar and handout can be found on the NCGT website, here
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Future topics will include
Succession Planning and Heirs Property,
Legal Issues for Farm and Food Businesses
, and Place-Based Entrepreneurship Programs.
The next webinar, Food Business Incubators in North Carolina: Incubator Kitchens and the Business Networks that Support their Clients, will be held on May 24. Three successful kitchen incubators -- Blue Ridge Food Ventures in Western North Carolina, the Eastern Carolina Incubator Kitchen at James Sprunt Community College in Southeastern North Carolina, and the PREP Station (formerly Piedmont Food and Agriculture Processing Center) in Orange County -- will discuss their services, facilities, and common challenges and opportunities for small food businesses.
Registration is free. For more information, please visit the NCGT website's Events page.
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Project Contact Information
Nancy Creamer,
Co-Director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, NC State University; and Project Director, NC Growing Together,
nancy_creamer@ncsu.edu
, 919-515-9447
Emily Edmonds, NCGT Extension and Outreach Program Manager, emelders@ncsu.edu, 828-399-0297
Laura Lauffer
, Project Coordinator, Local Farms and Food, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Cooperative Extension Program,
ldlauffe@ncat.edu
, 336-285-4690
This project is supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grant no. 2013-68004-20363 of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
© 2013-2017 NC Growing Together
www.ncgrowingtogether.org
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