Rhyne Cureton will be a junior at NC A&T University this fall majoring in Agricultural Education, after taking a gap year to explore his interests in agriculture. During his first two years in college, he discovered that he not only loved the outdoors, but was also fascinated with agriculture and its role in many different sectors including sustainability, economics, education, and energy. Over the past year, he raised hogs and other animals at World Hunger Relief, Inc. in Waco, Texas,  worked with the National Pork Checkoff program, and worked on small scale pork production at Fickle Creek Farm in Efland, NC.

As an apprentice with Foster Caviness this summer, Rhyne has been helping with quality control in the warehouse, doing customer service calls to clients, as well as working with accounting and record keeping - experiences that he says have helped him recognize how important it is in business to be organized and keep things up to date, flowing, and neat.

Rhyne eventually wants to start his own farm, and become large enough to sell wholesale. This apprenticeship has helped him understand what it is like from the distributors perspective. With prior experience in several different areas of the local food supply chain, Rhyne was looking for an opportunity to fill in the gaps in his experience, he explained, "Advocacy I have done, councils and policy making...I have been a part of. But what does it mean to be a wholesaler? If I want to be a bigger scale wholesale farm, I need to have an understanding of what exactly I would be getting into."

Alex Borst is a recent graduate of Mississippi State University with a degree in International Studies. This summer, Alex is helping Working Landscapes to develop a new sweet potato value chain to supply its Chopped Produce Initiative. This program aggregates local produce, adds value by chopping and prepping it, and then distributes it to local schools and institutions. Alex is compiling lists of interested producers, doing farm visits with them, updating existing producer profiles, and crafting brochures and marketing materials for Working Landscapes' website.

 

While in college, Alex became interested in sustainable foods while interning at the Mississippi Sustainable Agriculture Network and also working on a sustainable hog farm. This summer he has enjoyed seeing a different facet of the local food system and gaining experience working in a non-profit focused on value chain development. Alex says that being a non-profit, mission driven organization makes it possible for Working Landscapes to "get produce into schools or communities that don't normally have access to it...the non-profit ethos in our food hub makes it a lot different and allows us to fill a void by being a mission driven organization."

 

He also appreciates the mentorship and knowledge that he has received from directors Carla Norwood and Gabe Cummings, says Alex, "Learning about how local supply chains work and how to develop them has been really helpful to me because it is a behemoth - from grower to distributor, to processor, to schools, to waste product. It's cool to observe people who really understand that process and are able to break it down really easily. For future projects and employment, I will feel more comfortable talking about local [food] supply chains." 

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." 

Erin Welty is a rising senior at the Univer sity of So uth

Carolina, majoring in English. She became interested in a career in local food and agriculture after interning at a community garden in Cedar Grove, North Carolina last summer. Originally from Clemmons, NC, Erin was excited to be placed near her home community at the Lowes Foods headquarters in Winston-Salem, and have a chance to approach food and agriculture from the standpoint of a major retailer.  This summer Erin has taken charge of the newsletter which goes out to customers who take part in the "Carolina Crate," Lowes' local produce box. The newsletter includes information about what will be in the box each week and where it came from, including farmer bios and recipes. Through this, Erin has learned about graphic design and using online templates to get information out to customers. 

A second project is to help her apprenticeship mentor Krista Morgan, Lowes Local Food Accounts Representative (and former team member of the CEFS/NCGT project) complete farmer bios that will be used throughout Lowes Foods locations for in-store advertisements about their vendors. To do this, she has visited local farms with Krista, and says this has been her favorite part of the apprenticeship.  Says Erin, "farmers in rural communities are why I think local food is so important. Getting to be around farmers and hear all the knowledge they have and how to support what they're doing - it keeps me motivated."