Read the notes from our last Management Team meeting in January. The February meeting was rescheduled to March.

  

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.

  

NCGT partners Piedmont Grown and Lowes Foods collaborated to hold a producer tour of Lowes Foods Flagship store in Clemmons in conjunction with the annual Piedmont Grown meeting on February 24. The annual meeting and mini-conference, Growing Your Farm or Food Business, also featured Ariel Fugate and Patricia Tripp, NCGT liaisons to Lowes Foods and Foster-Caviness, respectively, as panelists to discuss ways to make connections to retail and food service supply chains. Dani Rowland, of Rowland Family  Farms in Cabarrus, also spoke about her experiences selling directly to the Lowes Foods store in her community. The Winston-Salem Journal covered the events:

  

NCGT Extension and Training Coordinator Joanna Lelekacs worked with Cooperative Extension partners Taylor Williams, Paige Burns, and Kim Tungate to hold a Grower - Buyer Meeting at the Lee County Extension office in Sanford on February 20.  The event brought together eight local growers and seven buyers, including NCGT partners Lowes Foods, Merchants Distributors Inc., Foster-Caviness, and NCDA&CS (Farm to School Program, and representing the Military Produce Group), as well as Whole Foods and Fresh Point.  Growers and buyers had the opportunity to meet face-to-face in a one-on-one meeting format with each grower-buyer pair given 10 minutes to exchange information.  Extension specialist Gary Bullen also delivered a Retail Ready workshop, and Carolina Farm Stewardship Association president Roland McReynolds shared CFSA's food safety program offerings with the group. NCGT will track the effectiveness of this and previous NCGT-Extension events that have been held over the past year to increase local small and mid-sized grower sales into "mainstream" market partners.