NCGT Monthly Project Update

In This Issue

NCGT Meeting Notes

NCGT Research Symposium Highlights Supply Chain Challenges, Solutions

NCGT Work Supporting NC Food Hubs

Partner Profile: NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services

Meeting Notes
At our last NCGT Management Team meeting, the Management Team reviewed plans for achieving Year 2 project objectives, as laid out in this document.

About NCGT

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.

May 2, 2014

Greetings all,

Thanks for reading our monthly project update and please let us know what you think!

Sincerely,

The NCGT Management Team

NC Growing Together Research Symposium Highlights Supply Chain Challenges, Solutions

NCGT project researchers and student teams from the NC State graduate-level business course "Local Foods Supply Chains" met with NCGT partners to present their work on April 22 at the JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh.

Among the presentations, five student teams and two supply chain scholars offered potential solutions to aggregation and distribution challenges of selling local products, including seafood. Presentations are available on the NCGT website, and final student team reports will be posted by the end of May.

NCGT will continue to support student research teams in the 2014-2015 academic year. Contact Rebecca Dunning for more information and how you can be involved.

NCGT Work Supporting NC Food Hubs

The NC Growing Together project is working to support the development of Food Hubs as a promising way to address the aggregation and distribution challenges of moving local products into mainstream markets.

On April 11, NCGT arranged for Pilot Mountain Pride (PMP; a Winston-Salem area Food Hub) and TRACTOR (an Asheville-based food hub), to tour NCGT partner (and Lowes Foods sister company) Merchants Distributors Inc. (MDI).

MDI will be working with NCGT partner food hubs and an NCGT-sponsored Food Hub Research Intern to develop quality and packaging requirements for Food Hubs selling into their distribution network. NCGT is also supporting a Food Hub Apprentice at Feast Down East, otherwise known as the Southeastern NC Food Systems Program.

At the recent NCGT Research Symposium (see above), four of the research projects dealt directly or indirectly with food hubs. One of the projects, headed by NCGT Supply Chain Fellow Sebastian Naskaris, examined the optimal distribution routes from Pilot Mountain Pride to different retail grocery stores, and compared the options of PMP delivering directly or doing a cross-docking option with a regional distributor.

Register Now! NCGT, along with the NC Cooperative Extension Service and the NC Farm Bureau, is sponsoring a Food Hub Information Exchange on May 6 in Winston-Salem. For more information and to register, click here.

Partner Profile: North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services

NC Growing Together has many partners, but perhaps none with as long a history of working on agriculture in North Carolina as the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. "NCDA&CS has had marketing programs to help farmers connect with marketing opportunities literally for decades," says NCDA&CS' Domestic Marketing Manager G.W. Stanley. These marketing programs include "Goodness Grows in NC" and "Got to be NC".

For the last few years, the agency has also been working with the NC Cooperative Extension Service to schedule grower/buyer tours and meetings throughout the state to connect growers with potential buyers.

At NCGT partner Fort Bragg, NCDA&CS has been working to identify and promote local products in base commissaries for years. "We've developed shelf tags in all commissaries that indicate North Carolina-grown products, and signage hanging from the ceiling for [local] produce and products. And more pronounced signage is in development for produce," explains NCDA&CS Marketing Specialist Tony Haywood.

The agency also participates in tent/sidewalk sales in base commissaries across North Carolina, Haywood says. "Commissaries set up tents and invite local producers so that customers can buy and sample local products," including fresh NC produce when in season. "It's a great way to draw attention to North Carolina products," he says.

For more information on NCDA&CS' local marketing programs, please see gottobenc.com, or visit the Got to be NC Festival at the NC State Fairgrounds May 16-18.

Project Contact Information

Rebecca Dunning, NCGT Project and Research Coordinator, rebecca_dunning@ncsu.edu, 919-389-2220

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

John O'Sullivan, Co-Director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, NC A&T State University; and Co-Principal Investigator, NC Growing Together, johno@ncat.edu , 336-285-4683

Michelle Schroeder-Moreno, NCGT Academic Coordinator, michelle_schroeder@ncsu.edu, 919-513-0085

Joanna Lelekacs, NCGT Extension and Training Coordinator, joanna_lelekacs@ncsu.edu, 919-244-5269

John Day, NCGT Military Partnership Coordinator, john_day@ncsu.edu, 704-785-6670

Ariel Fugate, Locally Grown Accounts Representative, Lowes Foods; and Lowes Foods Liaison, NC Growing Together, ariel.fugate@lowesfoods.com, 859-552-3467

Patricia Tripp, NCGT Wholesaler Liaison, patricia.tripp1@gmail.com, 336-458-6980.

JJ Richardson, NCGT Website and Communications Coordinator, jj_richardson@ncsu.edu, 919-527-9891

NC Growing Together is funded by the United States Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, grant #2012-68004-20363.

� 2013-2014 NC Growing Together