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Upcoming Events
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For more information, follow the links or visit the NCGT website's Event Details page.
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| 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.
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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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NCGT and NC Choices Highlight New Pasture-Based Meat Tools and Events
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 NC Growing Together and partner NC Choices are collaborating on a series of upcoming events and tools for pasture-based meat producers and businesses.
Funded by USDA Rural Development, the NCGT/NC Choices' Meat Quality Project is developing a software interface that allows meat processor Acre Station Meat Farm to collect meat quality data for the NC Natural Hog Growers Association, the largest pasture-based pork cooperative in NC. The software has been developed and the team is making a few minor changes before it's up and running in the plant.  The interface will collect meat quality data per hog in one central location (processing plant), thereby enabling the farmers to assess and improve production practices within the co-op in order to achieve greater product quality and consistency. Once finalized, the software will be made available for public use.
NCGT is also supporting the Pasture Porkshop, a full day of workshops for pastured pork producers on May 25 in Winston-Salem sponsored by NC Choices and NC Cooperative Extension. Topics include Alternative Feeds & Developing Good Forage; Maximizing Meat Quality; Determining Costs, Capital Investments, and Pricing Your Pig; Wholesale versus Retail: Side by Side Pork Breakdown Illustrating Two Ways to Process Pork for Wholesale and Retail Markets; Building Your Market Round Table: Determining Markets, Scale, and the Right Mix for Your Farm; and more. Registration is coming soon, check the NCGT website for details.
 Save the date! NCGT will be sponsoring the 2016 Women Working in the Meat Business Conference, to be held October 2-4 in Chapel Hill, NC. The conference, which brings together women farmers, processors, and professionals from across the country who raise, butcher, prepare, and or market pasture raised meat, will double in size this year to accommodate the growing demand. For more information, stay tuned to www.carolinameatconference.com/women.
The conference is a hotbed of innovative thinking and supply chain collaboration. At the 2014 Women Working in the Meat Business conference, NCGT partner Firsthand Foods presented their Carcass Value Estimator Tool, which they are now making available for public use through NC Choices' website. The excel spreadsheet can be used for Beef and Pork, and, when populated with a producer or meat business' data, outlines the absolute and relative values of different cuts of meat. The result enables a producer or meat business to clearly see where they are making (or losing) money, and adjust their pricing and production accordingly.
The tool takes into account the cost of the animal, slaughter/processing, and distribution to arrive at Net Revenue, Gross Margin, and Monthly Breakeven (revenue/animal) figures. Firsthand Foods' Co-CEO Tina Prevatte built the tool and calls it "invaluable" to Firsthand's planning and pricing decisions.
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NC Cultured Fish and Shellfish a Popular Choice for NCGT Partner Pate Dawson-Southern Foods
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As featured previously in the NCGT News, PDSF Director of Marketing Joel Sullivan met Valee Taylor, co-owner of Cedar Grove-based Taylor Fish Farm, at the 2015 NCGT Annual Meeting. The two quickly realized the potential for business collaboration and Taylor began delivering his whole tilapia to PDSF's Greensboro cut shop for processing. There, they are hand-cut into high-quality fillets, transforming his whole fish into a value-added product.
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| | Photo: Taylor Fish Farm. |
The arrangement has worked out well for both. Taylor says that his business has increased production 1000% since he began processing with PDSF. "They have a USDA inspector on-site and all the bells and whistles," including microtoxin testing, he says. "It opens up more doors for us, I can process with them for any grocery chain. This was one of the main keys I needed to move my operation to the next level."
Taylor, whose products are AquaGAP certified, went from supplying 5 Whole Foods stores in the Southeast Region to over 30 stores in the Southeast region, plus additional stores in the Mid-Atlantic region. He is grateful for assistance he's received from NCGT in connecting to PDSF, as well as from USDA Rural Development, which awarded Taylor a Value Added Producer Grant. "If a farmer is going commercial, they need someone to help them once they reach that tier. Mistakes are very costly," he says.
NCGT has also helped make connections along the coast. At an NCGT-organized tour following last year's NC Catch Annual Summit, NCGT's John Day introduced Sullivan to Jimmy Morris of Millpoint Aquaculture in Sealevel. While Morris didn't have enough excess production to meet PDSF's needs, he connected Sullivan with Jarrett Bay Oysters in Carteret County.
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Photo: Jarrett Bay Oysters
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Founded in 2014, the small company is growing rapidly. Originally producing 3,000 oysters per week, the company is now producing 6,500 per week with plans to increase to 7,500 per week by the summer. "Oysters are living organisms and grow at different rates", explains Kolby Martin, who is a part-owner of the company. "Some are ready in 7-8 months while others take from 1 � to 2 years to mature." The company has about 400,000 spat, or baby oysters, in the water currently.
Sullivan says they are selling the oysters to fine restaurants literally across the state, from the Boiler Room in Kinston to Rhubarb in Asheville. "Chefs are really happy with them. We sell everything they can harvest."
"We have such a great variety of quality fish and seafood here [in NC], better than a lot of other places in the US. It's being discovered and appreciated more," says Sullivan. Between North Carolina's high quality seafood and strong growth of its restaurant industry, the state's seafood and aquaculture industry is well positioned for expansion into local markets.
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| NCGT and NC Cooperative Extension Release Guide to Selling Milk to Grocery Stores through Direct Store Delivery | | |
NC Growing Together and NC Cooperative Extension have released a new guide entitled Selling Fluid Milk to Grocery Stores through Direct Store Delivery. The guide is intended for small to medium-scale North Carolina fluid milk producer-processors who are interested in expanding their markets to grocery stores.
The publication includes information on what producers need to know before approaching a retailer (pricing, labeling, Universal Product Codes); vendor requirements; making initial contact with the retailer; the vendor setup process; and preparing for a first delivery to the retailer. The guide can be found on the NCGT website under Resources for Producers.
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Project Contact Information
Rebecca Dunning, NCGT Project and Research Coordinator, [email protected], 919-389-2220
Nancy Creamer, Director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, NC State University; and Project Director, NC Growing Together, [email protected], 919-515-9447
Noah Ranells, NCGT Principal Investigator at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Cooperative Extension Program, [email protected], 336-285-4658
Laura Lauffer, Project Coordinator, Local Farms and Food, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Cooperative Extension Program, [email protected], 336-285-4690
Emily Edmonds, NCGT Extension and Outreach Program Manager, [email protected], 828-399-0297
Patricia Tripp, NCGT Produce Supply Chain Development Liaison, [email protected], 336-458-6980
JJ Richardson, NCGT Website and Communications Coordinator, [email protected], 919-889-8219
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.
� 2013-2016 NC Growing Together
www.ncgrowingtogether.org
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NC Growing Together partner 
