Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/19
Outputs
Target Audience:We have continued to deepen our engagement with a variety of stakeholders in our region's food system during the third year of our project. Our efforts are summarized below: Farmers: We provided technical assistance to farms in achieving food safety certifications (three farms, including two minority-owned farms, passed GAP audits with our support). Our food hub provided infrastructure (cold storage, commercial kitchen, etc.) that helped farmers connect to new markets. We also purchased produce and meat from local farms for school classroom programming, school cafeteria taste tests, childcare center pilots and healthy food access programs (twelve farms). We have also assisted two farms in developing grant proposals for funding from other sources to support their entry/growth into local and regional markets. Further, we have provided feedback and consultation to area farmers regarding wholesale opportunities. School districts (Child Nutrition Directors and Superintendents): We have been working to develop strong relationships with CNDs in our region, which sometimes involves also working with superintendents and other district administrative leadership. In some cases, we have also worked with Child Nutrition Directors to develop innovative supply chain efforts (described in more depth in the Accomplishments section). Teachers: We have provided training, participation stipends and classroom lessons/materials to teachers in four school districts increase awareness of healthy and seasonal eating through What's Growing On. In the 2018-19 school year, we partnered with 62 teachers in nine elementary schools to enrich their classrooms with our materials and technical support. Students: This past school year, more than 1200 students per month benefitted from our What's Growing On/Harvest Box delivery program. We have conducted 23 cafeteria taste tests in schools and childcare centers, introducing students to healthy, locally-sourced vegetables, fruits and meats. We used engaging marketing materials like posters and stickers to enliven the events. We have also developed an internship program with a local high school that provides professional work experience in food systems work for a local student. Community groups, agencies and other stakeholders in food system revitalization. We have worked with many grassroots community organizations in our region, gathering feedback on how they define success in food system efforts, sharing ideas about strategy, and developing collaborative projects. We have partnerships with two health departments, three childcare centers, two childcare center resource organizations, a community college, statewide food system advocates, three regional councils of governments, a nonprofit think tank, a university press and a number of peer grassroots organizations across a multi-county region that includes both rural and urban areas. We bring a strong food system perspective as well as expertise in supply chain connections and food safety regulations to these groups, and are always looking for opportunities to help others reach goals that align with our mission. Food businesses and food entrepreneurs. We have increased access to locally sourced ingredients, including meat and produce, among five food businesses that utilize our shared use kitchen. These businesses include a minority woman owned catering operation and three other women-owned ventures. We provided orientation and consultation to more than a dozen potential entrepreneurs who expressed interest in using our shared use kitchen. We have partnered with a woman-owned food business to develop a healthy, frozen meal aimed at low-income consumers; initial production of this new version of Good Bowls is taking place in our kitchen. Changes/Problems:We are very pleased with our success in meeting and exceeding the majority of our project's goals. We reached more low-income consumers than anticipated, and have built a strong network of community and regional partners. Over the course of this project, we have grown as a regional leader and have demonstrated within our community and across a broader region the importance of our value-added, value-chain development approach. However, we did not meet all of our goals. In particular, we did not reach our sales goals with our healthy, locally-sourced SNAP-eligible meals. We did work with partners to produce a variety of meals, individually packaged meats, and fresh-cut vegetables for retail customers, but they did not elicit significant demand. We are continuing to work with partners to experiment with different approaches to increasing healthy food access that are more effective. Through this project, we have developed good working relationships with a number of corner stores in our rural region, which is an asset as we continue to experiment with models that can help address low healthy food access at affordable price-points. Thank you for the opportunity to do this work. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? We hosted two summer supply chain apprentices, sponsored by the NCSU Center for Environmental Farming Systems We have hosted two academic year interns from a local high school. Three staff members have received training in food safety. We offered a Wholesale Readiness training course to 17 farmers in our region. We have also partnered with other agencies and colleges to offer training on food safety and wholesale markets to more than 60 farmers and farmworkers. We have offered on-farm food safety training/consulting services to five farms in our region. We trained 15 minority farm operators to become GAP certified produce suppliers, including 10 youth and four women. We provided training for more than 150 elementary school teachers, school cafeteria personnel, and community/church volunteers regarding local food systems. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? We are very pleased to have published a paper this year in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development. The title is Local motivations, regional implications: scaling from local to regional food systems in northeastern North Carolina. This paper is available to the public, as the journal is open access. It captures some of the original research and learning we have done over the course of this project. The paper drew on engagement through a participatory research project, known as the Growing Opportunities project, that we led. We produced a video documentary capturing perspectives on the barriers and opportunities in building more robust regional value chain connections, based on interviews with food system stakeholders in the region, and an analysis of interview transcripts using Nvivo qualitative analysis software. The film was originally shared as a conversation-starter among food system stakeholders at the August 2018 Growing Opportunities meeting. The film is accessible online at https://vimeo.com/292744446. Results of that engagement effort have shaped our subsequent regional planning efforts. We developed a presentation about regional value chain opportunities, which summarized data regarding economic, agricultural and health factors, as well as shared original analysis regarding food production and institutional customers (schools, hospitals, nursing homes, child care centers, hospitals) in our region. This presentation was shared with participants in the same meeting described above. We produced a short film about the benefits of the Community Dinner series that we co-sponsor with area churches. It is accessible at https://www.facebook.com/workinglandscapes/videos/1443044272462539/ . We developed a presentation about the challenges of scaling from local to regional food system work, which was delivered at the Place-Based Food Systems Conference (Vancouver, BC, August 9-10, 2018). We have conducted trainings (on reaching wholesale produce markets, in food safety, in farm-to-school concepts, in doing taste tests and in utilizing the What's Growing On curriculum) for 115 people, as described above, to lower barriers to participation in regional supply chains. We have given presentations about our work at three statewide events: Thrive NC, a healthy food conference organized by Blue Cross Blue Shield; the NC Rural Assembly; and the NC American Planning Association conference. We have given an invited lecture at Appalachian State University, as well as presenting at a Kinston food system revitalization effort organized by Croatan and the NC Justice Center, the NC Rural Assembly, at a class at Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment and the Kerr Tar Council of Government's kickoff event for a regional food strategy. We led two workshops, at the request of The Conservation Fund's Resourceful Communities Program, for faith groups interested in food system development and increasing access to healthy food. We have maintained a website, an active Facebook page, and email news updates over the course of our project to share regular updates with our community and supporters. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Outcome A: We have increased access to healthy, fresh local produce for nearly 72,000 students across our region. Six school districts served our convenient, value-added locally grown produce in their cafeterias through this project. Four of the school districts we served qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision which allows high-poverty districts to serve free lunch to all students. In the other two districts, 66% of students qualify for free/reduced price lunch. Another wholesale customer provides meals for childcare centers. Our food processing facility has passed multiple food safety audits. We supported five small farms, including four minority-run operations, in achieving GAP certification, which is required to sell produce to schools in North Carolina. We expanded our products to include diced sweet potatoes, chopped kale, chopped collards and diced cabbage. Succeeded in raising more than $400,000 for facility renovations to expand our processing facility so we can do more to increase healthy food access in our region. Re-branding our food hub as ByWay Foods, and re-launching with an expanded line of fresh-cut, ready-to-eat vegetables. Goal 1, Outcome B: We completed a lovely set of educational materials for our What's Growing On program. There are monthly lessons for young kids (for grades K-2) and also for older kids (grades 3-5), which feature a seasonal fruit or vegetable of the month. The lessons are aligned with core curriculum standards, and are available on our website. What's Growing On posters have been delivered to all participating school cafeterias and classrooms. Working with school partners and agency colleagues, we have led the implementation of 50 taste tests in school cafeterias, as well as taste tests in five childcare centers. The majority of students surveyed demonstrated increased enthusiasm for learning about healthy, local food as a result of these taste tests. We have developed a scalable, effective approach to engaging students in learning about healthy, seasonal, local food that builds on the What's Growing On lessons: through our Harvest Box program, participating classrooms receive a monthly delivery consisting of the classroom lesson, take-home newsletters, poster, stickers and fresh, local produce to use in an in-class activity. Over the last school year, more than 1300 students benefited from this program. We have engaged 62 teachers in implementing What's Growing On curricula across four school districts. Each of the teachers were trained by our staff or by partners whom we trained. Our evaluation data indicate that participation significantly increased students' ability to correctly diagram a food supply chain, an indicator of increased awareness about healthy, local eating): in the pre-tests, students correctly identified the middle steps in a food supply chain only between 23% and 39% of the time, while in the post-surveys, students correctly identified these steps between 51% and 61% of the time. Through What's Growing On trainings, more than 40 cafeteria personnel were trained in local food system concepts and farm-to-school sourcing. Goal 1, Outcome C: Our local, fresh-cut produce was marketed to childcare centers and hospitals in our region. Our products have been utilized by a central kitchen that provides meals to multiple childcare centers in Durham and Orange counties, as well as by one hospital system. We have partnered with three childcare centers to pilot locally grown or raised value-added products, including pork barbeque, beef sliders, and frozen cantaloupe/berry cups. The products were very well received. We have also conducted interviews with directors/managers at a hospital system, multiple child care centers, and two colleges to learn more about the barriers and opportunities to serving those markets with our locally grown, value-added produce. We have worked to strengthen relationships with mainline produce distributors that serve food service customers, including universities, hospitals and other institutions. We have established a cold storage unit at Nash Community College to be used to store healthy, locally grown food (delivered by farmers or food hubs) to be picked up by childcare centers. Goal 1, Outcome D: We have performed outreach to corner stores throughout our service region, consisting of site visits, phone calls and resource inventories. We provided small freezers to eight corner stores so they could stock healthy, frozen products and participate in our programming. Through a partnership with the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, a consulting firm and a cooperative grocery store, we have helped to develop a healthy, locally-sourced frozen meal product for corner stores. Known as Good Bowls, these meals are SNAP-eligible. Our hub diced the sweet potatoes and greens in the recipes; we sourced the produce from regional farms. We marketed these products to 20 corner stores in our service area; 12 stores in our service area, across four counties, have sold them to customers. The bowls sold poorly in the low-income convenience stores. They sold somewhat better in more affluent regions. We also offered corner stores the opportunity to use their freezers to stock high quality, frozen, local pasture-raised pork sausage. Six stores participated in this effort. Again, across most stores, the products sold poorly due to high cost. We tracked sales at each store, and kept product stocked for duration of the project. Despite our best efforts to provide a healthy, affordable frozen meal for low-income consumers that featured healthy, local ingredients, we were unable to reach our sales goals. We are continuing to explore other models for increasing access to healthy, local food among low-income consumers. Goal 2, Outcome A: Through our programs, we have enabled the establishment of more than 110 new supply chain connections through our food hub programs and technical assistance from our staff. We have developed a geodatabase that draws on our food hub sales data to illustrate regional connections among growers, our hub, distributors and institutional customers. We have also developed a Social Network Analysis framework for assessing the degree to which food systems stakeholders collaborate. We have built relationships with many supply chain stakeholders though this project, and endeavored to integrate their perspectives and needs into our food system revitalization strategies. Over the course of this project, Working Landscapes has emerged as a leader in advocating for regional food system planning and coordination. Our August 2018 stakeholder workshop attracted 50 stakeholders in our regions' food system, representing 37 organizations. This project employed the Community Voice Method (communityvoicemethod.org), an effective and powerful stakeholder engagement methodology developed by members of our staff. We have held workshops regarding wholesale market opportunities that have engaged more than 70 farmers. We have provided one-on-one assistance regarding grant writing, farm safety certifications or farm planning to a dozen farmers. Through our efforts to build value chains that integrate small and minority producers into new markets, at least 54 farmers have been connected to new markets for their produce and pasture-raised meat products. For example, we supported the Edenton Chowan Farmers Market in serving employees of Vidant Health. We have developed interactive maps and graphics based on our food hub sales. The Center for Environmental Farming Systems developed a film, entitled What Can Be, about our value chain development work. View the video here: https://cefs.ncsu.edu/food-system-initiatives/local-food-economies/local-food-economic-development-videos/
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Cumming, Kelmenson, Norwood. 2019. Local motivations, regional implications: scaling from local to regional food systems in northeastern North Carolina. Journal of Agriculture, Community Development and Food Systems.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Tewari, Kelmenson, Guinn, Cumming, and Colloredo-Mansfeld. 2018. Mission-Driven Intermediaries as Anchors of the Middle Ground in the American Food System:Evidence from Warrenton, NC. Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment: The Journal of Culture and Agriculture.
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Progress 09/01/17 to 08/31/18
Outputs
Target Audience:We have deepened our engagement with a variety of stakeholders in our region's food system during the second year of our project. Our efforts are summarized below: Farmers: We provided farms support in achieving food safety certifications (five farms, including four minority-owned farms); purchased produce for farm-to-institution sales (five farms); purchased produce for educational programming (twelve farms) and provided training to 17 farmers regarding growing produce for wholesale markets. We have assisted two farms in developing grant proposals to other funding opportunities to support their entry/growth into local and regional markets. School districts (Child Nutrition Directors and Superintendents): We have been working to develop robust relationships with CNDs in our region, which sometimes involves also working with superintendents and other district administrative leadership. We have marketed our product to ten school districts through meetings, provision of product samples, and ongoing phone or email contact. Six out of these ten districts purchased our locally grown products. In some cases, we have also worked with Child Nutrition Directors to develop innovative supply chain efforts (described in more depth in the Accomplishments section). A part of our marketing strategy is to also offer access to What's Growing On, described more below. School cafeteria personnel: We have partnered with cafeteria managers at 10 elementary schools to plan and host taste tests in school cafeterias that reached more than 3200 students. Teachers: Provide training, participation stipends and classroom lessons/materials to increase awareness of healthy and seasonal eating through What's Growing On. We trained 52 teachers to utilize our program; solicited feedback on lessons in order to finalize a curriculum; gained feedback on a novel delivery mechanism for What's Growing On materials: the Harvest Box (described in more depth below). We worked in 36 elementary classrooms at 14 schools across all educational programs during the grant report period. Students: In the second year of this project, we have reached nearly 72,000 students with healthy, fresh local produce in the six school districts that have bought produce through our Chopped Produce Initiative. Four of these six school districts have >99% students who qualify for free/reduced lunch, while the remaining two districts each have 66% qualifying. We have conducted sixteen cafeteria taste tests in schools, utilizing engaging marketing materials like posters and stickers to enliven the events. We have also continued to work closely with an agricultural teacher and group of students in Halifax County on an innovative project whereby we provide food safety consulting, agricultural students grow greens, we purchase produce from them for processing in our food hub, and finally the greens are provided back to the school cafeterias. Community groups. We have worked with a number of grassroots community organizations in our region, gathering feedback on how they define success in food system efforts, sharing ideas about strategy, and developing collaborative projects. We bring a strong food system perspective as well as expertise in supply chain connections and food safety regulations to these groups, and are always looking for opportunities to help others reach goals that align with our mission. We participate in regular gatherings of the Warren County Local Food Promotion Council, the Just Foods Collaborative in Nash/Edgecombe counties and the Halifax County Schools Farm to School Partnership. We have worked closely with several regional and state organizations to promote healthy corner store efforts across our service region. We have conducted taste tests of healthy, prepared food at three corner stores, at a food pantry, at a forum held by the Warren County Local Food Promotion Council, and at monthly free community dinners we co-sponsor at an area school. We have continued to work closely with rural churches to increase access to healthy, local food through events at a neighborhood school, and to raise awareness among their congregations regarding the economic, social and environmental values of purchasing locally grown food. We hosted a gathering of the NC Council of Churches at which pastors were able to learn more about healthy eating and active living programming. We have also hosted field trips to our food hub from three community organizations, and led a Peer Learning Visit organized by The Conservation Fund's Resourceful Communities Program for interested community leaders across the state. Stakeholders in food system revitalization. We are a leader in promoting a regional, coordinated approach to food system efforts. As part of our Growing Opportunities research and engagement effort, we convened a successful meeting in August which brought together fifty stakeholders from our region. Participants discussed gaps and identified opportunities to growing a more robust regional food economy. This meeting drew upon a video featuring excerpts from interviews with leaders across the region, as well as research we conducted regarding institutional buyers and potential markets. We have had strategy and planning conversations with more than 25 food system stakeholders in our region in the last year, and have been invited to speak at eight conferences or workshops, including an international conference. We have also made substantial progress in developing working partnerships with entities across the region, including community colleges, a small college, other food hubs, mainline distributors, a nonprofit think tank, two universities and several school districts who are motivated to pursue collaborations that extend beyond procurement. Food businesses and food entrepreneurs. We have increased access to locally sourced ingredients, including meat and produce, among five food businesses that utilize our shared use kitchen. These businesses include a minority woman owned catering operation and four other women owned ventures. Seventeen new entrepreneurs completed an orientation of the facility through our marketing efforts through the project period. We have also worked with a cooperative grocery store to develop a frozen meal product that we have marketed to 20 area country/convenience stores. Changes/Problems:Our project's overall plan, methods, and objectives have not changed. However, the timeline and strategy for accomplishment of some outcomes has changed. These changes reflect the fact that food system development is to some degree unpredictable, and we were not able to anticipate all factors; therefore, we work to adapt as circumstances evolve. In some cases, we have learned that the approach we planned to achieve a given outcome was not feasible, so we have modified our activities; in other cases, we have responded to opportunities that have emerged since the proposal for this project was written. Significant deviations are discussed below. Goal 1, Outcome C: Marketing and sales of our fresh-cut produce products to hospitals, childcare centers, and other institutions have been delayed due to the renovations that we are undertaking at our produce processing facility. The goal of this renovation is to offer a wider array of products to these foodservice customers, but as we have come to further understand these customers' needs, the scope of the facility modifications we need to make has expanded. As a result, we have had to seek additional funding and revise our design--a time consuming process that has taken a year. Marketing our expanded product line will begin in spring 2019, and we expect to fill orders starting in the fall. We have been active participants in a regional farm-to-childcare initiative, but the partners in this initiative have not been as focused on procurement as Working Landscapes. Therefore, this initiative has not yet resulted in new local sourcing relationships by childcare facilities. We are working on developing products for childcare facilities that can be piloted this coming year. Goal 1, Outcome D: We have modified our approach to the development of prepared meals. While our kitchen facility has been able to support additional food entrepreneurs during the past year (enabling us to establish new sourcing connect, Goal 2/Outcome A), we have encountered ongoing challenges in working to develop a food safety management plan that will also accommodate preparation of meat-containing foods for off-site sale. We have developed a frozen meatball product featuring locally-sourced, pasture-raised ground beef and pork, but do not yet have the authorization to produce this product in our facility for off-site sale. We are continuing to work to meet the requirements. In the meantime, we have tested several recipes with consumers, have begun the process of obtaining nutrition labels, and have revised our financial plan to reflect actual ingredient and labor costs. In addition, we are simultaneously relying on partner facilities to prepare foods that reach the customers we intended to serve. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? We offered a Wholesale Readiness training course to 17 farmers in our region. Three workshops over the course of six weeks covered food safety, marketing, working with distributors, access to capital and why participating in regional food systems matters for rural economies. We have offered on-farm food safety training/consulting services to five farms in our region. We trained 15 minority farm operators to become GAP certified produce suppliers, including 10 youth and four women. One staff has received training and professional development in food safety. Fifty students have received food safety training in advance of their school farm seeking GAP certification. We hosted a summer supply chain apprentice, sponsored by the NCSU's NC Growing Together program, who gained experience in supply chain development and working healthy corner store initiatives. We provided training for elementary school teachers (52) and community volunteers (4) regarding local food systems and the many benefits that accrue to communities and students when schools purchase locally grown food. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We do not yet have full results to disseminate. However, in the reporting period, we have produced several interim products that have been shared with our community. They are described below. Growing Opportunities is a short (18 minutes) video documentary that captures perspectives on the barriers and opportunities in building more robust regional value chain connections. This film is based on interviews with food system stakeholders in the region, and an analysis of interview transcripts using Nvivo qualitative analysis software. The film was originally shared as a conversation-starter among food system stakeholders at the August 2018 Growing Opportunities meeting. The film is accessible online at https://vimeo.com/292744446 (password = collards). We developed a presentation about regional value chain opportunities, which summarized data regarding economic, agricultural and health factors, as well as shared original analysis regarding food production and institutional customers (schools, hospitals, nursing homes, child care centers, hospitals) in our region. This presentation was shared with participants in the same meeting described above. We produced a short film about the benefits of the Community Dinner series that we co-sponsor with area churches. It is accessible at https://www.facebook.com/workinglandscapes/videos/1443044272462539/ . We developed a presentation about the challenges of scaling from local to regional food system work, which was delivered at the Place-Based Food Systems Conference (Vancouver, BC, August 9-10, 2018). We have conducted trainings (on reaching wholesale produce markets, in food safety, in farm-to-school concepts, in doing taste tests and in utilizing the What's Growing On curriculum) for 115 people, as described above, to lower barriers to participation in regional supply chains. We have given presentations about our work at the OARS Summit, at the Healthy Places Agency Partners quarterly meeting, at the What Can Be film premiere, at a class at Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment, at the NCGT Apprenticeship final presentation, and at the CFP Grantee annual meeting. We also hosted a peer learning visit sponsored by the Resourceful Communities Program of The Conservation Fund. We have shared some of the data we've collected on farmers and supply chain connections with partner organizations and agencies. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The major work of Year Three, the final year of this grant project, will be in the following areas: Complete a major renovation of our food processing facility and developing new fresh-cut products (washed, ready to eat) that will allow us to expand our markets and increase purchases from local growers. Funding is in place, and we expect expanded operations to begin no later than fall 2019. We will expand our efforts to market our food hub's products to schools and other institutions, increasing the number of school districts, hospitals and childcare centers to which we offer products. We will work with marketing professionals to develop new online and print marketing materials, and strategically market our products to key institutional buyers and distributors. We will continue to process orders to specification, meet all food safety requirements, and manage the supply chain logistics to get products to customers across the region. We will develop new locally-sourced products to supply to corner store partners in our region, following up on our prepared meals pilot project. We will continue to expand our supply chain stakeholder database and geospatial databases that track supply chain stakeholders and connections. Our goal is to create a resource that many entities across the region can contribute to and benefit from. In collaboration with area teachers, we will complete a year-round What's Growing On curriculum on healthy, seasonal eating and local food systems. We will train forty teachers across at least two school districts in implementing this curriculum. We will deliver Harvest Boxes (monthly deliveries of local, seasonal produce with accompanying lesson plans and materials) to the classrooms of teachers who have been trained on the What's Growing On curriculum. We will conduct 20 taste test events at schools or afterschool programs; volunteers at these schools will be trained to carry out these events. We will continue to participate in a regional farm-to-childcare initiative, and we will work on developing prepared food products targeted at childcare centers. We will document our food system development initiatives through outputs including a peer-reviewed publication, presentations, online content, and video content. Following up on our August 2018 Growing Opportunities meeting (which convened food system stakeholders from across our region), we will expand our role as regional leader in building a more resilient regional food system. Our goal is to engage stakeholders and community leaders in thinking about the food system as a system, in identifying opportunities for collaboration at the regional level, and being open to aligning resources across scale.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The groups immediately helped by our work include stakeholders at every link in emerging regional supply chains, including small farmers and gardeners, distributors, institutional food buyers, retailers, and consumers. Goal 1, Outcome A: Developed a new fresh-cut product, diced sweet potatoes, for institutional customers. We piloted the product with three districts in February-March 2018, and received very positive feedback on the product. Fresh-cut local produce marketed to ten school districts or institutional buyers. Of those ten, seven procured fresh-cut local produce, thereby increasing healthy local food access for nearly 72,000 students. Of these six participating school districts, four qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision which allows high-poverty districts to serve free lunch to all students. In the other two districts, 66% of students qualify for free/reduced price lunch. The other customer provides meals for childcare centers. Product line expanded to include diced sweet potatoes, in addition to chopped collards, cabbage and kale. Succeeded in raising $240,000 for facility renovations. Our goal is to increase sales to the level that we can support full-time jobs at our processing operation. The Produce Center passed GAP audits, state inspections and a Primus HACCP audit. Goal 1, Outcome B: We have developed a novel approach to engaging students in learning about healthy, seasonal, local food: the Harvest Box program. Through this program, participating classrooms receive a monthly delivery consisting of a classroom lesson, take-home newsletters, poster, stickers and fresh, local produce to use in an in-class activity. We piloted the approach with five teachers in May, and served 11 teachers with the program in August 2018. 36 classrooms at 14 schools were engaged in lessons and programming about healthy, local and seasonal eating. We conducted 16 taste tests at ten schools, reaching more than 3200 students with hands-on and engaging cafeteria programming. Nearly all students have demonstrated increased enthusiasm for learning about healthy, local food as a result of these taste tests. At one school (South Warren Elementary in Warren County), a school garden was developed as an outdoor instructional environment for What's Growing On. Through What's Growing On trainings, 52 school personnel were trained in local food system concepts and to utilize What's Growing On programming in their classrooms. Goal 1, Outcome C: Our local, fresh-cut produce was procured by an agency that provides meals to childcare centers in Durham and Orange counties. We have built relationships with key decision makers at a major regional hospital system. We have also conducted interviews with directors/managers at child care centers and colleges to learn more about the barriers and opportunities to serving these markets. We have worked to strengthen relationships with mainline produce distributors that serve food service customers, including universities, hospitals and other institutions. We have begun developing a business plan for serving healthy, prepared meals to childcare centers, and have worked to identify an entrepreneur who could use this opportunity to grow their catering business. Working Landscapes provided technical support to four childcare centers on how to increase their access to healthy, locally grown food. We partnered with Nash Community College and Down East Partnership for Children (which serves childcare centers in Nash and Edgecombe counties) to establish a cold storage unit at Nash Community College that could be used to store healthy, locally grown food (delivered by farmers or food hubs) to be picked up by childcare centers. This centralized drop-point will serve as a node in our expanding regional food system, and will hopefully overcome some of the barriers to distribution we have encountered. Goal 1, Outcome D: Through a partnership with the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, a consulting firm and a cooperative grocery store, we have helped to develop a healthy, locally-sourced frozen meal product for corner stores. Known as Good Bowls, these meals are SNAP-eligible. Our hub chopped the sweet potatoes and greens in the recipes, which were sourced regionally. We have marketed these products to 20 corner stores; 12 stores in our service area, across four counties, have sold them to customers. Since distribution in June 2018, approximately 250 meals had been sold by the end of the reporting period. Most of the stores required freezers to handle the product, and we have provided freezers for that purpose. We performed taste tests around the Good Bowl products at three corner store markets in Halifax and Warren Counties, which provided an opportunity to get feedback from 75 customers on what types of food people want to buy, how much they would pay for these meals, and what portions they would prefer. To see how our taste tests were conducted and how the Good Bowls project was devised and executed, please watch this video produced at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We have worked towards, but have not yet completed, the food safety development and inspections necessary to produce frozen meals for off-site sales in our food hub. We have drafted a HACCP plan and received feedback on it from a consultant. We have also made improvements to our facility that would be necessary for handling meat. We have developed a frozen meatball product, utilizing pasture-raised and locally grown ground beef and pork. The goal is to produce a relatively affordable but high quality product using excess ground meat from area farmers. In a frozen format, the meatballs will be convenient and easy to use, as well as SNAP-eligible. We are in the process of finalizing the nutrition label and completing the business plan for this product. When we achieve the food safety inspections necessary to produce meatballs for offsite sale, we anticipate that the product will be ready for larger-scale production. Various meatball recipes have been piloted and evaluated by community groups. Goal 2, Outcome A: Through our programs, we have enabled the establishment of 99 new supply chain connections through our food hub programs, facilities and the technical assistance of our staff. We have continued to work on Growing Opportunities, a research/engagement project aimed at understanding the perspectives of regional food system stakeholders and stimulating dialog and collaboration among them. We hosted a region-wide meeting in August 2018 which attracted 50 stakeholders in our regions' food system, representing 37 organizations. The participants represented positions across the food value chain, including farming (16), aggregation (7), processing (4), distribution (13), procurement (12), food service (4), education (20), technical assistance (25), value chain coordination (12) and funders (13) (organizations could select more than one category, therefore, the numbers given here exceed the number of participants). This project employed the Community Voice Method (communityvoicemethod.org), an effective and powerful stakeholder engagement methodology developed by members of our staff. NCSU's Center for Environmental Farming Systems developed a film, What Can Be, about our value chain development work, and screened it in our home community in January 2018. The event attracted 80 guests, and sparked dialog among local leaders about how improved collaboration could benefit farmers and consumers in our community. CEFS has included the video in a list of resources for regional government councils, and has screened the film at a variety of economic development gatherings. View the video here, https://cefs.ncsu.edu/food-system-initiatives/local-food-economies/regional-food-systems-strategies/
Publications
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Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/17
Outputs
Target Audience:We engaged an array of stakeholders in our region's food system during the first year of our project. In some cases, we have developed new relationships, and in others we have strengthened existing relationships. Our efforts are summarized below: Farmers: We provided farms support in achieving GAP certification (four farms, including three minority-owned farms); sponsored participation in food safety trainings for two small farmers, including one minority farmer; purchased produce for farm-to-institution sales (three farms); and developed training and informational materials for farmers regarding growing produce for institutional markets. School districts (Child Nutrition Directors and Superintendents): We have been working to develop robust relationships with CNDs in our region, which sometimes involves also working with superintendents and other district administrative leadership. We have marketed our product to nine school districts through meetings, provision of product samples, and ongoing phone or email contact. A part of our marketing strategy is to also offer access to an education/engagement program, What's Growing On, that complements the procurement of seasonal, local harvests. Two-thirds of the districts we marketed to purchased our locally grown products. In some cases, we have also worked with Child Nutrition Directors to develop innovative supply chain efforts (described in more depth in the Accomplishments section). School cafeteria personnel: We developed training materials and held an initial workshop for school cafeteria personnel on the basics of farm-to-school procurement and the benefits of procuring locally grown food for school cafeterias; we will use these materials to train personnel in other districts. We also partner with cafeteria managers to plan and host taste tests in school cafeterias. Teachers: Provide in-classroom lessons and activities to increase awareness of healthy and seasonal eating through What's Growing On; solicit feedback on lessons in order to develop a curriculum that can be shared with interested teachers and districts. We worked in 33 elementary classrooms during the project period. Students: Through our Chopped Produce Initiative, we have increased access to healthy, local produce for more than 72,000 students in six school districts. Four of these districts have >99% students who qualify for free/reduced lunch, while the remaining two districts each have 66% qualifying. We have conducted ten cafeteria taste tests in schools and four in childcare centers. Furthermore, students in three school districts have been exposed to our engaging marketing materials, such as posters on the cafeteria walls and stickers illustrating that the student tried locally grown produce. We are also working closely with an agricultural teacher and group of 50 students in a middle school on an innovative project whereby we provide food safety consulting, agricultural students grow greens, we purchase produce from them for processing in our food hub, and finally the greens are provided back to the school cafeterias. Community groups. We have worked with a number of grassroots community organizations in our region, gathering feedback on how they define success in food system efforts, sharing ideas about strategy, and crafting project plans. We participate in regular gatherings of the Warren County Local Food Policy Council and the Just Foods Collaborative in Nash/Edgecombe counties; we bring to both groups a strong food system perspective as well as expertise in supply chain connections and food safety regulations. We partner with ABC2 in Halifax County, a community organization that focuses on healthy food for corner stores, and we are collaborating to engage their network in our healthy meals efforts. We work closely with two rural churches to increase access to healthy, local food at a neighborhood school, and to raise awareness in their congregations regarding the economic, social and environmental values of purchasing locally grown food. Stakeholders in food system revitalization. We are a leader in fostering a regional perspective on food system efforts. We have met with more than 20 food system stakeholders in our region in the last year, and have conducted recorded interviews with five. We have been invited to speak at two regional and statewide meetings regarding the local food system, and have ourselves convened or co-sponsored two meetings that pull together people working across the supply chain to connect farmers to consumers in our region. We have also made substantial progress in developing working partnerships with entities across the region, including a network of childcare centers, two community colleges, two other food hubs, two mainline distributors, and several school districts who are motivated to pursue collaborations that extend beyond procurement. Food businesses and food entrepreneurs. We have worked with four food businesses to increase their access to locally sourced ingredients, including meat and produce. For example, entrepreneurs who rent space in our shared use commercial kitchen are given an orientation that includes our services related to local sourcing; five have chosen to use locally grown ingredients in their products, which are sold in retail locations across the region. We are also working with a university, a cooperative grocery store and a minority, female food entrepreneur to develop healthy frozen meals for retail outlets in the region (see Changes/Challenges section for more information on the evolution of this aspect of our work). Changes/Problems:Our project's overall plan, methods, and objectives have not changed. However, the timeline and strategy for accomplishment of some outcomes has changed. These changes reflect the fact that food system development is to some degree unpredictable, and we were not able to anticipate all factors; therefore, we work to adapt as circumstances evolve. In some cases, we have learned that the approach we planned to achieve a given outcome was not feasible, so we have modified our activities; in other cases, we have responded to opportunities that have emerged since the proposal for this project was written. Significant deviations are discussed below. Goal 1, Outcome B: Staffing challenges significantly delayed implementation of What's Growing On. It can be difficult to attract qualified staff in our region, and we struggled to find the right person to lead this effort. We are moving forward with new staff (who are great!) and also aim to work with a consultant to provide some targeted assistance in finalizing our materials. We have also made some modifications to this program based on our evolving relationship with regional school districts. Some school districts in our service region have thus far declined to participate in the program, limiting the number of schools we can expect to reach. In response to this challenge, we have adjusted our strategy: instead of reaching the anticipated number of schools, we are working to deepen our relationship with those districts that opt to participate. One way that we are doing this is by expanding our child nutrition and agricultural program support services. For example, we have conducted food systems trainings for Halifax County Schools cafeteria personnel and helped their agriculture program prepare for a GAP audit of a school farm. Through participation in the statewide Farm to Childcare initiative, meanwhile, we have been able to extend programming into childcare centers earlier than anticipated. Goal 1, Outcome D: Development of prepared meals for corner stores and health clinics has been significantly delayed, due to challenges related to the use and design of our kitchen facility. We currently operate the kitchen as a shared use facility, which enables us to support local food entrepreneurs and help establish new supply chain connections. However, in working with the NC Department of Agriculture to develop the proposed prepared meal program, we have become aware that our existing facility design and management plan is not compatible with preparing meat-containing foods for off-site sale. We are working to plan for the necessary modifications; in the meantime, we are pursuing an alternative strategy for developing prepared meals: a partnership through which meals will be prepared in another commercial kitchen that already has the proper certifications/inspections. The timeline for this partner-based process does not correspond to our initial proposed timeline: initial meal production is scheduled to begin in early 2018. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? We have offered food safety training and consulting services to four farms in our region, and supported two small farmers in attending food safety training at NCSU. Four staff and two volunteers have received training and professional development in food safety. One staff member has received professional development in videography. Fifty students have received food safety training in advance of their school farm seeking GAP certification. Twelve student farm managers have received additional training in advance of an upcoming GAP audit (successfully passed in November 2017). We hosted a summer supply chain apprentice, sponsored by the NCSU's NC Growing Together program, who gained experience in supply chain development and working with institutional buyers. (The intern was a great success, and is now employed full time by our organization!) We provided training for cafeteria personnel (35), elementary school teachers (10), and community volunteers (4) regarding local food systems and the many benefits that accrue to communities and students when schools purchase locally grown food. We were invited to provide training on performing cafeteria taste tests at two workshops hosted by The Conservation Fund's Resourceful Communities Program; these workshops attract staff and volunteers from grassroots organizations across North Carolina. More than 80 people were trained at these events. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We are early in our award, and do not yet have full results to disseminate. However, in the reporting period, we did produce two written documents that were designed to share our experience and findings from our work to build regional value chains: Building Farm-to-Institution Value Chains in Eastern North Carolina: A Resource Guide for Small Farmers, which shares our expertise on accessing institutional markets with a broader audience; and Building Regional Food Value Chains: A Report on Activities and Lessons Learned, a report that analyzes our efforts through early 2017 in building regional value chains. We have conducted trainings (on doing taste tests, in farm-to-school concepts, in food safety and food systems for students) for 115 people, as described above. We have given presentations about our work at three events: North Carolina FoodCon, the Northeastern NC Sustainability Summit, the OARS Convening, and a Community-based Environmental Management graduate class at Duke University. Further, we have shared some of the data we've collected on farmers and supply chain connections with partner organizations and agencies. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?With the strong groundwork we have laid in Year 1, and with a highly functioning staff now in place, we anticipate making significant progress towards our objectives. The major work of Year 2 will be in the following areas: Renovating and expanding our food processing facility, and developing new fresh-cut products that will allow us to expand our markets and increase purchases from local growers. We are in the process of fundraising for this expansion, and hope to have the work completed by September 2018. We will expand our efforts to market our food hub's products to schools and other institutions, increasing the number of school districts, hospitals and childcare centers to which we offer products. We will work with marketing professionals to develop new online and print marketing materials. We will continue to process orders to specification, meet all food safety requirements, and manage the supply chain logistics to get products to customers across the region. We will focus more energy on helping small farmers enter institutional markets. We will host an interest meeting and offer training in meeting wholesale market demands for a cohort of small farmers. Following the training program, if there are growers ready to take the next steps, we will offer technical assistance in developing farm safety plans, help connect them to agencies who can help with more specific business planning/capital needs, and provide access to our food hub's facilities. We will complete development of a food system literacy curriculum and recruit teachers in up to three school districts to implement and evaluate the curricula in their classrooms. Our goal is to recruit teachers through collaborating partners who share a mission and a combination of financial incentives (funded through other sources) and professional development opportunities (we are working to have our trainings qualify for continuing education credits). Using materials developed in Year 1, we will host trainings for up to 60 cafeteria personnel or community volunteers in the region, which will equip them to implement taste tests, understand farm to school supply chains, and advocate for increased local purchasing in their community. We will offer supplies/materials and technical assistance to those who have received training, while also continuing to host taste tests and perform lessons in elementary schools in our service region ourselves. We will continue to build relationships with corner store or health clinic managers, and plan to deliver initial frozen meals featuring local ingredients to 12-15 corner stores and/or health clinics in Spring 2018. We will deploy marketing materials and manage supply chain logistics. We seek to support minority food entrepreneurs in growing their businesses through the production of these meals. We will continue to expand our supply chain stakeholder database and geospatial databases that track supply chain stakeholders and connections. Our goal is to create a resource that many entities across the region can contribute to and benefit from. We will continue to serve as regional leader and convener in building a more resilient regional food system. We will continue to conduct video-recorded interviews and host dialogs with stakeholders across the region. Our goal is to engage stakeholders and community leaders in thinking about the food system as a system, in identifying opportunities for collaboration at the regional level, and being open to aligning resources across scale.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Problem addressed: This project aims to help correct deficiencies in northeastern North Carolina's regional food supply chains and supply chain infrastructure. In so doing, we are addressing two critical problems facing our region: 1) insufficient consumer access to healthy food and 2) insufficient farmer access to wholesale and institutional markets. Beneficiaries: The groups immediately helped by our work include stakeholders at every link in emerging regional supply chains, including small farmers and gardeners, distributors, institutional food buyers, retailers, and consumers. Major accomplishments (grouped by goal/outcome) Goal 1, Outcome A: Fresh-cut local produce marketed to nine school districts. Of those nine, six districts procured fresh-cut local produce, thereby increasing healthy local food access for 72,000 students. Of these six districts, four qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision which allows high-poverty districts to serve free lunch to all students. In the other two districts, 66% of students qualify for free/reduced price lunch. Product line expanded to include chopped kale in addition to chopped collards and cabbage. Working Landscapes' 2016-17 Chopped Produce Initiative season was the first financially viable season of CPI (our sales covered our direct operating expenses for the first time since the project began in 2013)! In collaboration with an NC State business school team, Working Landscapes developed a financial forecasting model for CPI. Using CPI sales data, this model enables us to chart a path toward the long-term financial sustainability of this venture. Informed by market research, we planned an expansion of the product line to include triple-washed products, which we project will enable us to achieve our growth goals. We worked with a USDA architect to plan a renovation of the Working Landscapes Produce Center that would support the proposed product line expansion. The Produce Center passed GAP audits and state inspections. A Primus HACCP pre-audit was conducted in April 2017, in preparation for audit. (Audit conducted and passed in November 2017.) Goal 1, Outcome B: What's Growing On educational programming was piloted in five schools this year. These schools were located in three school districts within our service region. All of the students in those schools--a total of 1,593 children--have been exposed to What's Growing On cafeteria programming (taste test events) and educational displays (Harvest of the Month posters), thereby increasing their awareness of and enthusiasm for local, seasonal produce. Lessons that teach children about local produce production, health benefits of produce, and the food system were piloted in thirty-three classrooms. At one school (Northside K8 in Warren County), a school garden was developed as an outdoor instructional environment for What's Growing On. Through a partnership with a local church, Warren Plains United Methodist Church, church volunteers assisted with garden programming. Through What's Growing On trainings, thirty-five school personnel were trained in local food system concepts. Goal 1, Outcome C: Working Landscapes became a partner in the Farm to Childcare Initiative sponsored by the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (sponsored by NC State University, NC A&T University, and the NC Department of Agriculture). Programming that we conducted through this initiative increased access to local food at two pilot childcare centers. Our local, fresh-cut produce was procured by one hospital: Nash General Hospital. Goal 1, Outcome D: We entered into partnership with the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the University of North Carolina to develop healthy, locally-sourced frozen meals for corner stores. Recipes have been pre-tested at three corner stores. Working Landscapes will be providing local ingredients for these meals and piloting their rollout in corner stores within our service region. Initial production of these meals for sale--which will take place at a kitchen operated by Weaver Street Market, a cooperative grocery--is planned for January 2018. In consultation with the NC Department of Agriculture, we have determined that Working Landscapes' own kitchen is not yet configured for wholesale meal production. We are planning facility upgrades that will make meal production possible. We are also incubating a tenant venture within the kitchen--a minority women-led catering venture named Honey's Kitchen--which may be able to produce meals on our behalf in future. In the meantime, we have piloted locally-sourced recipes with low-income consumers through a series of six community dinners at Northside K8 School. These dinners, which were held in partnership with Warren Plains United Methodist Church, served more than 75 individuals, and provided an opportunity to gain feedback on recipes. Goal 2, Outcome A: We launched Growing Opportunities, a research/engagement project aimed at understanding the perspectives of regional food system stakeholders and stimulating dialog among them. This project employs the Community Voice Method (communityvoicemethod.org), a stakeholder engagement methodology members of our staff developed. We have developed the interview guide, consent form, and an interviewee pool from which to draw. A staff member received further videography training. We have conducted interviews with five food system stakeholders, and also documented our supply chain work in order to videos about our supply chain work (harvest, processing, distribution, etc). We have also met with twenty food system stakeholders individually to discuss their work and gather feedback on our efforts. We co-sponsored a food system stakeholder meeting (50 attendees) and collected baseline food system activity data from participants (i.e. who is currently involved in regional supply chains in what kinds of ways). Through our programs, we enabled the establishment of the following kinds of new supply chain connections: Farm to food business Farm to childcare center Food hub to distributor Food hub to community organization Food hub to school district Community organization to hospital Farm to consumer Food business to consumer Community organization to consumer Impact: During this reporting period, Working Landscapes used its staff capacity/expertise and food hub infrastructure to establish and expand relationships among food system stakeholders in northeastern North Carolina. A critical way that we accomplished this was through our farm-to-school programming, which had two main components: 1) the sourcing, processing, and sale of fresh-cut produce to school nutrition programs; and 2) the provision of educational materials and services to school students and personnel. Beyond our farm-to-school initiative, we increasingly played a leading role in connecting food system stakeholders across the region, both through new sourcing relationships and through engagement activities aimed at fostering dialog. As a result of this work, school students and other consumers increasingly ate locally-sourced foods instead of non-local foods; these consumers also learned more about these local foods, the supply chains behind them, and the benefits of selecting them. Meanwhile, farmers and food businesses entered regional supply chains for the first time, learned about them, and/or established new relationships within them. Taken together, these efforts began to incrementally benefit the region's health, economy, and environment.
Publications
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