TheFirstFurrow

When most people think of agriculture they envision row crops, large tractors or animals like cows and chickens. But at North Carolina Farm Bureau we recognize that our state’s great heritage of feeding the world goes beyond the land through our aquaculture and seafood industries. North Carolina produces some of the finest seafood in the world ranging from trout in the Great Smoky Mountains to blue crabs in the Outer Banks. Many coastal communities depend on the seafood industry to create jobs and support their local economy, but the seafood and aquaculture industries support thousands of American jobs throughout the seafood supply chain.

This weekend, seafood lovers from all over will head to Morehead City to celebrate our great seafood industry at the NC Seafood Festival. The event, which begins this Friday, September 30^th and runs through Sunday, October 2^nd, will feature live music, great food, cooking demonstrations and even a boat show. The NC Seafood Festival takes place each year to “promote the positive social and economic impact of the seafood industry on the citizens of North Carolina.”

More information about the NC Seafood Festival is available at www.ncseafoodfestival.org.

This week’s gas shortage in North Carolina presents an opportunity to talk about another reality of daily life some people often take for granted: our food supply.

The recent Colonial Pipeline leak in Alabama is a reminder that a disruption in local gas deliveries can create panic and confusion among consumers. But what would it look like if North Carolinians were facing a food shortage? We’re talking about a situation in which consumer access to food is significantly disrupted and people have difficulty finding basic food products such as milk, bread, meat and produce. It wouldn’t be a pretty picture that’s for sure.

Written by Dan Gerlach, President of the Golden LEAF Foundation.

The Golden LEAF Foundation was created to ensure to ensure there would be dedicated resources to help transform the economy of rural, tobacco-dependent and economically distressed communities in North Carolina.

During my more than 20 years in North Carolina and my almost eight years as President of Golden LEAF, there’s no doubt in my mind that the heart and soul of the innovation, creativity, risk-taking, vision, and significance of North Carolina can be found in the farmer and grower.

Earlier this year, the Golden LEAF Board of Directors stepped out of our usual grantmaking processes to create a fund to support the development of major industrial sites across North Carolina. This fund would reduce the time it takes a big manufacturer to be build a plant and hire North Carolina workers, exporting product all over the United States and all over the world. With this $25 million, there would be no requirement that a company be committed, but rather faith that this seed corn would facilitate the location of good-paying manufacturing jobs to North Carolina. Manufacturing has long been part of rural North Carolina’s past, and certainly important to its future – though in a different way.

So it should be no surprise that our Board of Directors made one of the biggest commitments in our history – $45 million – to ensure that a facility on NC State’s Centennial Campus in Raleigh to house the Plant Sciences Initiative would be built. Manufacturing and agriculture are the two great workhorses of our rural economy, and are a major part of our future as well.

Tomorrow night marks the premiere of Season Four of the hit PBS show A Chef’s Life, which “follows the trials and travails of Chef Vivian Howard and her husband, Ben Knight, and their farm-to-table restaurant, Chef & the Farmer, exploring both traditional and modern applications of quintessential Southern ingredients.” The show won a Peabody Award in 2014 and a Daytime Emmy Award in 2015, and has received plenty of critical acclaim so you should definitely tune in.

North Carolina Farm Bureau has been a long-time supporter of the show because of its loving and honest depiction of life and farming in Eastern North Carolina. And as more consumers come to link their opinions about food with their understanding of farming, A Chef’s Life provides an honest and unsensational glimpse into the life and work of farmers.