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 30th and runs through Sunday, October 2nd, 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.
A couple weeks ago we talked about the growing use of drones in agriculture and outlined some of the policies surrounding drone usage. This week, we’d like to turn the spotlight back onto drones and provide some cool facts about how this technology is being used to help farmers improve yields, use inputs more efficiently, and increase profitability.
Over the past two weeks we’ve shared a couple of posts from Dr. Rebecca Tippett of Carolina Demography at UNC’s Carolina Population Center. If you haven’t read them, we encourage you to go back and read those two posts in their entirety – it’s really good stuff. But as great as Rebecca’s work is, we can’t post ALL of it, so we’ve decided to break down what we believe to be some of the more important bits of information. Of course, you can read all of her posts at demography.cpc.unc.edu/blog and follow her on Twitter @ncdemography.
Written by Dr. Rebecca Tippett and originally published at Carolina Demography. This continues our series of posts highlighting some of Rebecca’s excellent insights into rural North Carolina. If you missed last week’s post, be sure to go back and check it out as well.
“The growth of urban places historically has been fueled largely by in-migration from rural areas (including from other countries)…” – Daniel Lichter & David Brown, “Rural America in an Urban Society”
Nearly half of North Carolina’s counties – 47 of 100 – had net out-migration between 2010 and 2015, meaning more people moved away than moved in.
There are some clear patterns to this movement. The core counties of the state’s major metropolitan areas—such as Guilford (Greensboro), Forsyth (Winston-Salem), Mecklenburg (Charlotte), and Wake (Raleigh)—saw net in-migration. In general, the counties immediately adjacent to these core counties, such as Johnston and Harnett south of Wake, also experienced net in-migration. In addition, regions that are generally attractive to retirees, such as Western North Carolina and the coastal counties, have had net in-migration since 2010.
Meanwhile, many of the counties that have experienced net out-migration are on the periphery of larger metro areas, are located in smaller metropolitan or micropolitan regions, or are rural counties, meaning they belong to neither a metropolitan nor micropolitan region. (A map of North Carolina’s metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas is available here and the delineation files are available here.)
But even though many counties have experienced net out-migration, North Carolina is a “sticky” state. Most people born here still live here. Among North Carolina-born adults, 72% still live here, the highest share of any other state except for Texas. And, when we look at individuals who move out of their county, individuals from rural, outlying, and micropolitan counties are much more likely to stay in North Carolina.
Written by Dr. Rebecca Tippett and originally published at Carolina Demography. Over the next few weeks the First Furrow will be highlighting some of Rebecca’s excellent insights into rural North Carolina.
As we’ve mentioned in the past, North Carolina has a large population residing in areas that the U.S. Census Bureau classifies as rural. Among the 10 most populous states, North Carolina has the largest proportion of individuals living in rural areas. In fact, North Carolina’s rural population is larger than that of any other state except for Texas.
Prior to coming to Carolina Demography, I worked in a similar role producing and interpreting demographic data in Virginia. Since returning to North Carolina, I have mentioned to a number of people that North Carolina is more “demographically interesting” in certain respects than Virginia. This isn’t to say that Virginia isn’t interesting –it is!—but the fundamental patterns of demographics are markedly different in Virginia compared to North Carolina. And some of this difference is rooted in the higher proportion of individuals living in high density, urbanized areas in Virginia.
Last week we discussed a couple of reasons some farmers choose to sell their farm products locally at farmers markets, roadside stands, and pick-your-own sites. While selling locally is an important market for some farmers, others are venturing into new markets through international trade.
The following appears courtesy of NC State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Agriculture and agribusiness — food, fiber and forestry — make up an $84 billion a year industry in North Carolina, contributing one-sixth of the state’s income and employees, according to the latest figures from NC State University economist Mike Walden.
In calculating value-added incomes for 2014 (the latest year for which figures are available), Walden found that food, fiber and forestry industries contributed more than 17 percent of the state’s $482 billion gross state product.
These industries also accounted for 686,200 of the state’s 4 million employees, according to Dr. Walden, a William Neal Reynolds professor and North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist. That’s up 23,000 from the previous year.
Walden said that overall value-added income from the state’s agricultural and agribusiness sector grew by 10 percent from 2013, when it contributed $76 billion to the state’s economy.
Walden says that the rise in North Carolina agriculture and agribusiness coincides with overall national economic growth of 2.2 percent in 2014, with much of the increase coming from the processing sector.
“Both tobacco product and food processing had big gains in value-added, the value of production at the processing level, in 2014. This reflects the rebound in those sectors consistent with a general economic rebound,” he said. “There was also a more modest improvement in wood product processing.”
