PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE
Strategies for Building A Sustainable Food System
BY AMBER NIMOCKS

Note: This is the second of two articles focusing on the changing nature of agriculture education in North Carolina.

Ariel Fugate smiles a little when she talks about turning her fellow students onto locally raised produce, meat and cheese. As manager of the farmers market that meets in N.C. State’s brickyard, the 19-year-old sophomore does a lot of educational outreach.

“I think that a lot of people don’t really know what buying local means,” she says

Fugate is majoring in fisheries and wildlife science with a minor in agroecology. She became interested in the minor after learning about the interdependent relationship between wildlife conservation and farmland preservation. Her academic advisor Michelle Schroeder-Moreno also serves as advisor to the student-run market. Its part of the university’s efforts to promote a broad understanding of the importance of sustainable agriculture.

Educators believe that to transform our food system, far more people to eat more food produced locally and sustainably, we’ll need more than farmers. To truly change the way America eats, we need a new generation that understands how crucial sustainability is. That’s one of the tenets guiding education efforts at the Center for Environmental Farm Systems, a state partnership dedicated to sustainable farming practices.

“When it comes stakeholders in the food system, there are not very many people who you can say are not,” says Tes Thraves, coordinator of CEFS’ Community Based Food Systems program. “That means there are a number of ways to plug into what it means to develop and sustain that system.”

Supporting farmers and researching environmentally sound agriculture practices are two of the core missions of CEFS, a partnership of N.C. State University, N.C.A&T University and the state Department of Agriculture. Helping consumers understand how their food choices affect the larger world is another. Toward that end, Thraves directs educational programs aimed at getting ‘em while they’re young.

“We need politicians, entrepreneurs, educators, health workers as well as producers who understand what the whole system looks like,” she says. “We need young people thinking about new innovative food businesses—creative distribution models, increased access and availability.”

Among the projects Thraves will focus on in 2010 is a Youth Food Initiative, which will help identify future leaders of the sustainability movement. Sophomore Fugate could be such a leader. In her role as farmers market manager, she is beginning to understand the challenges of connecting the masses with the food they eat. She says the posters she and her fellow market boosters developed did little to attract students to the market during its first semester.

“Word of mouth is the best form of advertising,” she says.

Another lesson: Vendors want assurances that they will have buyers.

“It was really hard to recruit new vendors to your market unless you prove yourself,” Fugate says.

As part of their recruitment strategy, she and her fellow market organizers kept statistics on the number of students who walked by versus the number who stopped at vendor stands. The student-run market wound up with four vendors by the end of its season, down from five. Fugate says the group that runs the market, which numbers less than 10, is hoping for more student involvement in the coming semesters. They’re improving their marketing strategies, as well, she says, moving beyond posters to live displays of vermicomposting, in hopes of making the experience interactive.

While farmers markets such as N.C. State’s are key to the success of the sustainable agriculture movement, some educators are looking beyond that model.

Jennifer Curtis is a consultant to the Center for Environmental Farm Choices and has been involved in the center’s Farm to Fork statewide initiative. She thinks there’s room for a middle man between the sustainable farmer and the consumer. Not every farmer wants to sell produce via a market or a CSA subscription service. Combining efforts and forming distribution networks can help, she says, and entrepreneurs could have a role in the creation of these networks.

“I think when you have a broken system you have nonprofit and advocacy systems that start to fill the void,” she says. “Hopefully that’s followed by for-profit enterprises.”

Among the success stories Curtis points to are Know Your Farms, a food-buying club based in Davidson that sells produce, meat and eggs from area farmers and distributes them to customers, who can order on-line; Eastern Carolina Organics, which markets and distributes organic produce to retailers and restaurants across the state; and Blue Ridge Food Ventures, which runs an 11,000-squarefoot kitchen in Asheville, that small food processors share.

Curtis knows that some farmers will object to distribution models like these because it means some money winds up in the hands of distributors instead of in farmers’ pockets. “You hear a lot of ‘Get rid of the middle man,’” she says. “Yet if you don’t have some level of midlevel marketing and distribution, it’s going to be really challenging to scale it up.” A key to the success of these new endeavors, Curtis says, will be transparency. Customers need to know that their distributor knows exactly where his food is coming from.

“You might not know that farmer, but you can look them up, go to their farm if you want to,” she says.

Part of the state’s role, Curtis says, is to continue to educate farmers and others about these opportunities.

“We are talking about business solutions,” she says. “What the state—government or education— needs to do is to continue to support small businesses.”

She believes it’s the topic that will dominate conversations about sustainable agriculture for the next 10 years. eP

Amber Nimocks grew up in a Southern home where food meant love, and she was very loved. She attended UNC at Chapel Hill, where she fell in love with shrimp and grits, and journalism. She is the former food editor of The News & Observer, where her monthly wine column “Let It Pour” appears. Contact her amber@amberwrites.com .