For many years, Western North Carolina growers lacked access to urban farmers’ markets.

Since 2006, N.C. Cooperative Extension’s Foothills Fresh has helped connect these growers with consumers in the same region.

What started as a four-county program with 30 farms now includes six counties and 55 farms and farmers’ markets. The program provides a brand for farms and their products, farmers’ markets and agritourism sites in Alexander, Burke, Catawba, Cleveland, Gaston and Lincoln counties. The area produces a wide variety of agricultural and value-added products, including wines, ostrich and other meats, as well as fruits and vegetables.

The program’s website — www.foothills fresh.com – helps consumers in those counties find vendors, commodities or markets within their own county. The website gives Foothills area farmers another presence on the web, and for some, it is their only web presence, said Leigh Guth, Lincoln County Extension agent who has helped oversee the program. In her own county, Guth makes over 700 customer contacts through email, blog, Facebook and Twitter each week during the market season, updating them on what products are available in local markets.

“Vendors at the markets say that people are asking for the products we promote that week,” Guth says. “We are using technology to attract a newer generation of farmers’ market shoppers that we’ve not reached before.”

In addition to serving as a branding initiative, Foothills Fresh has helped educate area growers in a number of areas. A growers’ institute held in Burke County this year was a big success, attracting 60 farmers. In addition, agents in Gaston and Lincoln counties have worked with immigrant Hmong growers, who are now selling Asian vegetables at area farmers’ markets.

Foothills Fresh also produces an annual guide to area farmers’ markets and farms. While visiting a market one morning, Guth saw local grower Bob Avery of Lincoln County offer one of the guides to a customer. “I’ve never given a Foothills Fresh brochure to anybody who wasn’t appreciative,” Avery said. “I’ve certainly gotten customer calls because of it.”

While growers are very happy what Cooperative Extension has done with Foothills Fresh, Guth says it’s important to keep the project moving forward. “Extension needs to be there to show farmers the possibilities and to develop a vision for the next few years,” she says.

 

Climate Research & Extension

In Asheville, North Carolina State University is playing a lead role in a new climate research partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the University of Maryland and a number of other institutions. A new climate center there is bringing jobs, research dollars and attention to Western North Carolina.

The new Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS) has sites in Asheville, NC, and College Park, Maryland. The North Carolina site (CICS-NC) will create more than 20 new jobs in Asheville by the end of 2010. More than $7 million has already been awarded to N.C. State for CICS-related activities, and the potential funding from NOAA could total more than $30 million over the next four years.

CICS-NC focuses its efforts on collaborative research into the use of satellite and in situ observations in climate research and applications. It also serves as a training ground for the next generation of the workforce. The institute is administered by N.C. State and includes as partners all campuses of the University of North Carolina system, as well as the CICS partners with specific expertise in the challenges of utilizing satellite observations in climate research and applications.

“This is an excellent step towards observing and documenting climate impacts on national and regional scales and a wonderful partnership between government and academia that will be a major player in climate research,” says Otis Brown, Director of CICS-NC.

The work of CICS-NC and its partners made headlines last February when the U.S. Department of Commerce officially announced the intent to establish the NOAA Climate Service, which will study the causes and impacts of climate change in much the same way the National Weather Center studies weather. It was also announced at that time that CICS-NC and its neighbor and partner in Asheville, the National Climatic Data Center, will be expanding.

The CICS Consortium will be led by scientists from the University of Maryland and N.C. State and will include researchers from Princeton University, Howard University, the University of California Irvine, Columbia University, the City University of New York, University of Miami, Colorado State University, Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Oregon State University, Remote Sensing Systems, the Renaissance Computing Institute of the North Carolina University System and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Additional capability for public and community outreach and engagement will be provided to the institute by partnerships with Climate Central in Princeton, the North Carolina Arboretum and the Centers for Environmental and Climatic Interaction (CECI), a non-profit corporation representing Asheville community interests and organizations related to climate impacts on the environment.

“This NOAA Cooperative Institute represents many years of community and UNC collaboration toward supporting NCDC and NOAA, and building capacity behind Asheville and North Carolina as a leading national center for climate change information and related business development,” said George Briggs, President of CECI and Executive Director of the North Carolina Arboretum.