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Farm to Store: a report from our recent NC marketing workshop

June 1, 2009 on 4:40 pm | By Emily in Events 2 Comments

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This past Thursday, Animal Welfare Approved and NC Choices teamed up to host a panel on the regional supply chain for pastured meat, dairy and eggs. This panel mirrored our recent summit at New York’s Alfred State College, and brought together farmers, processors and retailers in an effort to start a dialogue on a sustainable, pasture-based supply chain. Held at the JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, North Carolina, the panel included a representative from each link in the chain: Jeremiah Jones of the NC Natural Hog Growers Association talked about forming a farmers” cooperative, and Jennifer Curtis from NC Choices spoke about the work their group has done in facilitating purchases of local meat at Weaver Street Market, a local cooperative grocery store.

Weaver Street’s meat buyer, Paul Griswold, talked about local purchasing and plans to eventually have a 100% local, grassfed beef case. Richard Huettmann, co-owner of Acre Station Meat Farm, talked about the challenges and opportunities in running a processing business that serves niche markets like pastured pork. William Johnson of William’s Pork talked about using Animal Welfare Approved pork in value-added products, and his experiences in serving the retail chain Harris Teeter. We were especially proud to hear him say, “The two most important things on my label are the Animal Welfare Approved logo and “Got to Be NC.” You can see a picture of the Animal Welfare Approved logo on the William’s Pork delivery truck on our facebook page.

Though all of our panelists are integral parts of the same chain, it is rare to have everyone in the same room. Their very presence spoke to their dedication to making local, pasture-based agriculture a workable system and to working with each other to make that possible.


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2 Comments

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  1. I like your “Search by State” feature. Even more useful for me would be the ability to search by zip code (with mile radius option) or to have the option to show all at once instead of having to click on ten entries at a time. I don’t recognize the names of many of the North Carolina towns listed (since farms are often in more rural areas) and so have no idea which ones are convenient to my home.
    Thank you.
    PS–I couldn’t find a “Contact Us” place where I felt it would be appropriate to address this issue. Hope this gets to the correct place.

    Comment by Jane Henderson — June 6, 2009 #

  2. Thanks for your comment Jane. These comments are very useful to us! We plan to have a zip code search in the future because we know it would make the search function a lot easier. In the meantime, the database does allow you to sort listings by the zip code column. Just click the word “Zip” and the zip codes will be sorted in numerical order.

    Please let us know if you have any other questions or comments; we love the feedback.
    Thanks,
    The Animal Welfare Approved Team

    Comment by Animal Welfare Approved — June 8, 2009 #

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