Dara Bloom, PhD

The goal of this project is to expand local meat sales, including to low-income, low-access (LI/LA) consumers, through MeatSuite.com (MS), an online intermediary marketplace connecting North Carolinians with local farmers selling affordable meat in bulk. Bulk meat market channels benefit everyone: consumers save money, farmers spend less time marketing, and processors operate more efficiently with simplified work. Our 2021 FMPP grant showed strong results: over 13,000 NC shoppers made 26,500+ visits to MeatSuite.com in the past year. Bulk bundles (boxes of assorted cuts) now make up 55% of product listings, and 85% of farms received 20+ customer contacts annually. Yet gaps remain: shoppers are concentrated along two urban corridors, while rural, LI/LA areas ��� where many farmers live and meat access is limited ��� are underrepresented. Only 12% of NC���s population have used the platform. This project builds on what we���ve learned to expand local meat sales by making bulk meat more accessible to first-time buyers, especially those in LI/LA rural communities by: 1. Increasing awareness, fulfillment, storage options, and purchases for 965,000 consumers; 2. Training 475 farmers to offer affordable, accessible bulk meat products to reach new shoppers; 3. Partnering with 200+ processors, institutions, and supply chain trainers to grow regional food system capacity, supply, and demand. Deliverables include a statewide marketing campaign, updated platform features, new training curricula, and expanded market participation. A subaward to Cornell supports platform development, outreach, and education. Ultimately, the project grows farm sales, improves local meat access, and strengthens rural food systems.

Our evaluation approach will be guided by two overarching research questions: (1) How effective are the community engagement, education, and leadership approaches used by SARE Food Loss and Waste (FLW) grantees at reducing food loss levels and minimizing waste?; and (2) What are the impacts of these food loss/waste reductions on the sustainability and quality of life for producers, communities, and consumers? We will use the community capitals framework to guide our evaluation. The community capitals framework describes the categories of assets that all communities possess, including natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial, and built capitals, and analyzes how these capitals interact to shape the community development process. Ripple Effect Mapping (REM) methodology was developed as a tool using appreciative inquiry to analyze community capitals, and specifically how changes to one community capital lead to changes in others. REM is a participatory method that goes beyond direct, short-term program impacts to assess mid-term and community-level changes that result from program activities. Through the REM engagement process, participants identify otherwise unrecognized or indirect impacts of their project activities. We believe that this method is well suited to assess the cross-sectoral, community-based, and big picture goals of the national FLW grant program, including increasing community self-reliance, promoting comprehensive local responses, and assessing how outcomes lead to improved quality of life along the supply chain. To comprehensively evaluate the SARE national FLW grants program and determine the effectiveness of grantee engagement, education, and leadership approaches at reducing food loss and waste and promoting sustainability, we propose the following plan: Phase 1: Virtual semi-structured interviews with project directors and collaborators to provide evaluators with an in-depth understanding of each project, informed by a review of all reports. Phase 2: In-person REM sessions with all stakeholders for 12 of the funded projects in order to identify how activities led to secondary and tertiary impacts. Phase 3: Analysis of interviews, REM maps and transcripts, and all project reports, applying the community capitals framework, in order to generate a preliminary case study of each project. Phase 4: Virtual meetings with project directors and collaborators to share preliminary case studies as a form of ���member checking��� to confirm validity and receive feedback. Phase 5: Analysis across case studies to identify best practices in engagement, education, and leadership methods to be incorporated into a final report. Evaluation reports, which we will develop annually and at the program���s conclusion, will synthesize and integrate the qualitative narratives and quantitative metrics. This combined interpretation of data will lead to clear, evidence-based conclusions regarding project outcomes and impacts, providing USDA SARE with a comprehensive assessment of the national FLW grants program and lessons learned for future programs. Final evaluation reports will include a summary of findings, best practices, as well as a case study for each funded project.

Regionalization has been identified as one strategy to promote food system resilience. However, many of the markets that are the hallmark of local food systems, such as farmers markets, have historically excluded consumers who are lower-income and of color. Farm to Institution programs, such as Farm to Early Care and Education (ECE), School, University, and Senior Services, are one strategy to address this equity issue. These community institutions are a primary source of meals for children, youth, and older adults, especially in rural areas, and often rely on federal food assistance programs to subsidize feeding programs. Integrating local food into meals and snacks at these institutions has the potential to improve consumer access to healthy food, while also opening up new markets for small scale, limited resource farmers. Research has shown that selling into wholesale markets, such as institutions, increases the economic viability of small to mid-size regional farmers more than selling into direct markets alone. Despite these benefits, many historically marginalized and underrepresented farmers of color lack the infrastructure, resources, and experience needed to access these markets, due to historical discrimination in resource allocation. Most small to mid-sized farms also do not have the same logistical and scale-related efficiencies observed in the mainstream food system, resulting in higher marginal costs. This has led to the question of how local food systems can be ���scaled-up��� so that the lower prices in wholesale markets can be offset by bulk volumes and supply chain efficiencies to increase profitability. The Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) has implemented Farm to Institution (F2I) programs in North Carolina for many years. Through this work, we have identified and documented several barriers to establishing successful supply chains, including the volume, type, availability and distribution of products. However, we have never intentionally coordinated local food procurement among multiple F2I programs. We hypothesize that F2I supply chain coordination will generate strategies that can address the challenges observed when programs are implemented individually. We anticipate these strategies might include a system for aggregating orders and production planning to increase the volume purchased, specifications for aesthetically imperfect products (���seconds���), and shared distribution routes to reduce costs. We propose piloting and evaluating a coordinated F2I approach in Robeson County, North Carolina, a rural county with the highest Native American population in the state. We will work with a newly formed cooperative of farmers who are members of the Lumbee Tribe to assess their readiness and provide technical assistance to facilitate institutional market access and promote climate resilience agricultural practices. We will conduct a market assessment and supply chain analysis across these four institution types to develop strategies that streamline F2I local food procurement. We will conduct formative and summative evaluations to make mid project adjustments, and identify best practices. Finally, we will work with NC Cooperative Extension���s Local Food Program Team to create a F2I Work Group that will develop a Farm to Institution Toolkit for Extension Agents, and host five regional district Extension trainings.

The majority of children ages 0-5 consume most of their meals in early care and education (ECE) settings, prompting interest in the nutritional quality of child care meals and snacks as a vehicle for improving dietary-related health outcomes for this vulnerable population. Our team has identified central kitchens that serve prepared meals to child care centers as a potential model to improve meal quality for children, while also relieving child care providers of the burden of meal preparation and paperwork associated with federal meal reimbursements, and aggregating local food purchases to create a larger market for farmers than purchases by individual centers. The purpose of this research is to conduct a landscape assessment that looks at the demand for prepared meal service in child care Post-COVID, as well as success factors and the potential design of a central kitchen model for North Carolina.

This project will build a statewide Collaborative to connect local food systems and early childhood partners for the purposes of value chain coordination. The Collaborative will include Early Care and Education sites, including Head Start Centers, family child care homes, and independent child care centers, as well as local farmers, Cooperative Extension agents, and non-profits representing local agriculture. These teams will explore best practices in local food procurement.

The goal of this statewide project is to help the 1300+ small-scale independent meat producers in North Carolina (avg. head of beef processed annually is <15 and pork <30, NCC 2021 Niche Meat Survey) adapt profitably throughout and post-COVID by developing, expanding, and coordinating direct-to-consumer market opportunities for new and existing meat producers. This project will ensure meat producers have the tools, marketing, pricing, and processing capacity, and the know-how to take advantage of the increased direct-to-consumer market demand and expanded processing services that also comes as a result of COVID.

Agriculture is the leading industry in many rural communities in North Carolina, including Bladen, Columbus, and Robeson Counties, despite declining numbers of farming operations and food access points. At the same time, food insecurity rates can be high in these rural areas and associated with chronic disease and poor health outcomes within the community. Many strategies for addressing food insecurity include supplemental cash and emergency food assistance programs. We would like to ask the questions: Could community-led food system infrastructure development compliment these food assistance programs in addressing food insecurity? Could supporting farm capacity, a farmer cooperative, and local food market diversification increase healthy food access points in the community? What strengths do existing community leaders and assets bring to the table and what is needed to build place-based strategies for resilient economic development and healthier communities? To answer these questions, we propose an inclusive, community-led process of food system evaluation, planning, and farmer capacity building with direction from the Center for Environmental Farming Systems and NC Cooperative Extension in coordination with the 3-county region������������������s community stakeholders and leaders.

County-based institutions, like senior centers, have the capacity to increase access to local food products and expand market opportunities for local farmers. We propose to facilitate six county-based teams to build farm-to-institution pathways for local food sourced through local intermediaries (food hub, aggregator, farmer group). The project activities would include the following: create a county local food campaign, assess farmer readiness to sell to the institution, provide a baseline procurement report to the institution, provide a summer supply chain apprentice and marketing assistance to the local food intermediary, work with food policy councils to explore food procurement policy shifts, and facilitate information sharing and networking among stakeholders of the six county teams.

This grant to the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) will 1)-increase our collective capacity in farm to school through infrastructure support of the Farm to School Coalition of NC (F2SCNC������������������currently co-led by the Department of Instruction and the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services), and 2)-will resource 4H/Cooperative Extension/CEFS-based trainings and technical assistance in farm to school efforts for local practitioners across the state. As part of this work, a NC farm to school award will be developed and implemented, bringing visibility and recognition to model efforts while gathering data and best practices in the process; and statewide conferences and regional trainings will support increased knowledge sharing on school gardening and cooking with children, farm and farmer connections and local procurement, and equity practices in food systems work. Support of the network of state-level stakeholders and agencies who are dedicated to farm to school, as well as the networking, resourcing, and support of daily practitioners in schools, increases our collective action and commitment to farm to school policies and practices that increase knowledge, opportunities, health, and wellness for children and the local communities in which they thrive.

The purpose of the SNAP-Education grant delivered by the Steps to Health team is to deliver nutrition and physical activity education to limited resource audience at the individual level and provide multi-level strategies/interventions to promote policy, systems, and environmental change across North Carolina, with 100 counties potentially receiving high levels of intervention.

A majority of children under the age of six years old are enrolled in child care programs, where they consume a significant portion of their daily meals. It is essential that meals and snacks provided meet children������������������s daily nutritional requirements for normal growth, development, and maintenance of healthy body weight. However, research shows that child care meals and snacks do not adequately meet nutritional requirements. The Solid Rock Community Kitchen will address this issue by utilizing a central kitchen to prepare and deliver healthy meals to 10 local child care centers. The goals of the kitchen are to improve meal quality for young children, reduce workload on child care providers, provide a source of local economic development, and build community involvement. We propose to conduct a disciplined evaluation of the Solid Rock Community Kitchen to better understand best practices and disseminate this model to other communities across the state.

ABSTRACT Childcare Outdoor Learning Environments as Active Food Systems: Effectiveness of the Preventing Obesity by Design (POD) Gardening Component Long-term project goals: 1) To improve the health trajectory of Americans by increasing physical activity (PA) and consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables among vulnerable preschoolers attending U.S childcare centers, and 2) To use research findings to further support the Preventing Obesity by Design (POD), gardening component to influence state policy makers with compelling arguments to promote and create hands-on gardening opportunities at more than 120,000 licensed U.S. childcare centers. Supporting objectives 1. Research. Using a waitlist/control group, randomized controlled trial (RCT) research design, assess the impact of the Preventing Obesity by Design (POD) Gardening Component intervention on 300 children, 4-5 years old, enrolled in 15 childcare centers in Wake County, North Carolina. Assess the impact on: a) children������������������s physical activity; b) FV consumption; c) FV liking; and d) FV knowledge. 2. Education. a) Disseminate the POD Education Modules: Gardening Component, created for the North Carolina Community College System, embedded into community college courses (early childhood, culinary arts, movement education, horticulture, landscape design and construction) as defined in the NC Combined Course Library; b) Suggest potential Module adaptations to serve additional community college approved courses; c) Disseminate modules via community college/higher education faculty professional organizations; d) Identify early adopters and provide technical assistance for implementation; e) Transfer modules to organizations replicating POD in South Carolina, Texas (see letters of support), and other states as appropriate. 3. Extension. Disseminate information, tools, and resources to support parents, community leaders, technical assistance providers, extension agents, community college instructors, and public health professionals to implement evidence-based, children������������������s FV gardening and other health-promoting activities to impact childcare outdoor quality at local level. a) Disseminate FV gardening tools developed by the project; b) Develop online resources for delivery via eXtension and other distance/higher education systems, professional and collaborators������������������ networks, Farm-to-Preschool, and related state level and national organizations; c) Train extension agents, technical assistance providers, and early childhood educators to deliver children������������������s FV gardening/micro-farming technical assistance and trainings to create an evidence-based community of practice; d) Offer Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) cooking series activities in Year 4 & Year 5. Need. Preventing obesity from an early age has become a major public health priority in the developed world. Strong evidence supports beneficial effects of various child obesity prevention intervention programs, however, the majority of these programs are targeted to children aged six to 12 years (Waters et al., 2014). The effectiveness of intervention programs for preschool children (four to five years of age) is relatively understudied. Since a large number of preschoolers are enrolled into regulated childcare facilities where they spend a majority of their waking hours, childcare intervention programs are crucial in childhood obesity prevention.

EmPOWERing Mountain Food Systems: Cultivating a Profitable Local Food Industry Cluster through Entrepreneurial and Business Support, Infrastructure Development, Training, Leadership Development and Capacity Building Project Objectives Regional Food Assessment: Conduct a regional food assessment to identify gaps in supply chain, local food infrastructure, technical knowledge, marketing and agritourism opportunities. Train-the-Trainers: Provide training support and curriculum resources for regional food, farming and business leaders to expand knowledge and expertise on a variety of county and region-specific local food system topics. Product Development and Distribution Support: Support food and farming business product development and distribution with the Center for Agricultural and Food Entrepreneurship (CAFE). Collaboration with Community Colleges and Western Carolina University Faculty and Staff: Assist culinary, agriculture and business continuing education and curriculum programs as they seek to add course materials, guest lectures, and site visits to food and farming businesses. Provide Advanced Business and Programmatic Consulting: Development of advanced business and programmatic consulting framework providing up to 40 hours of commodity, valuechain specific, and marketing assistance to food and farming businesses. Provide infrastructure development support. Grants and low interest loans are available to fund farmer, business and organizational infrastructure such as cold storage and processing equipment. Support the development of new, direct, wholesale/retail, and institutional markets. Making connections with colleges, schools, hospitals and wholesale markets through site visits and grower-buyer meetings. Support the development of Agritourism resources in the region. How can we connect agritourism to the growing regional recreational trends? We will support existing farms in their efforts to add tourism and assess promotional opportunities region wide. Career Ladder - Paid Internships: Provide career ladder opportunities for community college, and university students and others in the region by providing paid apprenticeship opportunities. Assist with land access with WNC FarmLink. As farmers are seeking ways to retire and keep their land in production, FarmLink helps to connect new farmers with existing farms aiding in lease agreements and more.

The backbone of the FSRU will continue on: replicated plots of farming systems managed with farm-scale equipment. Within that context, new research questions have emerged. This research involves measuring outcomes never before measured or nesting new subplots within the experimental framework. From the social sciences, we can ask how these systems interact with sustainability in the real world. How do farmers weigh the choices in selecting farming practices from these various systems? What factors play roles in farming practices that cannot be captured in an experimental protocol? In this proposal, we have attracted researchers new to CEFS who have fresh ideas on relating this experiment to the sustainability issues of our time. Most of these questions were never envisioned when the experiment was first designed. From research on which farming systems emit the most greenhouse gases, to work on how land tenure affects the ability of farmers to adopt sustainable practices, the new research projects run the gamut of disciplines.

The backbone of the FSRU will continue on: replicated plots of farming systems managed with farm-scale equipment. Within that context, new research questions have emerged. This research involves measuring outcomes never before measured or nesting new subplots within the experimental framework. From the social sciences, we can ask how these systems interact with sustainability in the real world. How do farmers weigh the choices in selecting farming practices from these various systems? What factors play roles in farming practices that cannot be captured in an experimental protocol? In this proposal, we have attracted researchers new to CEFS who have fresh ideas on relating this experiment to the sustainability issues of our time. Most of these questions were never envisioned when the experiment was first designed. From research on which farming systems emit the most greenhouse gases, to work on how land tenure affects the ability of farmers to adopt sustainable practices, the new research projects run the gamut of disciplines.

The Community Food Share (CFS) project is a cross-sector collaboration between Farmer Foodshare, Reality Ministries, Transplanting Traditions Community Farm, Communities in Partnership, and other local farms. It uses innovative and entrepreneurial approaches to promote long-term food security among low-income, food-insecure community members in 3 diverse communities in the Triangle region of North Carolina: 1. Mixed-income, demographically diverse families and adults with developmental disabilities in Durham County who identified isolation and a predominance of unhealthy food as key challenges. 2. Primarily low-income African American families in the Old East Durham neighborhood who identified cuts to SNAP and lack of fresh food in their neighborhoods as a challenge. 3. Low-income Burmese and Karen refugees living in Chapel Hill (Orange County), who come from an agrarian culture and seek ongoing access to nutritious and familiar foods in an unfamiliar country. To address these needs, the CFS project proposes using variations on a collective buying model designed and implemented by community members to source the foods they want in ways that work for them. The project also involves creating learning opportunities to help community members learn to grow or cook food and build their capacity to engage their communities, building self-reliance. CFS methods and services are democratically developed, giving voice and influence to primarily low-income participants in naming how best to offer their communities access to locally grown food and nutrition education. They also constitute a replicable model for equitable, community-driven food access and education that can last beyond the period of the grant.

The long-term goal of this project is to build an objective analytical framework for local food systems development. This proposal focuses on better understanding how specific elements of local food systems contribute to overall vitality, functionality, and performance from both a consumer and producer perspective. This includes understanding place-based stakeholder preferences, social relationships, infrastructures, and values related to local food activity, marketing, and production. This integrated Research and Extension project develops a novel LFS evaluation metric to provide producers, local food system development personnel, and food-related enterprises detailed information about their local food systems. Using focus groups and surveys from 16 representative communities across the South, we create separate consumer and producer ���������������Local Food System Vitality (LFSV) Indices������������������ which flexibly 1) identify the elements of a local food system that are valued by local producers and consumers, and 2) measures the local activity/performance of each element at the community level. The LFSV Indices can be generalized and used by Extension agents, local food coordinators, or policymakers to identify market opportunities for producers in diverse locales. Collectively, the data provide needed insight into the elements and interactions contributing to LFS performance across the South, an essential community and regional benchmark for future research and extension work on this topic. Through partnerships with the newly formed Southern Local Foods (SERA-47), the Southern Risk Management Education Center, and Southern SARE, we will utilize these indices and case studies across the South to deliver Extension programs designed to assist LFS development agencies and producers in making resource use decisions and in developing vibrant local food economies.

North Carolina Farm to Childcare (NCF2C) will build on the existing infrastructure of high quality childcare centers and family childcare homes, Smart Start Local Partnerships, and existing early childhood and food systems efforts to embed locally grown foods into NC childcare. With careful attention to the health disparities caused by racial inequity, and the impact on our most vulnerable children, this initiative will connect childcare centers and family childcare homes, and the communities that they serve with local small- to mid-size farms, prioritizing those owned by limited-resource farmers. This initiative will serve as a catalyst for scaling up system change. Specifically, it will provide farmers with new sources of revenue, foster relationships between communities and farmers, make local food accessible in childcare, offer education that values the cultural heritage of food production, increase preferences for fruits and vegetables, encourage childcare centers to create production gardens, and increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables for children, parents, and caregivers. From a policy perspective, this project will be able to give legs to existing policy recommendations in the state, and tie those recommendations to a federal policy agenda through the Early Care and Education Innovation Collaborative and the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Obesity Solutions. We will also formalize the NC Farm to Preschool Network������������������s ����������������Reach for the Stars��������������� resource that aligns suggested farm-to-preschool activities with the NC Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) and other outdoor learning environment quality enhancement tools. We will develop and evaluate Models of Best Practice that integrate experiential opportunities, classroom learning, and strategies to integrate local food in meals and related curricula. We will develop and evaluate procurement models in three regions of the state working with low-income childcare centers and migrant labor head start programs that utilize the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). By utilizing strong, well-established partner programs, we will provide training and develop resources for families, teachers, farmers, childcare directors and other staff, food service personnel, food system actors, community members, state agency personnel, and others. Engagement of cooperative extension (CE) and other networks, including Local Food Policy Councils, guarantees systemic and long-lasting change with statewide reach. The focus will be those children most vulnerable to disparities due to structural racism. We will devise and implement adaptable collaboration approaches for use at the local level based on an understanding of structural racism and how it intersects with outcomes in young children������������������s learning in the community ������������������ linguistically, culturally, and socially. Finally, we will develop a strategic communication plan that integrates the above components and allows for high impact and visibility.

The purpose of the SNAP-Education grant is to deliver nutrition and physical activity education to limited resource audience at the individual level and provide multi-level strategies/interventions to promote policy, systems, and environmental change across North Carolina, with 100 counties potentially receiving high levels of intervention.

The backbone of the FSRU will continue on: replicated plots of farming systems managed with farm-scale equipment. Within that context, new research questions have emerged. This research involves measuring outcomes never before measured or nesting new subplots within the experimental framework. From the social sciences, we can ask how these systems interact with sustainability in the real world. How do farmers weigh the choices in selecting farming practices from these various systems? What factors play roles in farming practices that cannot be captured in an experimental protocol? In this proposal, we have attracted researchers new to CEFS who have fresh ideas on relating this experiment to the sustainability issues of our time. Most of these questions were never envisioned when the experiment was first designed. From research on which farming systems emit the most greenhouse gases, to work on how land tenure affects the ability of farmers to adopt sustainable practices, the new research projects run the gamut of disciplines.