Each week we round up the latest N.C. agricultural headlines from news outlets across the state and country, as well as excerpts from the stories.
- “919 Beer: Sweet potato lager,” WRAL: (Video) February is Sweet Potato month and what better way to celebrate North Carolina’s dominance in the sweet potato industry, than drinking sweet potato beer. 919 Beer took a trip to Fullsteam in Durham to talk with Sean Lily Wilson about their sweet potato lager, Carver, and why it’s important to highlight NC agricultural products in his beer.
- “WASHINGTON LAWMAKERS MADE AWARE OF AG ISSUES IN THE CAROLINAS,” Southern Farm Network: (Audio) It seems that we wake up in a new world every day since Donald Trump moved into the White House. Dan Weathington, Executive Director of the North Carolina Small Grain Growers Association recently spent some time on Capitol Hill speaking with the state’s legislators, reminding them on what’s important for the region’s farmers. Weathington recaps his trip …
- “Agribusiness students succeed close to home,” Washington Daily News: The best place to get an education in agribusiness might not always be the heart of a big city like Raleigh, as a number of students at Beaufort County Community College have found. The students, many of them taking over family operations in Beaufort, Hyde and Tyrrell counties, found that they can get the same training and knowledge through an atmosphere that felt closer to home. “We’re used to going to high schools with smaller class sizes,” said Billy Harding, who attended North Carolina State University, but returned to BCCC. “You have 200 people in a class with you (at N.C. State). I grew up on a farm. I was not used to city life.” …
- “LITTLE OPTIMISM IN TOBACCO BEYOND 2017,” Southern Farm Network: (Audio) At Friday’s annual Tobacco Growers of North Carolina meeting during the Southern Farm Show, tobacco growers were hoping for better, but right now, they’re generally hoping for not worse. NC State Economist Dr. Blake Brown: “That’s true. I mean, it could have been a lot worse this year. Brazil has a very large crop, and a good quality crop, I understand, that has just come off in the past month or so. So, we could have seen contracts down, we have seen some contracts down, primarily in the organic sector, that was very surprising for farmers, pretty dramatically. We have seen some contracts down, some up, so I think we’ll come out pretty flat, we may see production similar to what it was in 2016, it depends a lot on the exchange rate situation. …
- “Cattle industry ‘very concerned’ about Trump’s pledge to renegotiate NAFTA,” Southeast Farm Press: The largest U.S. cattle trade group said it’s “very concerned” about President Donald Trump’s pledge to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which calls into question whether the industry will continue to enjoy its current level of market access in Mexico and Canada. …
- “Bold Rock ramps up use of local apples in its cider,” Asheville Citizen-Times: Poor Red Delicious apples. Once the darling of lunchboxes, they’ve become the bane of schoolkids everywhere. Against crisp-fleshed, rosy-cheeked Honeycrisps, they’ve fallen far out of fashion. But Bold Rock Hard Cider’s founder Brian Shanks, a steely-blue-eyed entrepreneur with 30-year roots in the apple growing and cider-making industry, does not discriminate. At his Mills River facility, opened in 2015, a new apple press crushes a broad variety of local apples to a pulp within spitting distance of a taproom. Tumbling from wooden crates into a Voran Continuous Belt Press are apples with less-recognizable names, like Arkansas Blacks and Gold Rush, and Red Delicious, too. Positioned near the press is a truck waiting to shepherd that pulp to a local dairy. The cows love it, especially when it begins to ferment, Shanks said with a wink. …
- “One game and 1.3 billion chicken wings later: Super Bowl keeps restaurants busy for days,” Winston-Salem Journal: Mary Gentry, manager, prepares a display of bottled sauces at the cash registers for the Super Bowl on Sunday morning at Waldo’s Wings in Winston-Salem. The New England Patriots may have won the Super Bowl, but the real winner was the country’s multitude of chicken wings restaurants. Americans devoured about 1.3 billion wings Sunday, enough wings to circle the Earth three times, according to the National Chicken Council. That’s enough for every single person in the U.S. — babies and vegetarians included — to eat four wings each. …