The hallmarks of North Carolina agriculture are the farmers and others who share a steadfast commitment to and love for the Tar Heel State’s largest and most important industry. A new initiative puts that commitment into practice.

NC Ag Leads— spearheaded by the NC Chamber Foundation and Golden LEAF Foundation, with support from the North Carolina Farm Bureau and Google — is focused on ensuring the state’s No. 1 industry continues its economic success.

In June, NC Ag Leads completed Phase 1, which included input from more than 400 members of the agriculture community on how North Carolina’s agriculture sector can grow stronger and remain viable as the state becomes more urbanized. 

NC Ag Leads is now in Phase 2, with six working groups — collectively titled  HARVEST— tasked with identifying solutions and recommendations. The groups’ goals are: 

H – Harmonize land and resource use. Focus on addressing land and resource use pressure within the state. Farmland competition and water storage and diversion fit here, along with a coordinated and renewed discussion regarding continued strategic management of animal agriculture’s footprint.

A – Align tech supply and demand. Achieve alignment between the burgeoning agri- and animal-tech industries, and the state’s diverse and adaptive farming community.

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R – Reinforce farmer support systems. Focus on equipping farmers and agribusinesses with tools sufficient to guard against disruption, inclusive of shocks and challenges that may arise on legal and policy fronts.

V – Value a business mindset. Focus on ensuring the entire sector embraces an “ag as a business” mindset that enhances growers’ business planning, transition planning and credit management expertise.

E – Empower and equip workforce. Pursue alignment among ag education efforts to have the best trained and most plentiful labor supply that can be produced. Pursue a “Talent Pipeline Management” strategy that results in aligning talent demand with supply.

S – Streamline market access. Remove barriers to key markets, increasing access (in some instances, establishing greater aggregation), capturing as much of the food dollar as possible on the farm (value-added efforts) and exploring vulnerabilities that could cause mass economic casualties if disruption were to happen quickly (e.g., addressing one buyer issues and vertical ag dependence).

T – Teamwork and leadership. Both are needed to move from key issues to key outcomes.There is nothing quite like NC Ag Leads in other states. North Carolina agriculture is innovating and taking the lead, another hallmark for the state’s largest and best industry.

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