David Clyde Driskell, the country’s foremost living African American artist, is returning to his home County as the guest of Foothills Connect Business and Technology Center, Rutherford County, the Grahamtown Redevelopment Project, and the Community Empowerment Project Community Development Corporation to acquaint the youth of the County with the amazing story of his life. David grew up in Ellenboro, NC, the son of a sharecropper, and has since achieved world-wide fame for his art. David is currently an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland Department of Art, headquartered at a building—the Driskell Center—which now bears his name. Mr. Driskell will be addressing the Rutherford County Region on Friday, October 29^th, at 2pm at R-S Central High School. There will be a reception for Mr. Driskell at the Old Dunbar School in Grahamtown at 2pm on Saturday, October 30^th.

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Williamston – Snow may have delayed the originally scheduled ceremony, but Thursday, January 6, the first recognition ceremony for those who have learned about sustainable farming for-profit was finally held at Martin Community College.

According to Marvin Davis, director of Martin County Economic Development Corporation, this is the first class of Martin Community College in cooperation with Martin County EDC and others for the Farmers Fresh Market program. The Farmers Fresh Market program helps farmers connect to restaurants via the Internet to sell their products.

There are 18 people in this class, which was called, “Horticulture for Dollars.”

Walter Whifield, executive director of continuing education at MCC welcomed the public officials, those who took the class, and other guests. He thanked the Farm Fresh program for coming to this area.

“You could have gone to 99 other counties, but you chose Martin, and we appreciate it,” Whitfield said.

“As Walter said, we were indeed fortunate that we were chosen as one of the two places in North Carolina for Foothills Connect to extend this very good thing they have done,” said Marvin Davis, director of Martin County EDC.

“Thank you, Tim, for selecting Martin County to do that.”

Rockingham County is also participating in the Farmers Fresh Market Prorgam.

Tim Will, president of Foothills Connect, was one of the speakers for the evening. Foothills Connect developed the Farmers Fresh Market program four year ago.

Will recently received the Purpose Prize. Davis described it as the “Nobel Peace Prize for those who are in second or third careers that make a significant difference in people’s lives throughout the country.”

He was awarded the Purpose Prize for bringing broadband to Rutherford County and creating the online ordering system that helps local farmers sell produce directly to Charlotte restaurants. He was one of five Purpose Prize recipients to be awarded $100,000, which he put back into his organization.

Will told attendees that the changing economy demanded access to broadband. He said he was inquiring as to why broadband was not available in rural areas and was shocked when he was asked, “Why would a farmer need broadband?”

“Well, that question has been answered,” Will said. “How about so they can sell their product over the Internet, absolutely fresh, and just-in-time for delivery to eager customers in urban areas. And, that’s what you’re getting ready to do.”

He said the Farmers Fresh Market Program is expanding in North Carolina. Will is also preparing to make presentations in South Carolina and Kentucky, and hopes one day that the program will be nation-wide.

“You’re the first of a revolution,” said Will. “Your food is in demand, and I’m so proud you took the first step.”

Jeff Ivey, manager of the Farmers Fresh Market program in Martin County, explained how he has been working with restaurants on the Outer Banks and in the Greenville area, in an attempt to discover what they need.

Some things that restaurants have requested include collards, strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. Now, Ivey said, it’s time to figure out the quantities of these products that are needed.

“This is an opportunity, but it’s also a commitment,” he said. “People want your products.”

Tony Kleese, a noted horticulturist and food provider, taught the class. He told those in attendance about a statewide campaign where businesses commit to purchasing 10 percent of their products locally.

“Cooperative Extension is supposed to have a person dedicated in this county who is to lead this effort. That’s another big piece of this,” Kleese said.

After the commitment by businesses, the concern will then be who is going to provide that 10 percent.

Kleese and Charlotte Griffin, chair of the Martin County Board of Trustees, presented certificates to those who had completed the class.

“I’m excited about the program. I think it’s a great opportunity for people in our area.

I think it can become a driving force…because in the end, people are going to eat. And why shouldn’t we profit from it?” Griffin said after the certificates were handed out.

A class focused on Agricultural Entrepreneurship has been scheduled to start January 24 that will run on Mondays until March 14 from 6pm to 9pm at MCC. Contact MCC at (252) 792-1521 for more information.

Come to a Lunch and Learn on Friday, October 29th!

Meet Sarah Schober of the BioBusiness Center and learn about the market potential of valuable plants that may be on your land

Friday, October 29^th

12:00 to 1:00 PM

Foothills Connect Business and Technology Center

Woodrow Jones Building

146 N. Main Street

Rutherfordton, NC 28139

Light lunch will be served                                             Please RSVP by Oct. 25

828 288 1650                                                     pat@foothillsconnect.com

Sponsored by:

Foothills Connect, the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce,

the BioBusiness Center, Rutherford County Cooperative Extension,

WNC Forest Products Project, North Carolina Natural Products Association

On Sunday, October 3, 2010, PBS’s America’s Heartland aired episode 604, featuring Rutherford County’s own Farmer’s Fresh Market! Check out the video here!

As the Director of the Foothills Connect Business and Technology Center, (www.foothillsconnect.com ), I am occasionally requested to speak to audiences around the state of North Carolina about our various projects.  Of particular interest to both rural and urban communities is the nationally recognized Internet based Farmers Fresh Market Program www.farmersfreshmarket.org .  On a few occasions, I have been asked if I’m the guy that grows vegetables in straight worm “poo” in Wisconsin. googled enough keywords to find www.growingpower.org , the website of the internationally recognized winner of a MacArthur Genius grant, Will Allen.  I learned that Time Magazine recently named him to its list of the 100 most influential humans on the planet.   And yes, Will Allen has for the past 17 years been re-writing the book on food production by creating food and jobs in the midst of Metropolitan Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by reducing over 6 million pounds on problematic municipal waste into so many thousands of tons of worm castings.   Then, he created 40 urban horticulturalist jobs as he grows high value, intensively grown, delicious vegetables in straight worm “poo”.
Earlier, this spring, I was able to hear Will Allen spoke to a group in Durham. I listened and watched for three hours as Will Allen spoke from the heart racially mixed group of inner city residents about his concerns with the growing number of American “food deserts”, areas, urban and rural, where there are no grocery stores to serve the public.  Either too poor or too isolated to be considered customers, growing populations within the United States now purchase their “food” from gas stations and convenience stores. These are the denizens of the food deserts.  Then Will Allen articulated the one word that prompted me to jump on a plane with the Farmers Fresh Market Project Manager, Kirk Wilson, and fly to Milwaukee to a Growing Power weekend seminar.  Will Allen said that the American food system was “broken”, not breaking, he says that it is already BROKEN. BROKEN……!
Then, in Milwaukee, Kirk and I met the contingent of eight neighborhood food advocates from Detroit.  Eyeballing each other over morning coffee, they explained to us that the food system in Detroit has already collapsed.   They told us that there were no supermarkets left in inner city Detroit and that 30% of the population did not have automobiles, so driving to a suburban mall was out of the question.   They were in Milwaukee to learn from Will Allen how to grow their own food in the vacant lots of inner city neighborhoods.   But rather than trust the unknown sources of the often fill dirt in vacant lots, they were learning to vermi-composting:  they were learning how grow ON PARKING LOTS in raised beds of straight worm castings.  And there were over one hundred of us there:  Detroit, Denver, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Chicago, Grand Rapids ……….. and Rutherford County.
Kirk and I had been working for three years developing small businesses called farms on rural properties as small as a half of acre to grow high intensity, specialty crops.  We were in Milwaukee because we had heard that Will Allen’s 2.5 acres urban farm (Will bought the last farm in metropolitan Milwaukee) grosses over $1 million dollars in revenue.  We were in Milwaukee, like everyone else, to learn the secret of Growing Power.  It’s more than worm castings.

Almost every cubic foot of Growing Power’s 11 high tunnel, plastic hoop houses and two green houses is crammed with high value vegetation, integrated fish farming, mushrooms and of course his livestock, thousands of pounds of red wrigglers.  The average worm eats its own weight in, shall we say, garbage, every day.  Growing Power needs about 100,000 pounds of wood chips and food waste a week to feed its worms, employing many of its 40 workers. The worms then excrete super nutrient laden castings that support 600% more plant density than soil.   So growing in straight worm poo permits a far greater harvest per cubic foot.   That is how Growing Power has a vegetable garden on the pavement in downtown Chicago.
Thoroughly impressed, the Foothills Connect staff was able to corner Will Allen and ask to become a regional outreach training center because of our proximity to so many urban areas from Greensboro NC to Greenville SC.   We explained that we had been funded to expand the Framers Fresh Market to other Appalachian areas and that we were already organizing small farm businesses in from Williamston NC, less than 90 miles from Norfolk VA to Cherokee County, less than 95 miles from Atlanta.   Will turned to is administrators and said, “Send these folks in NC a contract to be a Regional Outreach Training Center.”
So 2011 portends to be a very wormy year.  Foothills Connect has already been awarded a $300,000 grant to build a series of high tunnel, hoop houses on three acres near a Rutherford County landfill and the staff has already identified an annual waste stream of 1,250 tons of woodchips and vegetable waste.   So now, all we need is people that want to learn a totally new, really cool type of small farm horticulture.   If interested in starting a business or volunteering at the Regional Outreach Training Center (ROTC) call Foothills Connect Business and Technology Center at 828 288 1650.

RS Central FFA takes another new step into sustainable agriculture today with the addition of aquaculture to its greenhouse.   Agriculture teacher Brandon Higgins says “this will give our kids another tool to help them  become entrepreneurs”. The aquaculture system is modeled after a Milwaukee-based company called Growing Power whose CEO Will Allen has pioneered urban farming techniques. The system at RS Central is made up of three levels. Hydroponic vegetables will be grown in the two upper beds, while Tilapia will be grown in the large lower tank. Brandon Higgins explains that it’s a re-circulating  system in which the fish provide nitrogen to the plants to grow and the plants clean the water for the fish. The current prototype will hold 700 gallons of water and will raise 350 Tilapia. The students are already in the building phase of another larger system that will be  twenty four feet long, hold 2000 gallons of water, and raise 1,000 Tilapia. Lisa Higgins (agriculture teacher) explains “it takes approximately nine months to raise a one to two pound Tilapia so the kids get to see the whole  growth cycle of the fish.”

Students will not only be learning about entrepreneurship but scientific research. Enclosed aquaculture systems require students to monitor PH, dissolved oxygen levels, feed conversion and  general water quality.  Even if students never raise fish on their own they are learning valuable lessons in water quality, animal management, and green building techniques. They are also learning valuable observation skills that make them more marketable and align them with 21st  Century goals. The aquaculture system is being built from a $50,000 grant received (with Foothills Connect) from the NC Rural Center.  These fish and vegetables will be marketed to the community members, local restaurants, and Charlotte restaurants.

Foothills Connect Business and Technology Center has been partnering with RS Central High School for several years.   This  partnership is taking its next step, says Tim Will, Executive Director of Foothills Connect. Partnering with Isothermal Planning and Development Commission’s Workforce Development Program , Rutherford County,  Isothermal Community College, and funded in part by a grant from the NC Rural Center, three acre site has been selected near the Municipal Solid Waste Landfill to expand the sustainable agriculture program.   The site will house multiple  greenhouses where local displaced workers, Entrepreneurs, RS Central FFA graduates and ICC students can enroll in its new Entrepreneurship program. These students will be exposed to high intensity horticulture, advanced green energy techniques, and the integration of Aquaponics (raising Tilapia) and Vermiculture (feeding tons of garbage to worms.) This will develop into a comprehensive, entrepreneurial horticulture business education cohort. Foothills Connect has become a regional training center for Will Allen’s internationally recognized “Growing Power” program. The food products resulting from these new businesses will find a ready local and urban market within Foothills Connect’s nationally recognized and Internet based www.FarmersFreshMarket.org project.

Larry Dale, Daily Courier

RUTHERFORDTON — Purpose Prize winner Jock Brandis recently brought samples of simple technology he has developed to Rutherford County in hopes some of it can be adapted for use by small farmers here. Brandis’ “The  Full Belly Project” is helping people in Africa and Central and South America as they work to feed themselves and develop a market economy.

“We can basically make the world better by helping farmers get more product out of their land and out of a day’s labor,” Brandis told a crowd of about 35 to 40 at EarthPerks, a new farm supply business on Poors Ford Road. “And in order to do that, you simply have to give people very, very basic tools. Our motto is, you cannot have prosperity without efficiency. “If you can come up with technologies that will double someone’s output if they  are doing post-harvest processing, if you can double their output by giving them a dry-season crop because they can get water, if you can do things like that, you’ve made a change in their lives.”

Brandis, from Wilmington, and his crew of volunteers brought with them such devices as corn crackers, corn shellers, peanut shellers and a small irrigation system to show area farmers that agricultural needs can be met through unexpectedly simple  techniques. Brandis’ visit was sponsored by Foothills Connect Business & Technology Center in Rutherfordton, one of whose goals is to increase entrepreneurship in the county through small-scale, specialized horticulture. Tim Will,  executive director of Foothills Connect, is also a Purpose Prize winner, for 2009, and he received his award in San Francisco from Brandis, a 2008 winner. The prize carries a $100,000 award, which Will donated to Foothills Connect. The Purpose Prize is awarded by the Civic Ventures Foundation to recognize persons more than 60 years of age who are leading social innovators in their “encore” careers.

Will told the audience at EarthPerks, “We take for granted all the infrastructure in this country. But it doesn’t exist elsewhere. “What Jock has done is reverse engineer a lot of equipment. Some of you probably remember some of it. It goes back several generations. “I asked him to come out and inspire us. Appalachia is three generations behind in agriculture. Agribusiness techniques aren’t working for us.”

Brandis told his Rutherford County audience last Monday, “I’m basically a city boy with a degree in anthropology. I’m here to learn. Every time I go to Africa I learn something.” He urged Rutherford County farmers to tell him what they need to be more efficient and productive. “What is it you need on a small scale like this?” he asked. Brandis is confident that some of the basic technology he brought with him can be adapted to serve those needs. For example, he unloaded a peanut sheller from the back of a pickup truck. The sheller was made of concrete and some metal parts. “If you are shelling peanuts by hand, and you are an experienced African woman with calloused fingers, you do one  pound of peanuts per hour,” he explained. “This machine can basically do it 50 times faster. And that is a huge difference in terms of a market economy. The big bottleneck with peanuts is the speed with which you can shell them. If you get past that, you can start thinking about peanuts for cooking oil.”

But he reminded his audience that The Fully Belly Project tries to think in more comprehensive terms. He pointed out it was initially thought that bringing mechanized peanut shellers to south Guyana, a small nation next to Venezuela, would allow farmers there to reach a level of efficiency that would allow them to sell peanuts to the Tandy peanut butter plant in that country. Brandis noted the plant was buying tons of peanuts from China, half a world away, and was still able to do it cheaper that way than by using peanuts grown in Guyana.

The peanut sheller seemed like the perfect answer. But the idea didn’t work. The farmers only got enough rain on their fields to produce a supply of peanuts sufficient to feed themselves. Part of the problem, then, was helping ensure an adequate crop. And that brought Brandis to the inexpensive irrigation equipment he brought with him. “Four pieces of concrete, a piece of wood and some pieces of truck inner tube,” Brandis said, pointing at a  strange-looking contraption with a hose attached to it. “Some nuts and bolts, and you’ve got a water pump. You can hook a 200-foot hose onto this, and you can do spot watering. So they can be spot watering 2.8 acres of  land. “The problem with hunger probably doesn’t have anything to do with food; it has to do with water,” Brandis explained. He noted that with a water source and the pump, the farmers could grow 8,400 pounds of peanuts on 2.8 acres. “And if you can get three crops a year you can grow 25,000 pounds of peanuts,” he added.

Brandis emphasized that The Full Belly Project is not about bringing in a piece of equipment and then leaving. It’s a wide-ranging approach to solving problems, he said. “It’s not just a gizmo, but a system,” he commented. “Not, ‘Here’s a gizmo. We’re out of here.’ “With peanuts, how can they plant faster, how can they thresh faster? How can we get them a dry-season crop? What are the market opportunities? We’re getting a surplus of peanuts now; Africans growing peanuts and importing cooking oil from India or China. “We simply have to teach them how to press their peanuts for cooking oil, and feeding a high-protein peanut cake to their livestock back home, or, more likely, to their children back home. So we try to come up with some sort of system.”

Brandis explained how very important it was to provide the struggling farmers with a dry-season crop. “We have the cold season, they have the dry season,” Brandis said. “They have the exact same situation that you do. In their case, the rains come. Everyone plants. During the rainy season all the plants grow at the same speed. You all harvest at the same speed and the same time. You all bring your crop to market at the same time, and the price isn’t very good—all selling product at the same time. “If you could wait three months, and plant your crop at the end of the rainy season, and irrigate your crop with some very simple technology, you can wait until three months into the dry season. The price is double, and your crop is just getting ready. That’s a revolution.”

One of the keys to success implementing such a revolutionary approach is making machines that are easy to use and easy to fix if something goes wrong. “We try to make things transparent,” Brandis said. “When I talk about a transparent technology, the worst kind of machine you can ave is a machine that you are really relying on, because you need to get water to water your animals or they will die, and you need a crop to harvest. And your machine stops working, and there are six wires going into this little black box and two wires coming out of it, and you suspect that the problem might be in there. That’s the worst kind of machinery you can have, because it sucks you in, and when you really need it, there’s nothing going for you.” As a first step to helping small-scale Rutherford County farmers, Brandis is leaving some of his machinery in the county so it can be used on a cooperatively available basis. Brandis also made stops at R-S Central High School and at Kudzu Cow Farm, on Duncan Road.