Workshop focuses on local food crops

PILOT MOUNTAIN --Someone asked a Surry County farmer whether he would have grown butternut squash if Pilot Mountain Pride — a regional marketing cooperative — hadn't been there to help him sell it.

"Absolutely not," the man said, "I don't have time to sell it on my own out of the back of my truck."

Pilot Mountain Mayor Earl Sheppard told that story Friday at an Appalachian Regional Commission workshop on sustainable agriculture and local food assets.

The conference was held in The Pilot Center, a former hosiery mill converted by the town into a showcase space that houses the Pilot Mountain satellite campus of Surry Community College and Pilot Mountain Pride's warehouse and offices.

As government leaders met to figure out ways they can help former tobacco farmers find new crops or help young people stay on family farms, the cooperative was held up as a success story for how to do that.

It works with small- to medium-sized farms in the greater Winston-Salem area to give them access to markets they wouldn't otherwise tap. Pilot Mountain Pride helps farmers in Surry, Stokes, Forsyth, Yadkin and Wilkes counties in North Carolina and Patrick and Carroll counties in Virginia sell local food...

For the complete article continue reading at the Winston-Salem Journal