North Carolina boasts nearly 43,000 farms covering over 8.1 million acres of farmland, producing $18.7 billion in agriculture product sales (eighth in the nation in 2022). Even more impressive, output from the food industry totaled more than $100 billion, making it the state’s number one industry.
Always in flux, North Carolina’s agriculture sector is undergoing several trends, including technological integration, crop diversification, market expansion, finding efficiency, environmental restoration, and producing value-added products. Challenges are ever-present. Currently, they include high input costs (from seeds and fertilizers to equipment and labor), external competition (not just from other states, but other nations), fluctuations in interest rates, and the increasing burden of state and federal regulations. Experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic and the policy reactions to it exposed supply-chain and other vulnerabilities that still require solutions.
The pandemic also worsened the growing food insecurity problem in North Carolina. Over 10 percent of North Carolinians struggle to secure enough food for a healthy lifestyle, according to the USDA. Only about 6 percent of adults in the state report consuming at least two servings of vegetables or fruits per day. Meanwhile, over one-third are obese, according to their BMIs.
Worse, supermarket prices outpaced the overall inflation rate in a time of rising prices, increasing by 25 percent from 2019 to 2023. Supply-chain disruptions, labor shortages, weather impacts, increased transportation costs, and competitive market dynamics all play significant roles in shaping food prices.
Climate policies such as carbon pricing add significant expenses to farmers’ operating budgets, translating to an annual increase in a family of four’s grocery bills by $1,330. Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting requirements and emissions monitoring increase participating farms’ annual operating expenses by an estimated 34 percent, beyond the reach of many smaller farms despite their need for market access.
A survey conducted for this report interviewed 800 registered voters and found significant disparities in access to affordable, nutritious food. Here are some:
- 45 percent of voters in urban areas were living in food deserts
- 39 percent of voters in rural areas were living in food deserts
- Over 90 percent of those surveyed had access to transportation to and from grocery stores, contradicting conventional wisdom
- Black respondents were more likely to face food insecurity — 22 percent reported sometime skipping meals over lack of affordability, and 33 percent reported having to choose between buying food and paying bills
Other issues examined here include: GAP certification, which is supposed to increase food safety but is prohibitively expensive and stringent for small-scale farms, impeding their ability to earn profits and grow as a business; local zoning regulations, which can either hurt or help farming activities; North Carolina’s Right-to-Farm laws, which protect farms against nuisance lawsuits; permitting hurdles; and regulatory challenges in such disparate activities as raw milk sales, meat processing, and selling value-added products like jams, jellies, butters, and rendered animal fats.
In response to these problems, this report recommends several policy solutions:
- Expand North Carolina’s regulatory sandbox to agriculture
- Streamline zoning and permitting processes
- Strengthen Right-to-Farm protections
- Promote agritourism and value-added activities
- Address the impact of ESG and environmental policies on farm profitability
- Build coalitions to resist overly burdensome federal and state-level mandates
To learn more, visit sowingresilience.org.
