AGRICULTURE

Agriculture and agribusiness account for one-sixth of North Carolina’s economy and employees, and more than 17 percent, or $84 billion, of the $482 billion Gross State Product. It’s no wonder farmland preservation is viewed as important to the future of our state. One way agricultural lands in our state are being protected is through Voluntary […]

Although North and South Carolina are urbanizing, with fast-growing cities and suburbs, agriculture remains a major piece of the economy for both states. Agriculture contributes $78 billion to North Carolina’s economy and $42 billion to South Carolina’s. It’s fairly well-known that North Carolina is a major turkey producer (No. 2 in the nation). But what […]

This article first appeared in the spring 2000 issue of “The LandMark,” the newsletter of The LandTrust for Central North Carolina. It is reprinted with permission of the author and the LandTrust. When European explorers and colonists, African slaves and their descendants were discovering and settling America, they confronted a vast, unknown wilderness. Trying to […]

For those seeking an autumn day trip, a new exhibit at the Stanly County Museum in Albemarle, paired with a visit to an old family homestead in nearby Morrow Mountain State Park, will reward visitors with a unique blend of regional history and natural beauty. And taken together they may inspire deeper thinking about issues […]

During one of my college English classes, the professor told us Southern literature is distinguished by a heightened sense of family, history and place. (In a cheeky paper published years later, another UNC professor offered evidence to suggest the signifier can actually be reduced to a single entity: the presence of a dead mule.) Recently, […]

Talk of the Towns is a PlanCharlotte series visiting planners from the 14-county Charlotte region. This installment takes us to Iredell County. This county of 162,708 people covers a lot of ground – from Charlotte suburbs on Lake Norman shores, to an older industrial county seat of Statesville, to rural communities in the northern part […]

Is “urban agriculture” possible in a city like Charlotte? Can backyard chickens and rooftop gardens solve urban hunger? The public will get a chance to consider those questions – and sip martinis crafted from local ingredients – at the June 13 KEEPING WATCH Clean Martini Screens. The event, free and open to the public, will […]

Where there once were weeds, there is now a farm field, planted in potatoes, broccoli and greens. Where there once was a defunct greenhouse, there are now floating trays bursting with lettuce, fed by water circulating through a tank of tilapia. A year has passed since Friendship Gardens’ Henry Owen and his team of enthusiastic […]

Just northeast of uptown Charlotte in the Tryon Hills neighborhood, in a previously abandoned and cluttered warehouse, is Lila’s Garden. There is graffiti on the entrance, but once you step inside, you are met with a garden that appears to be from the future. Rows of leafy greens and microgreens are bathed in purple light […]

If I didn’t have natural places to visit – trails to hike, rivers to kayak, mountains to climb, the sound of total quiet deep in the woods and of running brooks and streams – my life would be far less full. Famous naturalist John Muir said, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to […]