ASAP Connections

ASAP’s Local Food Experience

August 15, 2019, 6-8:30 pm, New Belgium Brewing Co.
Treat yourself to a fun and delicious evening celebrating where our food comes from. Proceeds benefit ASAP’s programs to help local farms thrive and build healthy communities through connections to local food. Learn more and purchase tickets today!

Calling All Photographers and Local Food Enthusiasts!

Each year ASAP prints a calendar showcasing the seasonality of local food and farms in the Appalachian Grown region. We are thrilled to bring back a photo contest for our 2020 calendar! Thirteen winning photos will be printed in the calendar (twelve months + the cover), and will be featured each month in ASAP’s social media and e-newsletter. See contest rules and submission instructions.

Connecting the Dots with Mountain Food Products (aired July 22, 2019)

It’s a busy morning at Mountain Food Products. Employees are answering phones, rifling through paper invoices, and getting deliveries ready for the day. Boxes of tomatoes and peaches are packed up and wheeled out to trucks, which will deliver produce to hundreds of restaurants in Western North Carolina.   READ MORE

Growing Local airs on WNCW on Mondays during Morning Edition at 8:45 am, featuring the local food and farm stories we discover through our Local Food Research Center. Past broadcasts are archived on our website and can be heard on SoundCloud or iTunes.

What’s Fresh July 19-25, 2019

Corn, tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos—it’s officially salsa season at farmers tailgate markets!

Two markets are offering special events capitalizing on salsa fever: West Asheville Tailgate Market’s Pepperpalooza will take place this Tuesday, July 23, featuring a hot pepper eating contest, hot sauce tasting, demonstrations of ristra (a traditional Spanish method for drying peppers), and more. Weaverville Tailgate Market’s salsa competition and fundraiser is the following week, on Wednesday, July 31. Register to enter via the market’s Facebook page—or just show up to taste the contenders and vote your picks.  READ MORE

2017 UDSA Census of Agriculture: Initial Impressions

The USDA Census of Agriculture, released every five years, is the most comprehensive and consistent source of data available regarding farm businesses, farmland, and farmers, down to the county level, and is a valuable tool for our Local Food Research Center. The 2017 Census was released April 11, and our research team has been hard at work drawing initial impressions from the more than six million data points.

2018 Appalachian Grown Producer Report

This report contains the findings from our annual survey of Appalachian Grown farmers used to assess the impact of the Appalachian Grown program and ASAP’s support