Piedmont Crops Get Second Chance
While some of North Carolina is continuing to be very hot and dry for the
month of August--in the Piedmont at least, growers of the area's cash crops
are apparently pleased with ample rainfall for the month. Tim Hamrick, an
agricultural agent from Forsythe County says things are looking up
“With the way August has gone, not just from a rain perspective, but from a temperature perspective, too.”
Sanderson Farms Expanding into Kinston, NC pt 1
The nation’s fourth largest poultry processor, Sanderson Farms, announced in early 2008 the plans for a fully integrated poultry processor in Lenoir County, just outside Kinston. Then nothing.
Bob Billingsley, Director of Development and Engineering for Sanderson Farms explains why the Kinston project was put on hold:
“In 2008 when we had the issues with the economy, and corn and soy, the feed ingredients to us got high, and credit issues in the country, we project on hold. It was never an issue of “if” we’d come to Kinston, it was always “when” we would come to Kinston. Our balance sheet drives our company, it drives what we do, it drives the growth of our company, and we paused in ’08. And a little over a year ago, we brought the project back on line with a January 2011 start-up, and we’re on target to meet that schedule, as we speak.”
Sanderson has quietly become a major player in the poultry industry, processing 8.125 million birds weekly. Billingsley describes the operations at their Kinston plant:
“We’ve got a hatchery, that we’re in today, and it’s a 60,000 foot pre-cast constructed hatchery that will provide the baby chicks that will support this facility. The beginning of November, we’ll start placing eggs in here and being able to hatch baby chicks to go onto the farms, the contract producers that we’ve secured in this area sometime the middle of November.
We’ve got a 8,000 ton per week feed mill that will provide the feed for these birds that we’ll be growing in eastern North Carolina, and we’ll bring that online sometime in November as well. That feed mill, as I mentioned, capable of producing 8,000 tons per week we will use as much local corn, and local ingredients as we can get, then we also have the capacity on site to bring in 75-car unit trains from the Midwest to support our operations here.”
Sanderson Farms in Kinston will be a retail servicing operation, in spite of their proximity to several major Atlantic ports. Billingsley says that one of their criteria for moving to Kinston was to more efficiently service their east coast customers, utilizing the I-95 corridor as far north as New York, as well as building their business:
“The closer you can get to a customer the better your able to service them, and one of the hallmarks of our company is always been customer service. And this will just allow us to be able to be there, to be close to them and service them and take care of them as you should.”
We’ll hear more from Bob Billingsley, Director of Development and Engineering with Sanderson Farms
26-year Study Links Protein Substitutes for Red Meat with Lower Heart Disease Risk
A 26-year Nurses’ Health Study, which tracked over 84,000 women between 30 and 55 years old from 1980 to 2006, showed higher consumption of red meat sharply increased the risk of heart disease and that substituting fish, poultry and low-fat dairy products and nuts significantly decreased that risk.
The women who ate two servings per day of red meat compared to those who ate half a serving per day had a 30 percent higher risk of developing coronary heart disease, according to the study, which was published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
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