A meeting at Camp Lejeune will be bringing together a variety of agencies.

“The meeting brings together the military and many state agencies and universities. It’s called the Southeastern Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability, and I am one of the co-chairs.
 

The mission is to protect working lands like farms, fisheries and forests. It is primarily close to military bases. And what the military and agriculture both have in common is that farms are something we both have to have. So this is a good collaboration between the largest industry in NC, agriculture, and the military which is number two.
 

The military’s primary interest in farmland is that farmland is a perfect fit for their training exercises. So when you protect the farmland, you protect the military bases by not having structures and things that would impede the training.
 

The goal is that we want to collaboratively find a way to preserve more farms, fisheries and forest in NC and sustain them. The ideas that have come from these meetings have resulted in some very worthy projects that are now going on in NC. We want to expand on that and continue to put the ideas for that will carry us both into the future.”