'Small Farms, Big Impacts': It's Lee County Ag Week
Lee County Ag Week kicked off Thursday with a breakfast at the McSwain Center that featured discussions of agriculture in Lee County.
County Extension Director Bill Stone said this year's theme, 'Small Farms, Big Impacts,' recognizes the emergence of more small farms across the county. He said Ag Week is designed to celebrate the role these farms play in the economy, stewardship of the land and the preservation of the rural character of the community. Stone noted that it is the fourth annual Lee County Ag Week.
'By recognizing the importance of these small farms, while continuing to support businesses and operations of all sizes, Lee County can ensure a vibrant agricultural sector for years to come,' Stone said.
Jimmy Randolph, CEO of the Sanford Area Growth Alliance, also spoke, including about the important relationship of agriculture and economic development.
'I don't think the importance of that relationship can be overstated,' he said. 'For our community, agriculture was the basis for our economy at the beginning for the City of Sanford and the County of Lee. I'm excited to say that relationship is still strong and that agriculture is still an incredibly important part of the local economy.'
'We have conserved and maintained agriculture,' he said.
Randolph noted that the county commissioners took an innovative approach to the conservation of farmland.
'They worked with other organizations to put in place a policy that would allow us to support the conservation of farmland in a really big way,' he said. 'I'm really excited about that and appreciative of the effort the commissioners have put in to understanding the opportunities and investing it.'
Sanford Mayor Rebecca Wyhof Salmon gave an update on the Pilgrims Sanford Agricultural Marketplace, where ground was broken late last year.
'We can begin to envision what this project is going to look like. This will kick off the City of Sanford Central Green. The farmer's market is fantastic. It's not just a building,' she said.
Salmon noted that the first week of this year's market drew more than 1,400 people to shop and look at the items available. She also said the target date to open the new marketplace is spring of 2026.
Lee County Commission Chair Kirk Smith said the county is growing rapidly, and that as of 2024, it had 67,615 residents.
'You can drive down Tramway Road and see building here and building there,' he said. 'We're building a library and an athletic park, and we've got some other things on the agenda.'
Smith said the growth means pressure for services like police, fire and city and county government.
'But that pressure also extends to the farms and forest lands,' he said. 'In 2021, the General Assembly adopted the Farm Act of 2021. From that act, Dr. (Bill) Stone and his staff, and the agricultural advisory board, Triangle Land Conservancy and others, sat down and updated and Lee County's agricultural development and farmland preservation ordinances.'
He noted that by doing this, farmland would be preserved and maintained in the future.
Attendees also got a chance to hear from local farmers Aaron and Hunter Ayers of Ayers Family Farm.
The farm, which raises a variety of crops and livestock, has been in existence since 1941.
Hunter Ayers spoke about the relationship that farmers have with all of the stakeholders who were present in the room.
'They allow us to do what we do and do it well,' she said. 'I just want to say thank you to SAGA, the Board of Commissioners and everyone here. You've always done a great job to make room for farmers.'
Both men praised the farmer's market for giving them and other farmers a place to sell their goods locally.
'We love being farmers in Lee County,' Hunter said. 'It's what we do. We value the community and what you do for us.'
They later closed their presentation by noting 'what farmers ask of you.'
'Farmers across the nation face daily challenges. If there are three things farmers would ask of you, they would be: One, pray for farmers across the U.S. Two, support your local growers. Three, provide a voice for agriculture.'
'The future of agriculture (in Lee County) is pretty good,' said Sarah Kirby, interim associate dean and director of the NC State Extension.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
14 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Lakes of the Four Seasons fire department calls for aid for financial situation
The Lakes of the Four Seasons Volunteer Fire Force answered nearly 1,500 calls for help in 2024. Now it's issuing one of its own. With this year's Senate Enrolled Act 1 promising to choke revenue to the West Porter Township Fire Protection District, combined with a decline in volunteerism, fire protection and EMS service straddling the Lake and Porter County line is facing financial peril. The fire department and fire protection district jointly approached the Porter County Council on Tuesday to make its case for assistance. The cuts don't begin until 2027, but the time to cry out is when the knife first appears, not when the slashing begins. Last year, the district began offering EMS service. Fire department attorney Nathan Vis said the department's response time for EMS calls is four to five minutes, which is faster than average. With a third-party provider, it would be seven to 15 minutes, he guessed. 'We're requesting this evening as much support as you can give us,' he told the council. The department has three ambulances, two of which are staffed by full-time employees. 'We need to hire more persons to assure we have a higher response time,' he said. Providing EMS service costs about $240,000 a year, Vis said. 'We've maxed out the revenue opportunities' the department has, he said. Winfield rents space to the department for $1 a year, about a $10,000 value, he said. Until last fall, the department hadn't had a formal contract nor any government dollars from a Porter County agency, he said. The fire protection district is looking at becoming a fire protection territory, something Porter County Council members have discussed as an option for funding EMS service and fire protection throughout the county's unincorporated areas. 'Unfortunately, it's going to have to come from the (township) trustees. It's going to have to be the townships coming together,' said Council Vice President Ronald 'Red' Stone, R-1st. West Porter Township Fire Protection District Chairman Craig Klauer said aging infrastructure, increasing call volume and equipment costs are taking a toll. For now, however, capital expenditures have been put on hold to focus on providing EMS service. Porter County officials are working on providing ambulance service throughout the county. That includes determining how many ambulances might be needed to serve areas not covered by fire departments that currently provide EMS service. One option might be to add an ambulance in the Boone Grove area, Stone said. For Lakes of the Four Seasons, the closest ambulance would be from either Hebron or Wheeler if not for the fire department. 'When you're thumping on someone's chest for three to five minutes, you're saying where the hell is that ambulance. When are they going to be here,' Klauer said. The county currently contracts with Northwest Health to provide EMS service. 'I will never disrespect NW Health ambulance technicians vs. a regular fire department,' Stone said. 'They're great, but they're spread so thin. They're covering mostly northern' Porter County, Klauer said. And while Northwest Health ambulances traditionally transport patients to the hospital at U.S. 6 and Ind. 49, the nearest hospitals for Lakes of the Four Seasons are in Crown Point and Hobart. 'We've got to sit down and go over all this,' said Councilman Greg Simms, D-3rd, who serves on the EMS committee. 'Right now, we're thinking five ambulances throughout the county, but now I'm thinking maybe six.' Complicating the issue is that Lakes of the Four Seasons, which the fire department serves, straddles the county line. The department also serves the town of Winfield and unincorporated Winfield Township, as well as west Porter Township. The department and fire protection district have a spreadsheet that separates the call volume by geography to help guide financial decisions by local government entities that could help support fire protection and EMS service.
Business Insider
18 hours ago
- Business Insider
Flipside Launches AI Platform That Delivers Real-Time Blockchain Intelligence to Combat Crypto Hype Cycles
Boston, MA, July 24th, 2025, Chainwire FlipsideAI lets anyone understand and make decisions about crypto activity across 35+ blockchains by simply asking questions in natural language, helping projects and individuals apply smarter growth strategies based on real data instead of hype. Flipside today announced the public launch of FlipsideAI, an AI-powered intelligence platform that generates growth insights and executes hyper-targeted campaigns across 35+ blockchains using proprietary address scoring data and algorithms. FlipsideAI can be easily accessed through the Flipside Model Context Protocol, or MCP, in market-leading LLMs like Claude, Gemini, and Cursor, or Flipside's own proprietary LLM chat interface. With the Flipside MCP, now anyone can analyze and act on real-time blockchain activity through natural language prompts, or vibecoding, eliminating the need to spend hours writing SQL code. Together with this launch, Flipside has also boldly retired its SQL studio, leading the industry's evolution from code-based to AI-driven products. "Understanding onchain behavior used to require a savvy analyst coding deep SQL queries," said Eric Stone, Co-Founder & Chief Data Scientist at Flipside. "Now, you can literally vibecode blockchain insights and growth strategies in minutes combined with the full power of LLM solutions using Flipside's MCP tools." Embedded with Flipside's proprietary address scoring model, FlipsideAI gives growth teams the onchain intelligence needed to design and execute sustainable growth campaigns. "The Flipside Growth MCP does much more than add an AI connector on top of static data. Our AI agents are essentially running 24/7 research sprints across the entire crypto ecosystem," explains Stone. "They're constantly learning from new transaction data, identifying behavioral shifts, and building the intelligence layer that powers instant insights through conversational AI." Growth teams can now obtain insights in seconds with prompts like: 'What are the latest trends for high-scoring users in our network?' 'Which protocols do users in our network use the most?' 'What activities create the most high-value users in our network?' FlipsideAI generated dashboard of top blockchains Equipped with these insights, crypto growth teams can readily identify who their most valuable users are, what activities are creating the most on-chain value, and directly target growth campaigns to develop more high-value users and activities. This sustainable growth approach is a stark contrast to the hype-driven, pump-and-dump cycles that are commonplace in crypto, leading to 50%+ of tokens launched since 2021 failing. Flipside has worked with 40+ protocols, including Solana, Avalanche, Near, Stellar, Aptos, and Marinade, to drive $168.3M in onchain economic activity since 2024, 128x ROI per dollar in campaign spend, and 76.2% new-to-chain user acquisition. In the first half of 2025, Avalanche leveraged Flipside to acquire 77,500 wallets, driving $5.65MM in onchain activity with 3.2X higher retention rates. 'The hardest thing for blockchain networks today is developing users that will provide value in the long-run,' says John Nahas, Chief Business Officer for Ava Labs. 'Using Flipside, we were able to pinpoint the user journey that created the most high-value users for our ecosystem and drive on-chain volume through focused activations.' Bringing Blockchain Intelligence to Millions of Crypto Users FlipsideAI also delivers highly available blockchain intelligence to everyday crypto users. Today, there are an estimated 560M blockchain users, but only a tiny fraction of those users have the technical sophistication to analyze blockchain data. Instead, decisions on which blockchain ecosystems to support and invest in are made overly based on following key opinion leaders (KOLs) and social media attention. Through the Flipside MCP, anyone can now do deep blockchain research that is currently limited to the most sophisticated analyst teams. Crypto users can better understand ecosystems, uncover cross-chain trends, and make more intelligent decisions on which networks to support and invest in. 'The same intelligence that only elite crypto projects and funds could afford is now available to anyone curious enough to ask the right questions,' said Jim Myers, Co-Founder and CTO at Flipside. 'Now individuals in the crypto ecosystem no longer need to rely on gut feel or hype-chasing to understand the right strategies and trends to follow. This will create a natural demand for more credible projects that will put crypto on a more sustainable growth path.' For a limited time during the launch period, users are invited to get access to FlipsideAI at no cost here. About Flipside Crypto Flipside Crypto powers blockchain growth through actionable, AI-driven intelligence. The platform combines cross-chain data analysis with proprietary wallet scoring algorithms to create targeted growth strategies that drive transaction volume and build long-term user retention. Flipside Crypto has partnered with industry leaders like Avalanche, NEAR, BOB, and Kraken to deliver measurable growth outcomes across the Web3 ecosystem. Founded in 2017, Flipside is backed by investors including Republic, Tribe, Galaxy, Coinbase, and True Ventures. Contact VP Marketing Brett Li
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Moncler revenue edges higher amid a deceleration in tourist flows
-- Moncler posted a slight rise in first-half revenue, navigating a challenging global environment marked by slowing tourist flows and softening consumer demand in key markets. Group revenue reached €1.23 billion in the six months to June 30, up 1% at constant exchange rates (cFX), with core Moncler brand sales also inching up 1% cFX to €1.04 billion. Stone Island revenue fell 1% cFX to €186.7 million, though the brand posted a 6% gain in the second quarter. Second-quarter Moncler sales slipped 2% cFX, impacted by a slowdown in the Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) channel, particularly in EMEA and Japan. However, revenue in the Americas gained 5% cFX, supported by improving DTC performance. Group EBIT declined to €224.8 million from €258.7 million, with the margin narrowing to 18.3% from 21% a year earlier, mainly due to the phasing of marketing spend. Net income dropped to €153.5 million from €180.7 million. 'The first half of the year reminded us once again how unpredictable and complex the world can be,' said CEO Remo Ruffini. 'Amid ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, our Group will continue to operate with consistency and resilience.' The company ended the period with €980.8 million in net cash after paying €345 million in dividends. Capital expenditure rose to €82 million, reflecting increased investment in infrastructure and store expansion. Looking ahead, Moncler said it remains focused on agility and brand investment as it enters the second half of 2025, which it described as marked by 'elevated' geopolitical and economic uncertainty. Related articles Moncler revenue edges higher amid a deceleration in tourist flows These Under-the-Radar Stocks Offer Better Risk-Reward Ratio Than Nvidia Surge of 50% since our AI selection, this chip giant still has great potential Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
