Maude D. Bauschard

“It’s back to the old barn-raising thing,” said Nicola Macpherson, a mushroom farmer who lent a hand at Wiseman’s farm near Union in Franklin County. “You can’t do all this stuff by yourself.”
Sometimes you need a mob.

The basic notion is almost as old as farming itself: People join together to get a big job done. And crop mobs are contemporary incarnations of this old-fashioned concept.

Read the full article here: Proposed legislation could affect local farmers :: WRAL.com.

Summary below:

Proposed rules from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could have a significant negative impact on the state’s local food economy, according to a nonprofit group that serves the interests of local farmers and consumers…

Carolina Farm Stewardship Association says costs for small-scale farmers and food suppliers to comply could exceed 150 hours in labor and as much as $20,000 in consulting and testing per year.

The group’s executive director, Roland McReynolds, says small businesses are not the source of the vast majority of illnesses that the legislation targets.

“These and other costs for complying with one-size-fits-all food safety rules could force many small farms and food businesses to abandon value-added markets,” McReynolds said.

It could also lead to significant job losses, he said.