NCAT Headquarters

NCAT's headquarters office has been located in the historic Silver Bow County Poor Farm Hospital building in Butte, Montana, since 1976. This office, NCAT's largest, houses NCAT's Accounting, Personnel, and Information Services offices, as well as the Executive Director.

NCAT has been an active member of the Butte community for many years, making its Resource Center available to the public and offering demonstrations of renewable energy and sustainable building technologies.

News

NCAT's Grow Montana project was featured in a 30-minute episode of HomeGround Radio in April 2008. The program is heard on public radio stations across Montana. In addition, Yellowstone Public Radio has archived the program for online listening.

NCAT is encouraging eligible agricultural producers to apply for Farm Bill Section 9006 Funding that provides grants and loans for energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy development. More information about applying for the program is available as a PDF file.

Montana Department of Agriculture Director Ron de Yong will visit NCAT's Butte office May 1, to learn more about NCAT's projects, services, and capacity.

NCAT Southeast

NCAT opened an office in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in the late 1980s. Today the office is located in the heart of Fayetteville, on the first floor of the historic Walker-Stone House, built in 1845. It functions as a hub for NCAT's sustainable agriculture activities throughout the Southeast.

NCAT's Southeast office has cooperated with educational institutions in the area over the course of many years, providing expert speakers for courses, working collaboratively on research projects, and offering internships for students from schools such as the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and in Pine Bluff.

News

NCAT's Southeast office was one of the exhibitors at The Living It Green Expo held in Rogers, Arkansas, April 5-6. More than 60,000 people attended the event, and had a chance to learn more about NCAT, its publications, and services.

NCAT Northeast

NCAT's Northeast office opened in January of 2007, and is located at "The Lands at Hillside Farms,"a nonprofit organization that maintains an historic farm. By virtue of its location, this office is well-positioned to work with a number of other regional organizations, and to provide technical assistance and outreach to individuals and groups in the area.

The Northeast office is particularly active in promoting sustainable agriculture, local foods, and renewable sources of farm energy.

News

Northeast Office staff members Lee Rinehart and Andy Pressman completed organic inspector training offered at the end of 2007 by the Independent Organic Inspectors Association (IOIA) and have each earned Certificates of Completion denoting satisfactory scores on both the written assignment and written test. Lee completed the Basic Livestock Inspection Training and Andy completed the Basic Crop Inspection Training.

NCAT California

NCAT's California office is located at the historic Glide Ranch in Davis, with the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. The California office helps NCAT to meet the needs of a large and diverse agricultural community. It serves as a hub for NCAT's work with immigrant and Spanish-speaking farmers.

NCAT collaborates with many government agencies and nonprofit organizations in the region, offering training on transitioning to organic agriculture, direct marketing, and other sustainable agriculture topics.

News

Recently NCAT's Sustainable American Cotton Project brought researchers and a cotton farmer from Georgia and Arizona to California to see how some producers are using ecological management for agricultural pests. The project expands on the work of the Sustainable Cotton Project (SCP), managed by the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, by having farmers, researchers, and extension agents from other areas visit some California operations where farmers are experimenting with habitat plantings in or near their cotton fields.

NCAT Midwest

NCAT opened its Lewis, Iowa, office early in 2006. This office is housed at the Wallace Foundation for Rural Research & Development, at the site of the Iowa State University Armstrong Research Farm, which conducts agronomic, horticultural, and livestock research.

In addition to providing NCAT an anchor in the heart of the Farm Belt for its sustainable agriculture work, the Midwest Office is deeply involved in local food system development in its region.

News

NCAT's Regional Office Director Holly Born is serving as coordinator for Southwest Iowa Food & Farm Initiative (SWIFFI).  SWIFFI was funded by the Leopold Center in 2007 and again in 2008 to create a strategic plan for developing a regional food system. In March, Born put on workshop with local regulators to clarify regulations for local foods purchase and sale. About 45 people attended the workshop, and presentations from the event have been posted to the SWIFFI website.

Earlier in March, Born arranged a trip that brought SWIFFI members to Sioux City, Iowa, to visit the Floyd Boulevard Local Food Market and learn about the Woodbury County model of using organic agriculture to stimulate economic development.

NCAT's Midwest Office is also involved in launching a Southwest Iowa Buy Fresh Buy Local chapter. Holly Born spoke on SWIFFI, Buy Fresh Buy Local, NCAT and ATTRA to the Southwest Iowa Coalition on April 22.

NCAT Gulf States

NCAT opened a new regional office in Hammond, Louisiana, in 2007. The Gulf States office is located on the campus of Southeastern Louisiana University.

NCAT had been quite active in the Gulf States region even before opening an office there, aiding in a variety of hurricane recovery and relief efforts. The Gulf States office is especially engaged in helping develop local and sustainable food production and marketing capacity in the region.

News

On June 27, nearly 70 participants joined in a tour that NCAT Gulf States organized of farmers' markets and producers in the Hattiesburg, Mississippi, area. The tour visited retailers, farms, packing facilities, and markets, and introduced participating producers to high tunnel growing.