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.

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On September 4, NCAT coordinated an electronics recycling opportunity for the Butte community. For a small fee, people could recycle obsolete or unwanted electronic devices at a central drop-off point.

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.

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NCAT's Southeast office staffed a display booth during Twist of Green—a family-friendly event that focused on showcasing the area’s organizations, resources, and research that focus on sustainable living— in Fayetteville October 4-5. NCAT staff members Alice Beetz and Robyn Metzger designed a display that demonstrated how to use a home worm bin as a way to convert kitchen waste into a valuable resource for gardening or houseplants. Festival-goers were able to harvest worms from an established bin and transfer them to a new one. NCAT staff were able to introduce NCAT to community members and make some contacts with people who were interested in sustainability and alternative energy.

NCAT also recently served as a sponsor for the Fayetteville Sustainability Summit. This event was designed to help citizens, students and local businesses learn how the City of Fayetteville, its business partners and its corporate citizens are leading the way in sustainability initiatives. Southeast office staff attended sessions and staffed an NCAT booth.

NCAT's Southeast office hosted a sustainable agriculture roundtable discussion for the World Food Day event that was held at the University of Arkansas October 16.

NCAT hosted a Sustainable Agriculture Appetizers event with Fred Kirschenmann in Fayetteville, in cooperation with Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG) and Ozark Slow Food.

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.

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NCAT Northeast led a workshop on building a hoophouse at a farm in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania on September 10th, hosted by Heidi Secord and sponsored by the Pennsylvania Women in Agriculture. About 20 participants joined in the building process. Through the course of the day they set foundation posts, erected bows, installed purlins and began truss construction. Participants went away with a basic understanding of what it takes to build a hoophouse, including site selection, leveling, squaring, and erecting the hoops.

NCAT partnered with the Commission on Economic Opportunity of Luzerne County to place an electronic benefit transfer machine at the Wilkes-Barre Farmers Market. Customers can now utilize food stamps, debit, and credit cards to purchase locally-grown fruits and vegetables from area farmers.

NCAT has teamed up with Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre to start a student-run entrepreneurial farm based on the SPIN-Farming model. The farm includes a 2200 square-foot plot on campus and a 3000 square-foot plot located at The Lands at Hillside Farms in Shavertown. Student Farmers Nate Kenny, Andrew Bookin, Natalie Harvey, Rachel Curtis, and Jason Brady have been working hard planting, weeding, and marketing crops to local institutions. In addition, they are currently developing an indoor shoot growing operation that will supply shoots, sprouts, and microgreens year-round.

An exciting partnership has been established between the farmers and Brad Geiser, Head Chef at the Wilkes University Dining Services, who will offer the farm's produce in the campus dining facility. The student farm, named the Fenner Farm after the building where the shoot production operation is housed, promises to be an impetus for strengthening the local food and farming movement in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

NCAT is collaborating with The Intervale in Burlington, Vermont to publish a guidebook for organizations interested in developing a farmer incubator program in their area.

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.

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In collaboration with California Farmlink and UC Cooperative Extension, NCAT's California office staff members Rex Dufour and Marisa Alcorta put on an August 21 workshop targeted toward Hmong and Mien growers. The workshop was funded by the USDA Risk Management Agency, and included a morning session focused on business planning, and an afternoon session that covered land access and financing.

During the summer, California office intern Pamela Williams has been translating several ATTRA publications into Spanish, reviewing the NCAT/ATTRA Spanish webpage, and providing review on the Biorationals Database.

The California office recently finished formatting and posting a new publication, Positive Practices in Farm Labor Management, in collaboration with the California Institute for Rural Studies (CIRS). This successful collaboration has resulted in a second collaboration to develop a publication focused on farmers sharing profits with farm workers

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.

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.

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NCAT has been working with local farmers' markets to develop vendor production capacity and comply with local regulations. NCAT has also been introducing area producers to season-extending high tunnel technology.

Gulf States Program Specialist Michael McNair attended the Federation of Southern Cooperatives 41st Annual Conference in Epes, Alabama, in August. After this conference, he also attended a Train the Trainers workshop in Mobile, sponsored by AAMU small Farms Research Center and Alabama Cooperative Extension Service. The workshop addressed topics such as retirement planning, estate planning, land loss prevention, government programs, alternative farm business enterprises and sustainable agriculture.