- I'm Tyler Harper.

As your Agriculture Commissioner, I have the honor of representing one of the hardest working groups of people in our state, our farmers.

That's why we invite you to take the Georgia Grown Challenge.

Try any Georgia specialty crop against any other state's produce, and you'll pick Georgia-grown.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Community, learning, working, playing, celebrating.

Doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything.

From our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations, to our fun in person events, we've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

- I'm Tyler Harper.

As your Agriculture Commissioner, I have the honor of representing one of the hardest working groups of people in our state, our farmers.

That's why we invite you to take the Georgia Grown Challenge.

Try any Georgia specialty crop against any other state's produce, and you'll pick Georgia-grown.

- The fascinating and ever-changing world of agriculture.

(upbeat music) Let's hit the road here in Georgia and meet the farmers, producers, makers, and bakers who keep us all fed and keep us coming back for more, straight ahead at "A Fork in the Road".

(upbeat music) ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ - [David] Georgia farmers, artisans, merchants, and producers, we depend on these men and women every day of our lives through the choices we make and the food we consume.

Their strategy and approach is always shifting, but the end game remains the same, results.

(gentle music) It's about ending hunger in Georgia, in America.

It takes time, dedication, and determination from thousands of selfless individuals who have a collective compassion of helping others in need.

It's a combination of these individuals, along with farmers, volunteers, and support from government funding, to secure, store, and distribute food to those in need.

Time to meet a few of these community heroes and understand their effort to feed Georgia.

(upbeat music) Let's begin this journey in East Point at the Atlanta Community Food Bank, a central hub of the overall mission to feed Georgia.

(upbeat music) There are more than 2,000 pantries distributing food throughout Georgia to over 150,000 unique individuals each week, adding up to more than 130 million pounds each year.

Feeding Georgia Executive Director Danah Craft has been part of this effort for several years, and has watched this community of helping end hunger expand.

- So there are eight Feeding America food banks that feed people who need food assistance in all 159 counties through a community-based network of 2,400 partner agencies and pantries, many of 'em local church pantries and congregations.

Seven of those food banks comprise Feeding Georgia.

Last year they distributed more than 173 million pounds of food through their 2,000 partner agencies and pantries.

They aggregate food from a lot of different places, including Georgia-grown produce from Georgia farmers, and they distribute the food to people who need it, where people are most likely to seek help.

And that is why our network is so strong and we are able to move so much food and fresh produce through our network.

We couldn't do what we do without the very generous grower network that we have here in Georgia.

So the farmers, when they are harvesting, many times will sort out, grade out the number two produce that's imperfect, and we provide a solution to them to be able to pick that produce up and get it to people in need.

Otherwise, they would plow that produce back under in the ground, and being able to fully harvest their fields is better for them and better for their ability to farm their land and manage the land that they're farming.

And so we provide an outlet for their generosity.

Our sharing methodology means that the local and closest food bank gets offered the produce first, and then we sort of move out in concentric circles.

I encourage anyone to find their food bank ar feedinggeorgia.org, and find a way to volunteer, because it is a wonderful experience that they would enjoy.

(gentle music) - [David] During my visit to the Atlanta Community Food Bank, I also ran into Chris Flint, who is the Executive Director of the Southeast Regional Cooperative, or SRC.

SRC is another branch of the Feeding America mission, connecting the agribusiness industry across the entire southeast with food banks and non-profits in their fight against hunger.

- The Southeast Regional Cooperative was formed in 2017 by the food banks in the Southeastern United States to do sourcing and logistics work for those food banks who needed a more consistent and larger supply of perishable products for their food banks.

We're here at Atlanta Community Food Bank.

They have been instrumental in helping us form, in the first place, and our continued success is in large part due to the support of Kyle Wade and the food bank at large.

So, we're grateful for their support and their cooperation, collaboration, and all the work that we've done over the last seven years.

The demand is there.

It's not going away.

It's constant.

And we love the work, and we love partners like Atlanta Community Food Bank and the other food banks in the Georgia Food Bank Association, Feeding Georgia.

Our first full year in existence, we did 8.5 million pounds of distribution, last year, we distributed over 108 million, and we're well on track to exceed that pretty dramatically this year.

And so that growth in seven years is pretty astronomical.

The effort to keep up with to scale that up has been something else.

(upbeat music) We're working to source, first, locally for that food bank.

We advocate on behalf of that local food bank, wherever they are, with the suppliers that are in that area.

And then if they can't take all the product that we've sourced, we then bring it out to the state level.

So, Feeding Georgia would be the next beneficiary of that work.

If Feeding Georgia can't take everything that's available, then we go to the region.

If the region can't take it all, we go across the country.

Typically, the closer to home we can stay, the better, and we're always conscious of shipping from the closest point to the closest point when we can.

This is a great example of the type of product that we get.

This out of Moultrie.

Great looking product.

That is freshly harvested.

I'm gonna guess that that harvest date is within a day or two of today, which is really pretty remarkable.

I mean, this could easily pass as number one product.

So these won't actually say Vidalia on them because they were harvested before the official open date of Vidalia onions, but they are in fact Vidalias, and they're really looking good.

You notice the variation in size in these.

Onions are sized, obviously, these are unsized, and that is part of why we're able to buy them at a much lower rate than we would otherwise be able to.

Speaking of collaboration, this is a collaboration with a grower that we work with right here, actually, who's packing these for us, five pound bags, which is just really convenient for our partner food banks.

(upbeat music) - [David] It's not the lack of food, it's about the lack of being able to get it to these people.

- Exactly.

It's a capacity issue.

It's always a capacity issue.

And, you know, the collaboration that we have with the food banks around the state allow us to provide them opportunities to get to agencies that they wouldn't likely have.

We have one small food bank, for example, that was struggling during that pandemic to distribute a full load of small boxes.

So instead, we worked out an arrangement with a directed grant that we had access to, where we could provide them the product and the freight in very small quantities so that they could build the muscle memory and the capacity locally to distribute more and more and more produce.

- [David] Chris then took me from the Atlanta Community Food Bank to the Atlanta State Farmers' Market in Forest Park, Georgia, to meet another important partner in the distribution of food across Georgia and the southeast.

We met Andrew Scott of the Nickey Gregory Company in season one.

This was in 2020 in the midst of the COVID pandemic.

Andrew and the folks at Nickey Gregory were prepared then for this collaborative role of helping others, and remain just as committed today.

(upbeat music) - We're a 24-year-old wholesaler based here on the Atlanta State Farmers' Market.

We've got 150,000 square feet of warehouse space.

We're a wholesaler and a processor and repacker.

We deliver to 11 states overnight out of Atlanta on our own fleet of trucks, our own drivers.

You know, you're selling something that's dying every day in this business, you know, when you're trying to sell fresh produce, so we try and hustle it as fast as we can.

We work with food service companies, wholesalers, retail companies, and food service companies across the whole southeast.

We fill that niche for them.

They call us by noon, and we deliver that night or the next day.

We've got the warehouse behind us and the inventory behind us.

We've got the trucks.

We've got the spoke and wheel to make all this happen.

And so we're almost like an ambulance service.

You know, you call us by noon and we deliver that night, next day.

- So this was probably harvested last Wednesday or Thursday, arrived to us on Friday, and it's still in great shape four days later as we're starting to pack boxes up.

Good, hardy product.

So these apples might seem a little small, so retail wouldn't like that too much.

However, it's great for food service with schools and for programs like this.

If I have a smaller apple and it's a good apple, but it's just too small for retail, so it works for us.

- So this is Jalen Garrick, and Jalen is our operations coordinator.

And with so many moving pieces in and out of this building with 30, 40 loads going into the building, and as many loads going back outta the building, there's a lot of coordinating that needs to happen between the inbound and the outbound, and that's where Jalen comes in.

He makes sure the right stuff gets here when it's supposed to get here, and he makes sure the right stuff leaves here when it's supposed to leave here.

You know, I always tell growers, wrong size, wrong color, damage from the field is fine as long as it's wholesome, healthy product that you'd be happy to eat yourself.

And these carrots are a perfect example.

If you look closely, you'll see that there are broken pieces in here.

There are long pieces, there are some broken pieces.

This is perfect for cooking, eating, snacking, anything you would do with a normal carrot.

It's just that we're able to procure this for a much lower cost because of the fact that it has the broken pieces and all that kind of stuff.

So it's truly not even a number two product.

It's just product that would otherwise not be sold in the market, and we're able to utilize it for a very positive purpose.

- [Narrator] We've met a few of the players involved in the process of securing, storing, and distributing food to those in need across Georgia, but there's much more to this story.

And that brings us back to East Point, to the Common Market Southeast, a mission-driven distributor of sustainable local farm foods to the Atlanta area and beyond.

(gentle music) - The Common Market was initially founded in 2008 in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area, in a neighborhood called Strawberry Mansions.

And our co-founders, Haile Johnston and Tatiana Granados Garcia, together founded The Common Market as a solution to combat both the inequities they saw in food that was available in many low income communities in Philadelphia, as well as the plight of the smaller farmer outside of the city.

And so they set up a shop in a local food bank to begin to bring in this food from smaller farmers who lacked access to institutional markets or larger scale markets, and started delivering that food to organizations that had reach within the community.

Public schools, hospitals, community organizations.

And that's how The Common Market was started.

In 2016, they expanded the concept to Atlanta because they saw some similar disparities with communities in Atlanta that had suffered from lack of sufficient food access, and a number of farmers, particularly farmers of color, outside of the city who lacked access to the markets that would serve those communities.

And that's how The Common Market came to, first, Atlanta, throughout Georgia, and later became The Common Market Southeast as our operations expanded into Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and the Georgia-Florida line.

This is where most of our operations take place.

And so the first thing that you'll notice here are the empty boxes that we use to do our Farm Fresh Box offering.

And what the Farm Fresh Box is, is it is our offering to the community that allows an organization who wants to feed 100, 200, 1,000 people, will order that number of boxes from us.

And then what we do is we aggregate produce, usually produce, but it can also be proteins, it could be eggs, it could be other value added product, but we will source that from our group of producers, and then we will put it in these boxes, palletize it for them, and deliver it.

(upbeat music) These are two other tenants that we have in our facility.

To my right is Concrete Jungle storage space.

Concrete Jungle started as a gleaning operation and provided food from the trees that they were gleaning from to local pantries to feed people in need.

They've since expanded.

They have more robust relationships with farmers now, to where they're purchasing number two, number three product from local farms, and then providing that food as well to local pantries.

They're a great partner of ours on some city contracts that we've shared together.

To my left is Eat Right Atlanta.

So the Johnson family started doing farmers' markets and hospitals, and have now expanded to other types of organizations they do farmers' markets in.

They also have their own farm now, where they're growing their own food, and they also are developing a home delivery business as well.

They've got eight to 10 people who are usually here feverishly packing these orders.

So they're another one of our great tenants here.

(gentle music) So, as we move into our processing area, this is where we receive our product.

This is where we ship out, right through this door.

So this is the area where Neil, our operations director, makes sure that all the product that comes in is fresh, makes sure it's what we ordered, and as we're processing orders, that each customer gets exactly what they ordered.

Traceability is extremely important to us.

And so every product that leaves here, every case of product, has a label on it that tells us the name of the farm, the lot code that it came from, and other identifying information, because according to our food safety plan, we have to be able to identify every case of product that came from every farm in case of a recall or other reason that we would need to further handle that product.

So now we're gonna go into the cooler, where you'll see where we do most of our storage and processing of product.

You'll see TJ here, who's wrapping up an order that's gonna go out on tomorrow's trucks.

So, in this space, we have space for our tenants.

So, Concrete Jungle, this is their product here.

This is where all of our allergen product, our eggs, nuts, milk.

Market 166 has product back here.

Eat Right Atlanta is in here.

But as you see TJ wrapping up this order, this is wholesale product that goes out to the customer for them to further process.

But then here are some of the Farm Fresh Boxes that I mentioned.

This is a pallet that's going out to some of our community organizations tomorrow as well.

(gentle music) This is what we call Cooler A.

And so this is just one of the coolers that we store, and Love is Love Farm has product space back here.

We also have Ellijay Mushrooms, who's a fantastic regenerative grower.

We also have R&G lettuce.

It's a hydroponic lettuce farm, a woman-owned hydroponic lettuce farm.

And so she provides us pretty much weekly lettuce.

And some of our customers, like Emory University Hospital, Chef Mike, buys many cases of this, 30, 40 cases of this lettuce every week.

And so we appreciate his business, and I know Alexis appreciates that as well.

Over here, I wanna call out Coastal Georgia Small Farmers Co-op, a relationship that we have through our partnership with McIntosh SEED.

And so this is a group of five veteran farmers that they not only have bunch collards, but they also have a processing facility and do chopped bag collards.

And so a number of our customers order these collards every week, and many them have made commitments to order these collards a season in advance so that these growers know exactly how much to produce.

This is just one of our three coolers.

(upbeat music) Two things we believe in at The Common Market are the power of time and intention.

We know that nothing good happens overnight.

To change our soils, it takes many years of committed effort.

And behind me is a magnolia tree that was here long before we arrived, and it'll be here long after we're gone.

This tree is just a reminder that we have to do the little things every day if we want our community to survive, if we want our farms to survive, if we want our people to survive.

And so I call your attention over here to these two tiny, little trees.

These are fig trees that my predecessor, Lily Balcombe, planted for us.

So in the springtime, they bear fruit, and we eat the figs off of these trees.

And so I'm sure Lily didn't know when she planted these trees that they would continue to benefit folks that are here long after she has moved on to bigger and better things, but I think that's what we're all called to do, right?

Is continue to plant seeds so that those coming behind us can benefit from our efforts.

That's what we attempt to do here at The Common Market through our sustainable efforts that we're looking to make and the investments that we're making along with our partners, planting these seeds that people will benefit from in years to come.

(upbeat music) - [David] Prior to my visit to the primary distribution center in East Point, I took a trip with Bill down to Metter, Georgia, back in season three, to meet a farming couple who are a shining example of how The Common Market Southeast is helping both the farmer and the community.

(gentle music) A perfect day and a beautiful setting.

Friendly farmers with talent and ambition, Curtis and Mattie know this land, these fields, and are working hard to spread the word about their pecans.

- That's what I wanna see in my nut right there.

Quality.

A quality nut.

We out here in this South Georgia right here, and we right here in the Metter area in this good, great land and soil.

And my granddad, he the one that had the 200, 300 acres of land.

Then he had 13 kids.

Everybody kinda had a part.

We tend and farm this here, you know, cotton, peanuts, and corn and all that, you know?

Well, my mom, she was getting older, and I took over, and I decided when I met this gentleman, he kinda encouraged me to go into the pecan business.

He led me to go ahead on and start the planting the pecan trees.

And to this point, that's where I'm at right now, taking care of it and seeing after it and harvesting the pecans and selling and cracking and shelling, and that's where I'm at right now.

(gentle music) - Working together is great.

We've been married for 30, but 20 years, it took a new height.

So now we are really working together, and I don't think it's bad as Curt thought it would be.

- It ain't.

- He didn't want it.

He didn't know.

- Didn't have an idea.

- He had to grow to it.

- Yep.

- And we are growing in our marriage.

It's getting more and more wonderful as the years go on.

We're closer now than we ever have been.

(upbeat music) You know, the difference in the men and boys is the price of their toys.

You know, he's just like a little boy when he's a little boy, but now he's a grown man, and he get to play with all his toys.

- To keep him young, right?

- No, I guess that's it.

- [David] What's more fun, the sweeper or the shaker?

- Every one of 'em is a challenge 'cause it's different.

You get the jitters from the shaking, and then when you get there with the sweeper, you see that baby sweeping 'em out to the side and then blowing out that way.

And it's just so exciting.

And then when they get to harvesting, you know, you hear 'em coming into the harvester back there, into the bin, so all of us got a different excitement.

- [David] And it can only help to receive a little extra help from some nearby friends.

- We started with the Innovation Center in Metter, Georgia, Miss Heidi Jeffers.

They helped us with this logo.

They told us what we had to have on our bag to sell them.

We had lots of help from everybody to get this bag produced.

(gentle music) - [David] They've also received support from outside of Georgia's Southeast region.

That's where Bill Green and The Common Market Southeast comes into play.

- The Common Market started as a way to connect communities that needed nutritious food with small farmers who lacked access to institutional markets.

And so The Common Market started in Philadelphia in 2008.

The Common Market Southeast was started in 2016 as a way to connect those two communities.

We're working on opportunities that will revolutionize their farm operations and help them to sell to larger markets so they can support their families in a new way.

- Mr. Green is just another part of the puzzle.

See, 'cause we've been selling them to our friends and the public, but now we might have a chance to sell them bulk to Mr. Green, who's gonna do 'em for the food bank.

And so now, instead of me trying to sell them to different people, I just bag 'em up, box 'em up, and ship 'em to Mr. Green, and he's gonna ship 'em to the food bank, and we gonna make a lot more people happy, and that's gonna be real exciting.

- We're working on opportunities that will revolutionize their farm operations and help them to sell to larger markets so that they can support their families in a new way.

- [David] Let's journey a few miles down the road to a cracker and sheller who are working with Curtis and Mattie.

And this is a fascinating site.

(upbeat music) The growing is, of course, a major part of the pecan business down here, but sorting, cleaning, and shelling is another major part of the trade.

Right down the road is Mixon Pecan, run by Georgia farmer Emery Jones and his family.

And the day we joined Curtis and Mattie, it was peak season for pecans, and it was one day after high winds, so the result was a super busy day and a plethora of Georgia pecans from farmers all over the area.

(upbeat music) - You know, however the case may be, I always have to give thanks to the Lord for putting it in my mind and in my head.

It always goes to Him.

And I'm just thankful that whatever that he put in there, from this day forward, that's what I'm gonna try to produce, because he always leads you in the right direction.

- [Mattie] We wanna thank everybody, too, for liking our pecans, buying them, and helping us, you know, move a little higher.

- Folks like Curtis and Mattie, this farm has been in their family for so many generations that you really sense the importance of the land.

And helping farmers like Miss Mattie and Mr. Curtis hold onto their land is essential to our mission here at The Common Market.

So, seeing their enthusiasm, we are excited as well about the potential of what we can do together.

- [David] And you've tasted their pecans.

- Oh, they're amazing!

I've been eating them all day!

(upbeat music) - [David] It takes an army of good folks and goodwill to feed a village.

There's still many people and entire communities who struggle when it comes to hunger, but I've found that there's plenty of reasons to remain optimistic.

The more people are willing to get involved and work together for the better of their community and beyond, the closer we come to this goal of feeding Georgia, and eventually, feeding America.

I'm David Zelski.

See you at the next "Fork in the Road".

(upbeat music continues) - [Narrator] "A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by... (gentle music) - [Narrator] From produce to people, the best things are grown and raised in Georgia.

Even in tough times, we come together, work hard, and grow strong.

When you purchase Georgia-grown products, you support farmers, families, and this proud state we call home.

Together, we will keep Georgia growing.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Community, learning, working, playing, celebrating.

Doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything.

From our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations, to our fun in-person events, we've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.