Growing incomes: Tar Heel farmers develop new products from longtime crops to attract customers and cultivate revenue.

• Position: CASH CROP

Randy Lewis' family has operated Ran-Lew Dairy on the same Ra of Alamance County since he mid-1800s. A few years ago, it lost $150,000 for the year and its best customer. Things looked grim. Searching for revenue to keep the company going, Lewis and niece Megan Mann Riggans, his assistant, hatched a plan. They would cut out the middleman, bottling some of their milk and turning the rest into yogurt. Lewis would tend their 75 cows while Riggans, an N.C. A&T grad, would manage the bottling and yogurt. They believed that would keep the dairy open and in family hands.

Then, well into the planning process, tragedy struck. On the way to the hospital to deliver their first child, Riggans' husband lost control of their car on a rain-slickened highway, a mile from the dairy. Megan and their unborn son were killed. Her husband was critically injured but has since recovered.

Devastated, Lewis postponed applying for the grant that would pay for their plan. But family and friends encouraged him to finish it. He was one of 24 applicants in 2013 to share $180,000 from Pittsboro-based Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA. This spring, inside what was once a refrigerated trailer, Ran-Lew started bottling whole, pasteurized, nonhomogenized milk--up to 200 gallons a day. Hillsborough-based Weaver Street Market Inc. was the first to buy some.

Stories like Randy Lewis'--minus the tragedy--are increasingly common as Tar Heel farmers, growers and producers seek new ways to market their goods. For some, entrepreneurialism is a matter of necessity: Fewer hands along the way mean more money in their pockets. A growing number package their harvest to take advantage of the increasing demand for local fare.

Programs such as Goodness Grows in North Carolina--the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services' marketing and branding effort to support Tar Heel-grown and -produced food online, at trade shows and in retail outlets--help create business-savvy farmers. They also can seek advice from Annette Dunlap at the agriculture department. She and her colleagues encourage entrepreneurial enthusiasm but temper it with reality. For example, making and selling popular food items such as jams, jellies, pickles, sauces, snacks and baked goods may sound good, but profits are low--maybe 10 cents on every $5 bottle--and distribution and regulations can prove...