TheFirstFurrow

Written by Dr. Richard H. Linton, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at North Carolina State University.

We recently welcomed the families and friends of nearly 650 College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) students to campus for graduation ceremonies. These undergraduate, graduate and Agricultural Institute students will go on to pursue all sorts of careers — scientist, farmer, industry leader, doctor, elected official – joining thousands of other CALS alumni working to transform challenges into opportunities.

It’s through events like graduation that we are reminded of the tremendous impact of NC State’s land-grant charter – to teach, conduct cutting-edge research, and to extend science-based solutions to the people of our state. We are here for North Carolina.

Our work in the classroom, labs and 18 research stations across the state helps farmers cultivate more productive, more profitable businesses. We are working with government and industry to grow the state’s food manufacturing economy – from seed to supermarket  – in our own backyard. We are engaging families and communities to connect them to where their food comes from and teaching them about healthy choices. And most important, we are preparing our youth to fill the state’s need for a knowledgeable, prepared workforce.

What we Think and Do helps grow North Carolina.

State Leader Engagement

To increase awareness among state leaders of the many ways NC State and CALS are improving North Carolina, especially in our rural communities, we have launched a statewide educational campaign we are calling We Grow NC. You can discover more at WeGrowNC.ncsu.edu.

The campaign includes a series of television and radio public service announcements built around five strategic themes: We Grow Opportunities; We Grow Solutions; We Grow Communities; We Grow Economies; We Grow Talent.

Radio and TV spots will be airing through November on local TV and radio stations across the state, emphasizing how we help grow local economies, create new opportunities and help rural students find their path to NC State. We are also elevating NC State Extension’s role in providing research-based solutions to local challenges.

Promoting Partnerships

We Grow NC will also include public events and activities to encourage and acknowledge our partnerships with business and community leaders in all 100 counties. These partnerships fuel the creation of economic and intellectual prosperity from Murphy to Manteo. As always, we want to work with our alumni, friends and partners to help make North Carolina better, and we hope this campaign identifies new partnership opportunities.

You can help. Let us know how we can help grow your corner of the state. Visit WeGrowNC.ncsu.edu and also sign up to receive CALS news and event updates every week.

We are proud of our land-grant mission and proud to serve North Carolina. Thanks for your continued support and assistance in educating members of your community that how together, We Grow NC.

Let’s get to work. Go Pack!

Dr. Richard H. Linton is dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at NC State University. Before this role, Linton served as department chair of Food Science and Technology at the Ohio State University (2011-2012), and as a faculty member of the Department of Food Science at Purdue University (1994-2011). While at Purdue University, Linton also served as the director (and founder) of the Center for Food Safety Engineering and as the associate director of Agricultural Research Programs.

As dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Linton leads a college of more than 290 faculty housed in 12 different departments, more than 2,800 undergraduate students, 2,450 in four year degree programs and 350 in the Agricultural Institute’s two year degree programs, and more than 1,000 graduate students. Under his direction, the college has developed a new strategic plan that focuses on building people, programs, and partnerships. Collaboration with industry and government is critical to the mission of the college, and Linton’s dedication is demonstrated through the Plant Sciences Initiative and the Food Processing and Manufacturing Initiative, two endeavors that have the potential to create jobs, find solutions to global challenges in agriculture and foster support for local growers.

Linton earned a bachelor’s degree in biology, a master’s degree in food science, and a doctorate in food science from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

In a few days, North Carolina Farm Bureau members and voting delegates will travel to Greensboro, NC for the organization’s 82nd Annual Convention. The event is a celebration of the year’s work: growing the membership, advocating for farmers and rural families, telling the story of North Carolina agriculture, and investing in the future of our state. But the convention is also the culmination of the year’s policy development process — a process that, for more than 80 years, has exemplified the true grassroots spirit of Farm Bureau.

We’ve discussed Policy Review Day in the past, and have talked about how that event kicks off the policy development process.

During the fall, those policy resolutions go back to all 100 counties and are reviewed, debated, and in some cases modified. This involves countless hours of input from thousands of farmers across the state. All of those county recommendations came together earlier this week and were reviewed again by a 100-person committee comprised of farmers.

At Annual Convention, those resolutions will again be discussed by a voting delegate body of more than 600 farmer members. The process is thorough, comprehensive, and is a wonderful example of how North Carolina Farm Bureau has remained true to its grassroots foundations.

As always, we look forward to next week’s Annual Convention, and we are proud of what it means for this organization and North Carolina agriculture.

READ: Eighty Years of Service for North Carolina Farm Bureau

The following article was written by Jessica Walker Boehm and appears in the Fall 2017 issue of North Carolina Field and Family.

Ask a farmer what he or she does on a daily basis, and you’re bound to get a wide variety of answers – there’s planting crops, evaluating soil, predicting weather patterns, caring for livestock, repairing and maintaining equipment, keeping detailed financial records, and much more.

As a result, it’s easy to conclude that farmers routinely multitask their abilities and develop new skills to get the daily job done efficiently and safely. Often, they switch from one role to the next without skipping a beat, constantly working to master new methods and skills that might better serve their farms and livestock.

“Before I worked in agriculture, I thought you just put a seed in the ground and watched it grow, then had something to harvest at the end of the season,” says Russell Hedrick, a first-generation farmer who owns JRH Grain Farms in Hickory. “I had no idea about the technology you can employ to ensure you grow a better crop, and I didn’t realize how much I would learn once I was immersed in this occupation.”

Established in 2012, JRH Grain Farms is a 1,000-acre, no-till operation that includes corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, oats and triticale (a hybrid of wheat and rye), as well as pasture-raised beef cattle, Katahdin sheep and Berkshire pigs.

JRH Grain Farms also has a seed- cleaning facility that serves various local farms, and Hedrick says his farm is the only one in the state that produces bourbon. Additionally, Hedrick makes legal moonshine and stone-ground grits and cornmeal.

His operation has evolved over the years as he has continued to learn about soil science and technology. For example, he now uses sensors buried 48 inches in the ground to monitor soil moisture and temperature, as well as rooting depth and electrical conductivity, helping him to conserve water.

Hedrick has also worked with scientists and researchers across the U.S. to reduce his farm’s soil fertility needs by approximately 70 percent, which further contributes to his conservation efforts and results in significant cost savings. In addition, he has created a cover crop by blending five different plants that helps limit soil erosion, suppress winter weeds, scavenge excess nutrients from the preceding crop and improve the soil’s biological health.

He sharpens his educator skills regularly, sharing his knowledge with other farmers who might also bene t from it. Hedrick hosts a Field Day each year that features guest speakers like Ray Archuleta, a famed North Carolina conservation agronomist, where farmers have the opportunity to learn how they can enhance their operations and improve their soil without damaging the environment.

In addition, Hedrick is a businessman, marketing his products directly to consumers using social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, and he promotes agriculture by working with organizations like Catawba County Farm Bureau’s Young Farmers and Ranchers team and the North Carolina Farm Bureau.

“I try to advocate for agriculture any way I can,” Hedrick says. “Here in Catawba County, we have Farm to Fork Week every June, and the last two years my farm has hosted a daylong event. Members of the community have come out and looked at our equipment and our operation, and this year we hosted kids of all ages.”

With Congress back in their districts for August Recess, we thought it’d be a good time to talk about some federal issues that are a high priority for Farm Bureau. This week: WOTUS.

So what is WOTUS? Back in 2015 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and US Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) adopted a rule defining the scope of “waters of the US” (WOTUS) protected under the Clean Water Act (CWA). That rule, the WOTUS rule, expands federal authority beyond the limits approved by Congress and affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But you may be thinking, ‘didn’t courts strike down the WOTUS rule?’ Yes and no. The rule has never been implemented because it was stayed in both federal district court and a federal court of appeals. But those court orders are only temporary. And while the EPA’s current plan is to eliminate the 2015 rule and work on crafting a better WOTUS definition, environmental activists desperately want to preserve the 2015 land grab.

The impact of the 2015 rule on farmers will be enormous. That’s because the rule effectively eliminates any constraints the term “navigable” previously imposed on the Corps’ and EPA’s CWA jurisdiction, and the list of waters deemed “non-navigable” is exceptionally narrow—providing that few, if any waters, would fall outside federal control. This kind of shift in policy means that EPA and the Corps can regulate any or all waters found within a state, no matter how small or seemingly unconnected to a federal interest.

Today, possibly while you are reading this, North Carolina Farm Bureau leaders are gathering in Raleigh for 2017’s Policy Review Day. No, we’re not talking about insurance policies, but rather policies that address emerging issues and areas of concern to North Carolina farmers. Things like labor, transportation, property rights, taxes, regulatory reform, and more. It’s a day for NCFB’s farmer members to come together to talk about what’s going on at their farm, and to start figuring out how to solve tomorrow’s problems.

By North Carolina Farm Bureau President Larry Wooten

The old saying goes that ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ There is plenty of truth to that, and as one of the largest land-owning groups in the state, farmers understand this maxim better than most.

This bit of wisdom is at the heart, both literally and figuratively, of a dispute that has been bubbling over in western North Carolina communities for several years now, and is beginning to come to a head. It centers on the reintroduction and management of elk on federal land in the Appalachian Mountains.

I can remember like it was yesterday. Once farm chores and homework were completed, there was the opportunity to fire up the computer. And wait for it connect to the internet via dial up. There was no mute button for the wheerrrrrr wweeee DINNNGGG DDDIINNNNGGG DINNNNGGG of the dial up connecting. For a high schooler in the 90s in rural America, the internet was a fascinating place of email, chat rooms, and AOL Instant Messenger. Only one remains popular, and the others have been replaced with text messaging, Snapchat and Facebook.

We lived in mostly isolated parts of northwest North Carolina; my parents are divorced and both lived on a dirt road. My dad’s was a dead end road, with no neighbors on the road. The closest neighbor at my mom’s was a mile away. Needless to say, there were very few play dates and group activities with other rural youth, with the exception of school and church. And even then, it wasn’t uncommon to still feel somewhat isolated as the other kids at school and church had very little interest in the cattle we hauled across the country or the pigs we were taking to the State Fair.

Enter the internet, and with it the ability to connect with kids who WERE interested in the same things as me! I met tons of people my age from across the state and nation through FFA and National Junior Angus Association, and the internet gave us the platform to grow our small community. With the reliability of dial up, we were usually only able to chat for 5-10 minutes before a call beeped in or someone else needed the internet for legitimate reasons, like homework, but it was still exciting to talk to other kids who shared my interests.

While the availability and reliability of internet in rural areas has changed, the isolation in many of our rural areas has not. Many farm youth and adults are still utilizing the internet for the same reasons I did 20 years ago.

There’s nothing quite like the taste and smell of fresh strawberries to usher in warm weather and blue skies in North Carolina. And we’re right smack in the middle of the strawberry harvest, which typically runs from mid-April through late May, so there’s no better time to head to a local farmers market, roadside stand, or pick-you-own site to scoop up a few buckets. In fact, the NC Strawberry Association has partnered with the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, NCDA&CS Farmers Markets, and the NC Dairy Promotions Committee to host Strawberry Days at the farmers market. Here are the details:

• State Farmers Market (Raleigh): Thursday, May 4th from 11am – 1pm
• Robert G. Shaw Piedmont Triad Farmers Market (Colfax): Friday, May 5th from 11am – 1pm
• Charlotte Regional Farmers Market (Charlotte): Friday, May 12th from 11am – 1pm

North Carolina is one of the nation’s largest strawberry producers, and unlike other top states, most strawberries grown here are sold here — fresh, flavorful, and juicy. So in honor of one of the most delicious times of year, today we’re going to pay tribute to the North Carolina strawberry industry.