TheFirstFurrow

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

Nearly everywhere I go, it seems the conversation always includes concerns about student access or acceptance to a 4-year undergraduate degree – especially for kids from rural and farming communities. We hear this message loud and clear, and I want to let you know our college is fully committed to helping all qualified students find their path to CALS.

Paths to CALS

CALS is open for undergraduate students, and we are growing existing initiatives and developing new ones to help students access the college. We now have different paths to meet the needs of different students that are applying to CALS.

Over the past two weeks we’ve shared a couple of posts from Dr. Rebecca Tippett of Carolina Demography at UNC’s Carolina Population Center. If you haven’t read them, we encourage you to go back and read those two posts in their entirety – it’s really good stuff. But as great as Rebecca’s work is, we can’t post ALL of it, so we’ve decided to break down what we believe to be some of the more important bits of information. Of course, you can read all of her posts at demography.cpc.unc.edu/blog and follow her on Twitter @ncdemography.

Written by Dr. Rebecca Tippett and originally published at Carolina Demography. Over the next few weeks the First Furrow will be highlighting some of Rebecca’s excellent insights into rural North Carolina.

As we’ve mentioned in the past, North Carolina has a large population residing in areas that the U.S. Census Bureau classifies as rural. Among the 10 most populous states, North Carolina has the largest proportion of individuals living in rural areas. In fact, North Carolina’s rural population is larger than that of any other state except for Texas.

Prior to coming to Carolina Demography, I worked in a similar role producing and interpreting demographic data in Virginia. Since returning to North Carolina, I have mentioned to a number of people that North Carolina is more “demographically interesting” in certain respects than Virginia. This isn’t to say that Virginia isn’t interesting –it is!—but the fundamental patterns of demographics are markedly different in Virginia compared to North Carolina. And some of this difference is rooted in the higher proportion of individuals living in high density, urbanized areas in Virginia.

Written by Jason Gray, Senior Fellow of Research and Policy at the North Carolina Rural Center

Connection to place and land is the heart of rural North Carolina. It is what defines rural from urban. It also reflects the positive connection of what we do to where we live. Rural work and culture is not, as some would have us believe, “nonurban” – a null set waiting to become something else. The rural life has inherent worth and value.

Agriculture is a major expression of this worth and value. The North Carolina Rural Center believes that the sustainable, productive use of land, timber and marine fisheries is one of the defining characteristics of rural life, despite the inherent physical and financial challenges. North Carolina’s strategic location in the middle of the eastern seaboard places its agricultural production near a large percentage of the country’s population. The topographical variety and temperate climate makes North Carolina an agriculturally diverse state, second only to California. One of the greatest job creation opportunities available to rural North Carolina is the focused effort to increase the amount of value-added production that occurs near where the product is grown. Continued good stewardship of our state’s immense natural resources affords us the opportunity to maintain a desirable quality of life.

In April of this year the Rural Center released a ten point advocacy package. More than just a policy advocacy package to engage state and federal policy makers, it is also a statement of what we believe works. Advocacy point #8 is Develop Opportunities for Agriculture and Natural Resources, including Biotechnology and Value-Added Food Processing. We identified the following sub-strategies to do this:

It’s been more than 100 years since our last boom in the wine industry, when North Carolina led the nation in wine production until Prohibition in the 1920s. In fact, North Carolina is home to the first cultivated wine grape in the US – the scuppernong. Luckily for wine drinkers, grape growers and wineries, the industry has rebounded in a big way. In the past 15 years, North Carolina’s Wine and Grape Industry has flourished as large and small investments in grape growing and wine production are increasing and winery tourism has taken off. This week, we will spotlight the growing economic impact of the Wine and Grape Industry.

Last week we discussed a couple of reasons some farmers choose to sell their farm products locally at farmers markets, roadside stands, and pick-your-own sites. While selling locally is an important market for some farmers, others are venturing into new markets through international trade.

The following appears courtesy of NC State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Agriculture and agribusiness — food, fiber and forestry — make up an $84 billion a year industry in North Carolina, contributing one-sixth of the state’s income and employees, according to the latest figures from NC State University economist Mike Walden.

In calculating value-added incomes for 2014 (the latest year for which figures are available), Walden found that food, fiber and forestry industries contributed more than 17 percent of the state’s $482 billion gross state product.

These industries also accounted for 686,200 of the state’s 4 million employees, according to Dr. Walden, a William Neal Reynolds professor and North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist. That’s up 23,000 from the previous year.

Walden said that overall value-added income from the state’s agricultural and agribusiness sector grew by 10 percent from 2013, when it contributed $76 billion to the state’s economy.

Walden says that the rise in North Carolina agriculture and agribusiness coincides with overall national economic growth of 2.2 percent in 2014, with much of the increase coming from the processing sector.

“Both tobacco product and food processing had big gains in value-added, the value of production at the processing level, in 2014. This reflects the rebound in those sectors consistent with a general economic rebound,” he said. “There was also a more modest improvement in wood product processing.”

Nearly everyone who has traveled a North Carolina highway has been behind a log truck or seen trees being cut down. Maybe this drums up thoughts of a forest industry working to provide everyday items like paper towels and toilet paper, toothpaste, paints, furniture or 2x4s for your next home improvement project. On the other hand, maybe it brings to mind questions about how many trees are being cut down and how this affects the environment. Since yesterday was “Forestry Day in the Legislature”, we’ll take a look at five things that everyone should know about North Carolina’s forestry sector and hopefully debunk a few misconceptions along the way.