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.

Written by Dr. John Dole, Associate Dean and Director of Academic Programs, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at North Carolina State University.

It’s the start of a new academic year, and thanks to your support, more students have found their Path to CALS (College of Agriculture and Life Sciences) than in recent years – 839 students to be exact.

This year CALS received 2,116 applications – a 10 percent year-over-year increase – with 452 incoming freshman, an increase of 110 students from last fall. Roughly 54 percent of all applicants were accepted, with 46 percent of these students coming from rural North Carolina.

For many students – especially those from rural and farming communities – gaining access or acceptance to a CALS 4-year degree can be difficult. Student access is a top priority for the university and CALS.

That’s why we are growing existing programs and implementing new systems to provide different paths to campus for a variety of students. We wanted to share a few updates on our progress.

READ: Finding Your Path to CALS

Nominate A Student
This new online student identification process allows teachers, advisors, Extension agents, and others to tell us about students they think would be great for CALS. Most of the 102 nominated students who applied to CALS this year were from rural counties, and most were nominated for under-enrolled degree programs.

Of the 102 nominated applicants, 41 were admitted for the fall, 11 were admitted via Spring Connection, 19 transferred into the college, 5 were admitted to STEAM (the Student Enrollment Advising and Mentoring program), 1 was waitlisted, 4 were denied and 21 were deferred.

We are always looking for successful students. If you know of a great student, tell us who they are so we can contact them. While we cannot guarantee admission to CALS, we can help every student put their best foot forward.

The Nominate a Student website is open again for this application season: go.ncsu.edu/nominate

Spring Connection
Working with the university, we helped create a new spring semester admission option for freshman – Spring Connection. Students were largely accepted into under-enrolled degree programs in the crop and soil sciences, horticulture, plant biology, poultry science and others, with classes starting in the spring. Students can use the fall semester to gain work experience through an internship or attend classes at a local community college.

NC State invited 1,200 students to participate in Spring Connection, and 93 were prospective CALS students. Of the 93, 50 have enrolled (54 percent), and we have confirmed the fall plans for these students – 43 are planning to attend community colleges and 3 other universities 4 are planning to work.

Agricultural Institute – 2-Year Degrees
Not all students need or want a 4-year degree. NC State’s highly acclaimed Agricultural Institute (AGI) provides career-ready students a hands-on technical education through a variety of 2-year associates degrees.

AGI offers six concentrations ranging from agribusiness management to landscape technology, with unique enrichment opportunities outside the classroom that provide valuable real-world experience.

Whether a student needs to hone his or her skills to jump into the agricultural workforce, prepare to start their own business or get back to the family farm, AGI helps students hit the ground running.

This past year, AGI accepted 155 students.

Written by Chelsea Kellner and originally published on NC State’s CALS News.

The North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative isn’t all roots and stems.

It’s genetics. It’s robotics. It’s big data.

And with this week’s announcement of a newly hired launch director, it’s about to get rolling — in a big way.

Entomologist, agricultural biotechnology business professional and commodity leader Stephen Briggs is now signed on to make this one-of-a-kind plant sciences research enterprise, housed in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at NC State University, a reality.

“I believe in our stakeholders’ vision that this can be the Silicon Valley of agriculture for the world,” Briggs said. “We can make a mark on agriculture for generations to come.”

Briggs steps in at a critical time for the interdisciplinary, multi-partner initiative. In less than three years, the NC PSI has transitioned from a “big idea” to a highly anticipated center for plant sciences innovation. With the broad support of North Carolina’s agricultural community, the initiative will break ground on its state-of-the-art facility in 2019, with doors opening in fall 2021.

This week we interviewed Warren Leadership Fellows Daniel Radford and Kortney Smith, who spent this summer interning with North Carolina Farm Bureau learning about public policy and agricultural advocacy. Daniel is majoring in Animal Science and Agricultural Science with a minor in Agricultural Business Management at NC State University; Kortney is a rising senior at NC State studying Agricultural Education.

What was your favorite part of the internship?

Kortney: My favorite part of the internship was flying out to Washington, D.C. with Linda Andrews and Mr. Wooten for a few days. I had never been to D.C. so it was a great experience. It was really eye-opening to see the major differences between how things are handled at the state level versus on a national level and I may have been inspired just enough to possibly take my future career back there!

Daniel: My favorite part of the internship was being able to expand my network, and learning more about the legislative process. Everyone at Farm Bureau has been very welcoming and willing to help in any way that they can, and I am very thankful that they made me feel welcomed this summer. I really enjoyed meeting everyone and building these relationships.

What did you find the most challenging during your internship?

D: Since I was new to working with policy, it took some time for me to learn how the whole legislative process works. Jake and Paul spent many hours mentoring me and Kortney on how everything works at the General Assembly. On the first day, they spent time explaining how to look up bills and discussed how bills move through the General Assembly. I can definitely say that I would have been lost without them, but with their help, I understand the process a lot better than I did when I started.

K: The most challenging part of the internship was definitely learning how to navigate the General Assembly website and understand how bills were moving and what was important in each. Bill language can sometimes be very backwards and confusing, so we had to learn how to follow through all of the citations and correctly interpret what that particular provision meant. After the first few weeks though, we began to get the hang of things! We didn’t always interpret correctly, but we made drastic improvements from our first day!

What was the best advice you received?

K: Without a doubt, the best advice I received was to always ask questions. You can either sit and stay confused about something or ask questions and get a better understanding. There were so many times that I had no idea what was happening, but when I asked questions, things always made more sense and I could actually follow along and get more out of a particular experience.

D: Have an open mind and be open to new opportunities. Being open to new things has allowed me to be able to get the most out of my experience here at Farm Bureau. Walking into my internship this summer, I can definitely say that I did not know what to expect. This summer has been one I will always remember. As my internship is coming to an end, I am thankful for the many opportunities that I have been given while being a part of the Farm Bureau team.

Written by Dr. Mike Walden and originally published at NCSU CALS News.

My wife and I have one foot in rural regions and the other in big cities. We were both born and raised in small towns – I in an unincorporated town (meaning it wasn’t big enough to qualify as an official municipality) in Ohio and she in a recognized town (but still tiny) in upstate New York. I have a vague memory of my mother pulling me in a little wagon to the country store for groceries. On the way home, the groceries were in the wagon and I would walk!

But we’ve spent almost the last forty years of our lives living in Raleigh since I joined the faculty at N.C. State in 1978. Although it may not have been when we moved here, Raleigh today is certainly a big city. Indeed, it is recognized as one of the most dynamic big cities in the country.

My wife and I love both cities and the country. That’s one reason North Carolina is so great – it has both busy urban areas as well as tranquil rural regions.

But often the urban and rural areas don’t seem to get along. For example, in the 2016 presidential election, urban areas tended to vote for Secretary Clinton while rural regions favored President Trump. We saw the same urban/rural split in the North Carolina gubernatorial and General Assembly elections.

The urban-rural divide in North Carolina also extends to public policy. Here are two examples. Local public schools are partially supported by local property tax revenues. Since property values per resident are often higher in urban counties than in rural counties, there’s been a long-running debate whether this wealth disparity gives urban counties an unfair advantage in funding public schools.

The second example is sales taxes. Part of the sales tax revenues collected by the state are returned to the counties, but there’s an issue over how to do this. Should the distribution to counties be based on where the sales occurred or where the buyers live? North Carolina has a formula using both factors, but there’s frequently a debate about the relative importance of each in the formula. Indeed, legislation was introduced this year in the General Assembly to change the formula.

Has the urban-rural feud gotten worse? Some say three powerful forces – globalization, the elevation of education’s importance and population trends – have moved urban and rural areas farther apart in recent decades.

This week, we thought we’d explore a topic familiar to most people in the agriculture community: land-grant colleges. In the process of researching the history of land-grant institutions, we stumbled upon a fantastic write-up from the folks over at Back Story Radio, and instead of trying to out-do them we figured we’d just share their content with you. We hope you enjoy!

We hear it all the time.  We throw it around with authority – “oh, it’s a land-grant school.”  But what exactly does that mean?  And where did the land-grants come from?

Written by Dr. Randy Woodson, Chancellor of North Carolina State University.

This Saturday, November 19 at Carter-Finley Stadium, the Wolfpack not only play host to the Miami Hurricanes, but we will also be celebrating our 4^th annual Ag Day, a time to recognize the many contributions that agriculture and our farmers make to our state. Agriculture built North Carolina, and people around the world depend on what’s raised and grown right here at home.

NC State University and the faculty and staff of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences work hard with partners across North Carolina to ensure our state’s agriculture remains strong. Because of these combined efforts, remarkable things are happening.

Written by Dan Gerlach, President of the Golden LEAF Foundation.

The Golden LEAF Foundation was created to ensure to ensure there would be dedicated resources to help transform the economy of rural, tobacco-dependent and economically distressed communities in North Carolina.

During my more than 20 years in North Carolina and my almost eight years as President of Golden LEAF, there’s no doubt in my mind that the heart and soul of the innovation, creativity, risk-taking, vision, and significance of North Carolina can be found in the farmer and grower.

Earlier this year, the Golden LEAF Board of Directors stepped out of our usual grantmaking processes to create a fund to support the development of major industrial sites across North Carolina. This fund would reduce the time it takes a big manufacturer to be build a plant and hire North Carolina workers, exporting product all over the United States and all over the world. With this $25 million, there would be no requirement that a company be committed, but rather faith that this seed corn would facilitate the location of good-paying manufacturing jobs to North Carolina. Manufacturing has long been part of rural North Carolina’s past, and certainly important to its future – though in a different way.

So it should be no surprise that our Board of Directors made one of the biggest commitments in our history – $45 million – to ensure that a facility on NC State’s Centennial Campus in Raleigh to house the Plant Sciences Initiative would be built. Manufacturing and agriculture are the two great workhorses of our rural economy, and are a major part of our future as well.