In recent months, CEFS’ local food systems programming has received significant national and international attention, which we have been excited and honored to receive. In fact, our two Directors’ schedules can barely keep up! In early October, CEFS was awarded the regional APLU (Association of Public and Land Grant Universities) C. Peter Magrath Award for Community Engagement at the National Outreach and Scholarship Conference in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (View our short nomination video here.) CEFS’ unique partnership of North Carolina’s two land grant universities, NCA&TSU and NCSU, stood out as an inspiring model for universities engaged in food systems and sustainable agricultural economic development work.
In mid-October, our Goldsboro research farm hosted fifty Fulbright scholars from around the world studying at American universities who came to NCSU for the U.S. Department of State’s Fulbright Global Food Security Seminar. They toured the Goldsboro farm to learn about the innovative work going on across our seven research units to address agriculture’s most pressing challenges.
And just last week, SWARM, the Goldsboro-based youth food activism group led by our Community-Based Food Systems Outreach Coordinator Shorlette Ammons, was visited by Shellie Pfohl, the Executive Director of the President’s (yes, that’s President Obama!) Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. While in Goldsboro, Ms. Pfohl visited the CEFS research farm and several community sites including the Wayne County Public Library garden and Dillard Academy Charter School, where she heard about their garden-based programs from the Produce Ped’lers and the Wayne Food Initiative.
The visit was itself a follow-up to SWARM’s recent invitation to and presentation at a youth empowerment event of the Clinton Global Initiative. You can read more about that great honor in this e-newsletter.
Finally, we were recently awarded the USDA Secretary’s Honor award — the most prestigious departmental awards presented by the Secretary of Agriculture — for our leadership and accomplishments. CEFS was the only group outside of USDA to receive the award, which will be presented during a national webinar on December 11.
Somewhere, it is written that to those to whom much is given, much is asked. We have been given much here in North Carolina. We have a strong network of partners ranging from the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service to Farm Bureau to the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association and hundreds of other organizations. We have demonstrated the economic development potential of local foods, witnessed by the more than $27 million in local food purchases tracked through the NC 10% Campaign. We have robust long-term systems research being conducted at our Goldsboro research farm.
We have received more than $9 million in funding this year to tackle everything from greenhouse gas emissions to food, nutrition and health issues; from creating an organic plant breeding center for the Southeast to developing the next rendition of the Farm to Fork statewide action plan; from conducting a statewide food system assessment to training and empowering youth to be the next generation of food systems change. We look forward to describing these exciting new initiatives more fully in the next few E-newsletters, as they get off the ground.
Amid this incredible opportunity, we find ourselves called to fill a leadership role in teaching about what we are doing here in North Carolina to others across the nation and the world. We accept this challenge with humility and gratitude for the many partners that work alongside us. As we approach our twentieth anniversary, we realize that we do in fact have the knowledge and experience to take our place on the national and international stage.
With gratitude for all we’ve been given, and the brightest hopes for what we can achieve,
Dr. John O’Sullivan, CEFS Director, NCA&TSU
Dr. Nancy Creamer, CEFS Director, NCSU
From the November 2012 E-Newsletter