On April 22, 2026, Jennifer Badger, Area Specialized Agent, Agribusiness with North Carolina Cooperative Extension and the Center for Environmental Farming Systems' (CEFS) EmPOWERing Mountain Food Systems (EMFS) team, received one of the 2026 College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) Values Awards for Integrity during the CALS Celebration of Excellence.
CEFS is grateful for the opportunity to partner with Dogwood Health Trust and expand our impact in Western North Carolina.
On November 8, 2025, we celebrated the amazing work and growth of our WNCStrong Youth Service Corps participants! We launched the WNCStrong Youth Service Corps to help western North Carolina recover from Hurricane Helene while preparing the next generation of leaders. High school students from Buncombe, Mitchell, and Yancey counties gained hands-on experience in [...]
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, NC Choices has collaborated with Extension livestock and forage partners to develop NC Hay Finder, a new website to help connect farmers needing hay with those who have hay to sell. Read more below...
EmPOWERing Mountain Food Systems (EMFS), an initiative of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS), works to strengthen the local food system across 12 Western North Carolina counties and the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The arrival of Hurricane Helene underscored the importance of this work. Severe disruptions to farms, local [...]
On September 22, 2025, the North Carolina State University CALS News featured the WNCStrong Youth Service Corps in this article.
The backbone of the Service Corps is the internships that our 22 members are doing on nine farms across the three counties we serve. However, our Workdays are a meaningful and impactful component of the Corps experience. Corps members, their teachers, and the CEFS-based staff all dedicate one Saturday a month to work as [...]
In four short months we’ve gone from ideas sketched out in a grant proposal to twenty-two high schoolers receiving paychecks for internships they’ve been doing on nine farms across Buncombe, Mitchell and Yancey Counties. A full list of those farms is below. In addition to weeding, planting, fertilizing and mulching, our students have built [...]
In response to the devastation of the WNC region, EmPOWERing Mountain Food Systems (EMFS), an initiative of CEFS, awarded $100,000 of its small business grant funds to assist farmers impacted by Hurricane Helene.
