WNCStrong: Shaping Youth Service After Hurricane Helene
On September 22, 2025, the North Carolina State University CALS News featured the WNCStrong Youth Service Corps in this article.
The Center for Environmental Farming Systems Announces Recipients of 2025-2026 NC State Graduate Student Fellowships
We are pleased to announce the recipients of our 2023-2024 North Carolina State University Graduate Student Fellowships. Read about the Fellows and their research.
The Impact of Service Corps Workdays
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 [...]
The Plane has Left the Tarmac
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 [...]
Farm to ECE 2025 Garden Interns
For the past ten years, Wake County Partnership for Children (WCPC) has been a dedicated leader in connecting local food and nutrition education through its impactful Farm to Early Care and Education (Farm to ECE) initiative. Since launching the program a decade ago, WCPC has worked tirelessly to build a stronger, healthier foundation for [...]
National Leaders Visit NC to See Farm to ECE in Action
Earlier this month, representatives from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, along with partners working in early childhood education (ECE), community gardening, and local food systems in Detroit, Michigan, visited North Carolina to learn more about successful Farm to ECE initiatives that integrate local food purchasing. Organized by Shironda Brown and Dr. Dara Bloom of the [...]
Temporary Organic Transition Program Assistant
The temporary Organic Transition Program Assistant will support two USDA grants focused on organic transition in the Southeast. Key responsibilities include assisting with data analysis and reporting from two surveys, collaborating with research, Extension, and non-profit professionals across the region, and contributing to other grant and project outputs.
New North Carolina Local Farms and Food Profiles
To provide a snapshot of the importance of agriculture on the county level, the N.C. Cooperative Extension Local Food Program Team, NC State FarmLink, and the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) created an infographic for each county and each Council of Government region based on a comparison of 2017 and 2022 USDA Agriculture Census data.
New Publication: Soil Microbial Composition Responds to Diverse Long-Term Management Systems
A June 2025 article, published in Pedosphere, examines soil microbial activity, diversity, composition, and predicted functionality across a 24-year experimental period at CEFS Field Research, Education, and Outreach Facility located at Cherry Research Farm in Goldsboro, NC.
Lunchtime Discovery Series: Agroecology for Sustainable Food Systems in NC
Dr. Michelle Schroeder-Moreno was the May 28, 2025 speaker for a Lunchtime Discovery Series hosted by the N.C. DEQ Office of Environmental Education and Public Affairs and the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences.