Farm to ECE Institute participants celebrating NC Crunch! The North Carolina Crunch promotes healthy eating and supports farm to school, farm to early care and education (ECE), and other local food initiatives throughout the state. Join us October 22, 2025 or anytime this month by crunching into a locally grown fruit or vegetable!

Learn more about NC Crunch: growing-minds.org/north-carolina-crunch
Learn more about CEFS Farm to ECE: go.ncsu.edu/f2ece

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…

NC State Extension, with the generous financial support of NC Farm Bureau and NC Cattlemen’s, has launched a new tool for connecting those needing hay with those who have hay to sell.  The newly launched website, nchayfinder.com, allows you to search for hay by your zip code.  You can then sort by distance, type of hay, or price.  If you have hay for sale, you can create a listing by creating an account.

For livestock production, forage is the primary source of feed and nutrition.  Simply, forages are the plant material that animals eat, whether the animal harvests it themselves through grazing or it is harvested mechanically (hay, sileage, baleage) by the farmer. Feed is the most expensive cost of a livestock enterprise.  Farms that can extend their grazing season through management (rotational grazing, improved pastures, etc.) can help reduce this cost.  Even with the best management practices, there is still a need for feeding stored forages (hay, baleage, silage).

In 2023, 119 million tons of dry hay was produced nationally. Based on the 2022 Census of Agriculture, North Carolina harvested over 1.2 million tons of dry hay.  Many variables affect the quality of hay. These include, but are not limited to: the species of hay (fescue, orchardgrass, alfalfa, etc.), stage of maturity of the plant at harvest, amount of weeds in the forage, and how the hay is stored. There are visual inspections that you can make to help assess the quality of the hay. However, the best way to assess the hay is to have the forage analyzed.

Your forage analysis results are only as good as the sample you submit. Be sure to collect a representative sample of the hay you want analyzed and keep the sample clean from contaminants. Sample each unique lot of hay, or hay from the same field and same cutting. If possible, use a core sampler to obtain your sample from various bales from the lot.  Always sample from the end of square bales or the round side of a round bale.  It is best to remove the outer half inch of the bale before sampling to help limit contamination.  Mix the samples in a clean plastic bucket.  Typically, a gallon-size portion is needed.

You can send your sample to the NC Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services Feed & Forage Laboratory or you can choose a commercial lab for testing.  For more information about the NC Hay Finder website or how to collect a forage sample, contact your local livestock agent.

Download this one-pager about NC Hay Finder.

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 businesses, and food hubs threatened food security and farm viability across the region. Immediately after the storm, EMFS distributed 40 grants totaling $101,092 to support emergency recovery needs. Working with the Mountain Horticultural Research team and Country Farm & Home in Pittsboro, the initiative also supplied replacement fencing to 12 livestock farmers. For many farms, this support was not only financial but was especially important in a moment when the overwhelming destruction brought by the storm made many feel hopeless. Thanks to the EMFS grant program, these farmers were not only able to recover some of the losses they sustained, but they were also able to imagine a new future for their business.

Big Bottom Milk Company in Rutherford County, co-owned by Stuart Beam and Preston Green, lost 85% of its corn crop but managed to keep its 70-head dairy operation going after the hurricane with its generators. They collaborated with the Rutherford County Cooperative Extension office and other agencies to serve as a distribution site for hay and fencing and helped deliver fuel, water, fencing, and feed to small farmers in coves and valleys where aid had not arrived. While Big Bottom Milk Company had crop losses over $200,000, a grant awarded by EMFS allowed them to keep their payroll going, supporting essential staff to keep Big Bottom milk on shelves. EmPOWERing Mountain Food Systems is grateful to the Community Foundation of WNC for their grant to support meat processors and dairies damaged by the storm.

According to Beam, “…Ingles could not get milk to the stores, and Ingles could not get any milk out. The milk situation made us realize how big of [an] this event was; the stores asked us to bring milk straight to them. We were able to do that. Our distributor was washed away, their warehouse and coolers were destroyed and their trucks were washed away. We became a distribution center and delivered milk to Knoxville. The only way we could do this was with our generators – all dairies have to have a generator at this level of production. We had one for the dairy and one for the milk plant. A store in Asheville asked if we could bring water – we started bottling water on Monday and we ran through every milk jug we had that day, 3,000 jugs. We started a fundraiser to buy more jugs. We were bottling milk in the morning, during the day, then at 4pm we would start bottling water until midnight. People heard what we were doing and showed up to help. We ran that operation for a month and a half. We were sending cases of water to the relief stations, then we got a permit from the Department of Agriculture to use water from the milk plant for public water use…

Altogether, we moved 45,000 gallons of water in a month. We bottled over 25,000 gallons. Our truck yard was used by the Department of Agriculture and Extension for supplies. We had NCDA and USDA employees helping us unload, reload, and distribute ag supplies. Jeff Bradley, Rutherford County Extension Director, and I figured out we had 500k of supplies that came through here. We were the delivery and distribution point for thousands of bales of hay and fence supplies. I am so proud of what our employees and friends did during that period…The support from EmPOWERing Mountain Food Systems helped us meet recent payroll and keep our operation running. We had $245,000 loss due to Hurricane Helene. Every bit of support helps keep this farm in operation.”

Another farmer, Angel Page of Shiloh Farms & Homestead, LLC, noted:

“Hurricane Helene caused us to lose about two-thirds of our chicken products. Our gasoline-powered generator did the best it could. Getting gasoline was extremely difficult. We were without power for 12 days and only permitted to purchase 5 gallons of gasoline each day for the first 3-5 days. We couldn’t keep 200lbs of chicken frozen. With this generous grant, we have been able to procure another freezer and more portable coolers. Therefore, we can store more chicken. We have also been able to acquire our own poultry processing equipment. This saves the cost of equipment rental fees, allows us to raise and process more birds each month, and now we can offer turkey. With this equipment, we can expand our business. It allows us to increase revenue. With increased revenue, we may be able to recoup some of the loss from Helene.”

The ongoing work of EMFS of building capacity, resilience, and connections in the Western North Carolina food system remains vital one year after the storm. Hurricane Helene revealed vulnerabilities, but it also reinforced CEFS’ commitment to a strong and adaptive local food system.

To learn more about Hurricane Helene’s impact on regional food and farming communities please see the recently released Supply Chain Assessment and recording of the SCA webinar here.

Learn more about EmPOWERing Mountain Food Systems, their business development and financial support services, and upcoming events.

The Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) Graduate Fellowship was developed to provide financial support and recognition for future leaders, researchers and contributors in sustainable agriculture and local food systems while they engage in academic research to further the field of study.

The Fellowship offers a one-year, $5,000 stipend for Master’s students and a two-year, $5,000-per-year stipend for Doctoral students.

The Fellowship is an important opportunity for students to meet and interact with graduate students from other departments, with other areas of expertise. “With climate change and other pressing food systems challenges, we need interdisciplinary solutions and we hope this Fellowship is the start of students working beyond their discipline. Some of our past Fellows are now collaborating with other CEFS Fellows on ideas sparked during their Fellowship experience. I’m excited to see what happens with this year’s cohort,” says Dr. Angel Cruz, CEFS Academic and Extension Initiatives Manager.

The CEFS North Carolina State University (NC State) Graduate Fellowship Program was made possible by an endowment from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation.

The 2025-2026 CEFS NC State Graduate Fellows and their departments/research areas are:

2025 Cohort – NC State

Clarisse Owens | Master Degree| Forestry and Environmental Resources | NC State University

Clarisse is receiving a M.S. with the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University. Advised by Dr. Kurt Smith, she contributes to the retention of wild and working lands through the study of heirs’ property. Heirs’ property is a structure of collective family ownership that often has deep historical and cultural significance. There are an estimated six million acres of heirs’ property in the U.S. South, and NC contains the second largest amount at 300,000-500,000 acres. The vast majority of this land is undeveloped, containing wild and working lands. Increasing rates of farmland loss from development pressure poses a direct threat to families with heirs’ property.

Clarisse utilizes interviews and workshops to engage with heirs’ property owners and understand their experiences with land management and loss. Some heirs’ properties are managed for agriculture, agritourism, forestry, conservation, or other avenues of income generation, despite legal barriers that limit owners’ access to loans and cost-share programs. Learning from families about their experiences enhances land retention strategy and the production of food, fuel, and fiber.

Clarisse is a University of Michigan alum and has always felt most at home when near water or the woods. Her background in food systems with North Carolina State Extension and Cornell Cooperative Extension guide her goals around technical and educational programming with landowners.

Adam Michael Breister | Doctorate | Genetics & Genomics | NC State University

Adam Breister is a Microbiology PhD student and an NC State University Genetics & Genomics Scholar advised by Dr. Mallory Choudoir. Adam received his B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019. He is interested in using computational methods along with environmental nutrient data to understand microbial ecology globally. He is particularly interested in understanding microbial functionality and the impacts of microbiome function on the environment, with a current focus on farming systems. His current research is in collaboration with Dr. Alex Woodley at NC State looking at the legacy effects of different organic amendments on agricultural soil microbial community structure and function. He is also looking at the effects of flooding events on agricultural soil microbial communities through the use of microcosm samples with soils collected from the CEFS Field Research, Education, and Outreach Facility at Cherry Research Farm.

Soil ecosystems are one of the largest sinks of carbon in the world, and microbes play a major role in the cycling of nutrients including carbon. Soil organic matter, which is commonly used as a soil health indicator, is partially made up of microbial cells, and it is manipulated and transformed through microbial metabolic processes. Microbes in soils, especially in agricultural soils, make up an important part of the ecosystem in terms of productivity and should be considered important members of the entire agricultural ecosystem. Extreme weather events like those resulting in flooding can have major impacts on soil microorganisms, which can in turn impact higher level ecological processes in agroecosystems. Adam’s research aims to provide insight into how external stimuli impact microbial communities in agricultural soils with the hope of including microorganisms in the framework of agricultural sustainability.

He is excited to be a part of the CEFS fellowship program and hopes that this opportunity will allow him to increase his knowledge of agricultural system sustainability and soil chemistry in an effort to better integrate his research on microbial communities into the current ecological framework.

Praneswar Ghosh | Doctorate | Soil Science | NC State University

Praneswar Ghosh (who goes by PG) is a Ph.D. student in Soil Science at North Carolina State University, in the Sihi Biogeochemistry Lab led by Dr. Debjani Sihi. PG’s research primarily focuses on measuring soil carbon and nutrient cycle proxies and quantifying greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) benefits of sustainable agricultural practices using a combination of empirical and modeling approaches. The broader impacts of his studies include reducing greenhouse gas emissions from natural and managed ecosystems and enhancing soil carbon sequestration by promoting sustainable agricultural practices. Additionally, PG is also interested in developing low-cost, user-friendly nutrient sensors to measure and monitor nutrient losses (such as nitrogen as ammonia volatilization and phosphorus) from agricultural fields in real time. His work will help farmers in quickly diagnosing problems in the management practices and guide stakeholders and policymakers in North Carolina and beyond in real-time decision-making, ultimately lowering costs and minimizing environmental impacts.

Before joining the Sihi lab at NC State, PG completed his Bachelor’s in Agriculture and Master’s in Agricultural Chemistry and Soil Science from Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya (BCKV), West Bengal, India. His Master’s research examined how different land management practices affect phosphorus dynamics in soils across diverse agro-ecological regions of eastern India. The broader goals of his work were to reduce phosphorus loss to the waterbodies and recommend best management practices to maintain ecosystem sustainability and soil health over the long term. As a CEFS Fellow, PG aims to deepen his understanding of North Carolina’s farming systems and explore how his research can drive meaningful and lasting change in the agricultural workforce. Outside the lab, PG enjoys gardening, playing outdoor games, and traveling.

For more information about the CEFS NC State Graduate Fellows Program, please visit the CEFS website.

The Center for Environmental Farming Systems is a partnership of NC State University, NC Agricultural and Technical State University and the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. CEFS develops and promotes just and equitable food and farming systems that conserve natural resources, strengthen communities, improve health outcomes, and provide economic opportunities in North Carolina and beyond. For more information, visit www.cefs.ncsu.edu.