Entrepreneurship and Feasible Enterprise Analysis

Overview

Dr. Chyi Lyi (Kathleen) Liang

For more than 25 years, the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) has existed as a partnership among North Carolina State University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. An example of multidisciplinary research led by CEFS faculty at N.C. A&T is the multidisciplinary research of Dr. Chyi Lyi (Kathleen) Liang, CEFS co-Director and W.K. Kellogg Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Agriculture in the Department of Agribusiness, Applied Economics and Agriscience Education. Dr. Liang has designed, developed, and contributed to a variety of research topics in food systems and food networks. Examples include examining relationships between human decisions and natural resources to alleviate food desert challenges, creating innovative strategies to support diverse farmers to transform meaningful financial records into effective financial analysis, and investigating integrated social/economic/environmental impacts on reduced-antibiotic applications in the poultry industry. Dr. Liang’s expertise in entrepreneurship, community development, and creative solutions for food challenges have supported farmers, consumers, government agencies, and community-based organizations to build new visions and approaches.

Research Goals

Dr. Liang’s research promotes interdisciplinary and integrated nature to support and motivate scholars to use existing tools to solve new problems, to adopt new tools to solve ongoing challenges, and to generate new collaborative strategies to respond to future risks in food systems and community networks.

Research Design

  1. Primary data collection through surveys (e.g., producers’ decisions to start businesses, triggers of new venture creation, entrepreneurial characteristics, local food purchasing preferences, willingness to pay for local foods, production costs versus income, labor market and farm labor management)
  2. Secondary data analysis using Data.Gov (e.g., Census for community profile, demographics, industry situations, business locations, market and marketing, energy use, etc.)

Apply simulation models, prediction models, and financial analysis packages to estimate impacts and predicted relationships (e.g., people live in food deserts have low access to fresh produce, find out why, identify variables related to the reasons, find out what variables could be used to estimate this relationship, and analyze scenarios that could reduce the barriers for people to access affordable and available local foods.)

Results

Since 2016, Dr. Liang has collaborated with more than 50 multidisciplinary scholars, and served as leadership positions for 25+ public-private collaborative entities. She has worked with colleagues and students to present research papers in interdisciplinary conferences involving agriculture, geosciences, economics, engineering, entrepreneurship, and community development. Dr. Liang’s unique vision, knowledge, and experiences in agriculture/food systems have created a high demand across professional associations.

Dr. Liang has also designed and delivered extension and outreach workshops to offer research-based information through training and demonstration to support N.C. Cooperative Extension agents, farmers, and other service providers in NC and beyond. As the National Leader for eXtension Community of Practice since 2016, she has offered quarterly Open Forum via Zoom to 5,000+ national extension professionals to share research updates, best practices, innovative curriculum/programming, coalition building, and networking support.