John M. O’Sullivan
At the end of July, I retired after 31 years with the Cooperative Extension Program at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. It is amazing and inspiring to reflect back on how far we have come as a community and as a state in all those years. In the late 1980’s, when we first began to voice our concerns about the social, environmental and economic sustainability of our food system, we were like mice travelling in a herd of elephants.
Now, those concerns are mainstream. Indeed, new questions and concerns have arisen and impel us forward in our work. New partners have joined the conversation, and the conversation itself has broadened – from production and distribution to health and health care, food access and food equity. Food and agriculture are now properly understood to be inseparable from culture, access, justice, and health issues. This is as true across the globe as it is as here locally in North Carolina.
CEFS has become a “backbone” organization: convening, supporting, and facilitating the many statewide partners whose work, separately and together, has allowed us to reach this point of reflection.
I have enjoyed my tenure as Co-Director of CEFS; it has been a wonderful and enriching experience. I’m very proud of the work we all have done, and I’m grateful for the wisdom and experience that grounding our effort in Goldsboro, NC has given us.
I look forward to seeing many of you, including CEFS supporters from around the country, during our 20th Anniversary special events on October 17 and 18. I’ll be visiting Uruguay next spring with a Fulbright Award to research increasing interest in local foods and to nurture the connection between CEFS/North Carolina and our colleagues and partners in Uruguay. And I will continue to live in Chapel Hill. I have community garden work to do, and many conversations still to engage and be engaged in pertaining to local foods, food equity, and food access.
All in all, yesterday, today and tomorrow, thank you for the honor of having been part of the CEFS Team!
With love and hope for multitudes of blessings for all,
Dr. John M. O’Sullivan
Director Emeritus, CEFS
From the September 2014 E-Newsletter