Center for Environmental Farming Systems, NC

After my visit at Central Carolina Community College, I went to the Center of Environmental Farming Systems in Goldsboro (CEFS), North Carolina. According to their website "CEFS is dedicated to sustainable agriculture research, extension and education. Goals are to provide new economic opportunities in rural and urban communities, develop technologies that promote a cleaner and healthier environment, educate the next generation of farmers, consumers, and scientists, and engage all citizens in the food system". The place itself is a huge area of land dived into various focus areas such as sustainable crop production, small farms, agroforestry, sustainable animal production. I toured all of these areas but focused most closely on the organically managed small farm unit.

I was very interested in how the Center runs farming education programs. They offers a 8 week internship program for college credit not students from around the country. Each intern is paired with a mentor faculty in the focus area that the intern is most interested (i.e. community food systems, organic crop production, etc. ). The internship is meant to be an introduction to research and understanding of agricultural systems. The interns move around to various areas, which gives them a great overview of the whole agricultural system. At the same time they are only a few days at each unit, leaving little time for real training and sometimes leaving them with work that trained employee do not want to do.

The small farms unit also runs an apprenticeship program. Four apprentices work closely with a the farm manager, Steve Moore, from February though November operating a 35 acre farm. Steve is a very experienced farmer. Most of the farm is in perennial forages, producing feed for a few steers. About 1.5 acres is in annual crop production. In addition they have some berries and agroforesty trees. A heated greenhouse provides a propagation space and unheated hoop houses offer the opportunity for season extension. The heat for the propagation house is created with solar hot water tubes. The hoop houses are built on a metal sled. The produce from the farm is donated to a near by hospital unit for the mentally disabled. Unfortunately the patients do not work on the farm anymore. In my own apprenticeship on the Aspichhof in in Germany about 25 years ago, I had the opportunity to work with mentally disabled patients, which was a wonderful educational experience. According to one apprentice at CEFS, the apprenticeship is better suited for someone who will be involved in education in some form later on (Peace Corps, Extension, School Gardens, etc. ) and not someone wanting to start a commercially sustainable farming operation.

After my farm visit I had a chance to visit with colleagues back in Raleight, where NC State University is located. Tes Thraves is a project leader in community based food systems and she gave me many good contacts in this field. We also talked about incubator programs. Incubator programs allow a transition time between farm education and commercial farming. State or county owned farm land is managed by beginner farmers and a farm manager serves a mentor and equipment is shared. After I spoke with Tes I had a chance to meet with Nancy Creamer, director of CEFS and distinguished professor of sustainable agriculture and community food systems and Chris Reberg-Horton an extension professor I used to work during my employment at the University of New Hampshire. I also met my Oregon colleague and friend Alex Stone, organic vegetable specialist from Oregon State University. We rarely have time to visit with each other in Corvallis, so a meeting in Raleigh, NC was kind of strange but a nice opportunity to catch up.