N.C. A&T hosts chicken sale May 8
University Farm Superintendent Leon Moses was among the CAES volunteers at the pop-up meat sale.
N.C. A&T, Mountaire Farms and the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services teamed up to offer a bulk chicken sale to the public on the university campus May 8.
CAES students, faculty and staff volunteered during the sale. Additionally, the CAES purchased 800 pounds of chicken to donate to the food pantry at New Light Missionary Baptist Church, where it is helping to feed the hungry in East Greensboro.
Pop-up, drive-thru meat sales have occurred across the state to provide an outlet for farms and processors and to meet consumer demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sale was covered by The Carolinian newspaper of Raleigh.
“We’re glad to be here,” Mark Reif, who handles community relations for Mountaire Farms, told the newspaper on the day of the sale. “We do reciprocal business with A&T. We get management trainees from the school who typically go on to be supervisors and managers in our company.”
N.C. A&T part of new mentoring network
N.C. A&T is among 13 land-grant institutions participating in a new mentoring network focused on increasing underrepresented minorities and women in the agricultural and life sciences.
The network is based at Purdue University and is led by Levon Esters and Neil Knobloch, professors in the university's Department of Agricultural Sciences Education and Communication. Esters earned his master’s in agricultural education at A&T in 2000.
The Multi-institutional mEntoring Network for Transforming Organizational cultuRe (MENTOR) program will partner with six historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and seven predominantly white institutions (PWIs) to bring intentional and inclusive mentoring-based programs to these campuses.
“This project builds the collective capacity of and facilitates interactions between two disparate land-grant institutional types to help identify challenges and develop effective strategies to increase diversity in STEM-based agricultural and life sciences disciplines,” Esters said.
The faculty leadership team from A&T consists of Chastity Warren English, Gregory Goins, Chantel Simpson and Antoine J. Alston.
Alston elected to MANRRS Advisory Board
Dr. Antoine J. Alston, associate dean of academic studies
Antoine Alston, Ph.D., professor and associate dean for academic affairs, has been elected to serve as a member of the National Society of MANRRS Advisory Board. His three-year term begins Monday, June 1.
MANRRS promotes academic and professional advancement by empowering minorities in agriculture, natural resources, and related sciences.
Cooperative Extension featured in News & Record
A May 8 article in the Greensboro News & Record – It’s the growing season. Get out and garden –highlights gardening resources available through Cooperative Extension at N.C. A&T.
Rosalind Dale, Ed.D.
“Gardening provides not only good, nutritious food, it’s also a way to involve your family and get some much-needed physical activity,” Rosalind Dale, Ed.D., associate dean and administrator of Cooperative Extension at N.C. A&T, said in the story.
Gardening tips and The article directs readers to the Cooperative Extension at N.C. A&T’s COVID-19 Resources for the Public webpage.
Liang, technician use ‘telefarming’ to save exotic produce at CEFS
CEFS farm technician Salina Brown monitors the Asian gourds that she and Kathleen Liang, Ph.D. saved by “telefarming.”
That’s the idea behind “telefarming,” the solution that Kathleen Liang, Ph.D. and her farm technician Salina Brown found this spring to save the crop at the Small Farm Unit of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) in Goldsboro, when everyone left to shelter in place.
Liang is co-director of CEFS, where one of her current grant-funded research projects is the study of niche and exotic produce that farmers could grow to gain business in current markets.
When the unit’s other employees left CEFS to shelter in place, Brown, who is from Goldsboro, became the sole technician on hand to make sure that the seedlings and transplants of kohlrabi, Asian chives, Asian lettuce, several varieties of Asian gourd and other plants were cared for. However, she had no previous farming experience before working for Liang, and so she and Liang began working together through pictures and texts.
Through their efforts, several thousand plants were saved and lived to be planted at the farm unit.
Brown and Liang documented the process in a Voices from the Grassroots article, “Telefarming: When Push Comes to Shelve in Responding to COVID-19,” published online by the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.
Lee receives NCAFCS grant
Sung-Jin Lee
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines aging in place as “the ability to live in one’s own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level.”
