The Ag e-Dispatch

Party season preamble for SAES students

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:15:20 -0500

All SAES students are invited to kick off the holiday season at the annual Unity Day celebration from 6 to 9 p.m at the Webb Hall Auditorium on Thursday, Nov. 18. The food, fun and fellowship are made possible by the generosity of Cargill this year.

A hundred health-hungry teens headed to Greensboro

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:14:11 -0500

The Cooperative Extension Program at A&T will be hosting an elite group of teenagers from across the state Nov. 12 to 15. The teens will be coming for training in intervention measures for hypertension, diabetes, stroke, and kidney disease. Extension health and nutrition specialists are using a $50,000 grant from the Walmart Foundation to train the “Force of 100” in nutrition, food safety, physical fitness and proper exercise techniques.

Following their training this week, the teens will be expected to return to their communities and work on their own lifestyle changes, involve their household in changes, and conduct at least two programs that involve their family, friends and community.

Complete details are available at the program Web page.

Learning in style

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:13:34 -0500

On Friday, Nov. 20 The Cooperative Extension Program at A&T will be hosting a presentation by Dr. Nancy Franz of the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education at Virginia Tech. Franz will discuss recent research into the learning preferences of Cooperative Extension’s clientele and the implications these preferences have for Extension educators. She will be joined at the lectern by Johnnie Westbrook, a candidate for a doctorate in Agriculture and Extension Education at Virginia Tech and formerly a member of the A&T Cooperative Extension field staff. In addition to implications from learning style research, the program will also touch on gathering impact data that accurately reflects the public value of Extension programming.

The Nov. 20 program will run from 10 a.m. to noon in the Godfrey Multipurpose Room at Coltrane Hall, and the Cooperative Extension faculty is extending an invitation to faculty, staff and students from other SAES departments.

Tuskegee Professional Ag. Workers Conference first week in December

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:12:41 -0500

Tuskegee University will be hosting the 67th Annual Professional Agricultural Workers Conference (PAWC) from Dec. 6 to 8. The PAWC theme this year is "The Color of Wealth in the Green Economy.” The student registration fee is $125. For other participants, the early bird registration rate for registrations before Nov. 15, is $350. After that cutoff the registration fee will be $425.

Not too late to donate

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:11:54 -0500

The Department of Family and Consumer Sciences chalked up $1,565 in donations to take first place in the competition among the SAES’s four academic departments to see which of them could raise the most money for students’ out-of-pocket higher education costs and departmental instructional resources in the weeks leading up to Homecoming 2009. The Department of Agribusiness, Applied Economics and Agriscience Education finished second with $1,220; Animal Sciences was third with $689; and Natural Resources and Environmental Design was fourth with $300.

Dr. Donald McDowell, the interim SAES dean, and his administrative team want to send along a note of thanks to all members of the faculty and staff who were able to make donations. For those who were so busy with professional or personal obligations that the Cash for Thinkers fundraiser slipped by, it’s still not too late to give. Donation protocol is still accessible at the SAES website.

New issue of RE:search RE:ady

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:10:11 -0500

A new issue of the Agricultural Research Program’s annual magazine RE:search is ready to go, and copies will soon be hitting the mailboxes. The cover story for this issue is Dr. Manuel Reyes' multifaceted agroforesrty project in Southeast Asia, and Reyes and Dr. Willie Willis are the stars of the Web page video exclusives that complement the electronic copy (a PDF) available at the RE:search Web page. Members of the ARP faculty who would like copies of the booklet mailed to colleagues or trade magazines can add names and addresses to the mailing list by completing this Ag. Communications & Technology mailing list form. (This is also the form to use for updating the mailing list for Solutions for North Carolina, The Cooperative Extension Program at A&T's multimedia annual report, and the SAES's monthly newsletter, on the move.) For copies of the 2009 issue of RE:search to distribute at conferences or other functions, contact Teresa McRae, office manager for Ag. Communications at tamcrae@ncat.edu or at 334.7636.

SAES International Trade Center to help offer guidance to stimulus funding

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:08:06 -0500

The SAES’s International Trade Center is collaborating with the North Carolina Coalition of Farm and Rural Families in organizing a forum for presenting insights into “The American Recovery Reinvestment Act of 2009: Implications for Small Farms, Cooperatives, and Small Businesses.” The forum will be Friday, Nov. 13, at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel in Durham. Among the featured speakers are business, marketing and grants specialists from USDA Rural Business Development, and entrepreneurs with success stories that include dos and don’ts for funding support.

Dr. Osei Yeboah, an SAES associate professor who also serves as the interim director of the SAES’s International Trade Center, says that: “In the last two years, small producers, cooperatives, and small businesses have been facing historic energy, economic and environmental challenges. To address these issues, we are inviting program managers from USDA and state agencies to give an overview of their programs and funding opportunities available for producers and businesses.”

Members of the Cooperative Extension field staff, and professionals from other small-farm and rural business support agencies who are interested in registering to attend the forum should contact Yeboah.

Yeboah was part of a 100-member review panel selected to evaluate applications in September for the Department of Energy Biomass Energy Program at the agency’s Colorado field office. The DOE will be directing $500 million in stimulus funding to commercial-scale production of gasoline, jet fuel, and ethanol from corn, sugar, woody biomass and other feedstocks.

Associate dean of Agricultural Research Program garners national recognition

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:05:41 -0500

The American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences’ (AAFCS) has named Dr. Shirley Hymon-Parker, associate dean for the Agricultural Research Program, as one of two recipients of the organization’s most prestigious national award. Hymon-Parker was named an AAFCS Distinguished Service Award honoree for 2009-10 along with Juanita Mendenhall of the Teen Health Promotion Coalition in Ridgeway, S.C. Hymon-Parker and Mendenhall will be honored at the 2010 AAFCS Annual Conference in Cleveland, June 24-26. Their career accomplishments will also be spotlighted in the next issue of the Journal of Family & Consumer Sciences.

In correspondence announcing that Hymon-Parker had been honored with the Distinguished Service Award, the AAFCS’s senior member relations manager, Sophy Mott, noted that, “As the new Associate Dean for Research in the School of Agriculture & Environmental Sciences, North Carolina A&T State University, she's continuing a career built on the creation, transformation and advancement of FCS knowledge in the areas of teaching, scholarly research and outreach, and administration in higher education.”

The AAFCS Distinguished Service Award was established in 1979 by a forerunner professional organization, the American Home Economics Association, to recognize superior achievements in family and consumer sciences, and outstanding professional contributions through leadership as well as scholarship.

Application deadline for vet school prep program is Nov. 13

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:04:45 -0500

The application deadline is Nov. 13 for SAES undergraduate students majoring in one of the animal sciences who are interested in following the Food Animal Scholars Program’s academic pathway to N.C. State’s College of Veterinary Medicine in the fall of 2011. Up to six students and two alternates from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State and the SAES and are chosen for the Food Animal Scholars Program each year. Their progress toward achieving the admission requirements for State’s College of Veterinary Medicine is then closely monitored and well mentored. To be eligible for the program, Animal Sciences majors should be on schedule to complete their bachelor’s degrees within two or three semesters following submission of their November application.

Dr. Willie Willis of the Department of Animal Sciences serves as the SAES’s program representative and he requests that any A&T students interested in the application process begin their quest by first contacting him, either by e-mail or with a call to his office, 336.334.7786.

Closing off the epidemiological pathways

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:03:33 -0500

On Nov. 18th at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) near Goldsboro, members of the North Carolina Extension Food Safety Team will conduct a Tier 1 workshop for fruit and vegetable growers, and the program will cover the essential precautions for minimizing food safety risks. The training agenda’s backbone will be the Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), which are built around an introduction to common food-borne pathogens and diseases, points of potential contamination, use of biosolids as a nutrient source, packing facility hygiene and water quality standards.

The Tier 1 GAP training is for any individual involved in handling fresh produce: field hands, packing house employees and truckers as well as farmers, will benefit from the training by learning to identify and prevent contact between sources of contamination and fresh produce. The workshop registration fee is $20.

Brochure covering Small Farms Week sponsorship opportunities yours to distribute

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:00:10 -0500

A brochure with complete details is ready for agribusiness firms and SAES state and federal partner agencies interested in sponsorship opportunities for the Small Farmers Recognition Luncheon on Wednesday, March 24, 2010. The trifold brochure has a breakdown of funding levels and commensurate marketing and branding opportunities.

Members of the Extension field staff who have been working with small-scale farmers whose success qualifies them for the 2009 Gilmer L. and Clara Y. Dudley Small Farmer of the Year Award have until Dec. 1 to submit nominations. The award will be presented on Small Farms Day to a family farm in North Carolina that exemplifies success, innovation and leadership in small-scale agriculture. To be eligible, farmers must generate at least half their gross income from farming, have averaged less than $100,000 in annual gross farm revenue over the last three years, and the farm must be one with a family member making general management decisions.

Animal Sciences students’ research work gets public review

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:57:46 -0500

Two SAES Animal Sciences undergraduate students and four graduate students put together poster presentations covering their research projects for North Carolina Alliance to Create Opportunity Through Education (NC OPT-ED) Alliance day in October. The SAES Alliance Day Animal Sciences student researchers making presentations were:
• Erin Barnes, an undergraduate whose research into “Isolation and Purity of DNA from Goat and Swine Blood Collected on FTA Cards” was guided by Dr. Millie Worku;
• Carresse Gerald, a graduate student working under the guidance of Dr. Jenora Waterman, whose research project was “Swine Confinement Facility Dust Induces NF-kB and iNOS Expression in Airway Epithelial Cells In Vitro”;
• La'Toya Lane, a graduate student whose research mentor was Dr. Millie Worku, whose research was into “Identification of the Putative Ligand-Binding Region of Caprine Toll-Like Receptor-4(TLR4) from a Spanish Goat”;
• Melody Robinson, a second year master's student advised by Dr. Radiah Minor, whose research was into "The Effect of B-glucan on the Allergic Immune Response to Chitin”;
• Savannah Schepis, a graduate student whose research advisor for a “Sequence Comparison of Human and Bovine Small Heat Shock Proteins” was Dr. Millie Worku;
• Dez-Ann Sutherland, an undergraduate whose research was an “Evaluation of the effects of Nutraceutical Grade of Colostrum on the growth of C.elegans” that was guided by Dr. Millie Worku.

Melody Robinson’s research NC OPT-ED Alliance day presentation was also accepted for presentation at the Annual Biomedical and Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) in Phoenix, Ariz., the first week of November.

Extension accepting applications for two openings

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:56:45 -0500

The Cooperative Extension Program at A&T will be accepting applications until Nov. 15 for an Extension Associate who will assist with day-to-day operations and educational programs for the Small Farm Unit that is one of six units at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) near Goldsboro. Applicants should have the training and experience to plan, implement and evaluate Extension and research activities at the CEFS Small Farm Unit. In addition to a background of relevant professional experience, applicants also should have at least a master’s degree in one of the agricultural sciences, and preference will be given to applicants with master’s degrees.

Cooperative Extension’s application deadline for a Coltrane-based position, Evaluation and Accountability Coordinator, is Dec. 23. The individual selected will assist Extension and research faculty with assessment measures to determine the impact of programs and projects, and accountability reports for stakeholders and other constituencies. Applicants should have a doctorate in educational measurement, adult education, or a closely related field, and five years of professional experience in evaluation with a non-profit, educational or government employer.

Thought for food

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:55:49 -0500

On Thursday, Nov. 19, the Department of Family and Consumer Science’s Food and Nutrition Club will host a free screening of the movie Food, Inc. at Coltrane Hall. The 94-minute film will begin at 4 p.m.

One reviewer sums up the critically acclaimed documentary as “concerned with the extent to which industrial food production has replaced farming in America,” that has become a “blunt instrument of civic, moral, and social responsibility.”

Following the movie there will be an interactive panel discussion led by some of the SAES’s experts in food sciences, sustainable agriculture, health and food activism. Panelists will be an SAES food scientist, Dr. Ipek Goktepe, Dr. Patricia Lynch of the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, and Dr. John O’Sullivan, farm management and marketing specialist for The Cooperative Extension Program.

Special funding for specialty crops

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:55:14 -0500

USDA has announced the availability of more than $47 million in funding for research and Extension projects that will "address the critical needs of the specialty crop industry by developing and disseminating science-based tools to address needs of specific crops." The program has five focus areas for FY 2010 : 1) standard research and Extension projects; 2) coordinated agricultural projects that make contributions to sustainable agriculture; 3) regional partnerships; 4) eXtension projects that develop Communities of Practice; and 5) research and Extension planning projects.

Letters of intent for Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) grants are due Nov. 25, and the proposals themselves are due Jan. 14, 2010.