Consider Donnie Williams the pied piper
of Autryville. At least when it comes to
pigs. As Williams walks through his Sampson
County farmstead, an eager stream of little pigs
trail behind, nipping at his feet. They know who
feeds them, and who raises them in green pastures
with free range to roam and forage.
In recognition of their pastured hog produc-tion
and for maintaining good environmental
stewardship, Donnie and Alease Williams and
their D&A Farm were recently named the 2016
Small Farmers of the Year in North Carolina. The
Cooperative Extension Program at A&T, which
administers the award and the Small Farms Week
programs, lauded the Williamses in ceremo-nies
in March.
Williams, 72, a lifelong farmer,
was raising hogs the conven-tional
way, in confinement,
with a waste lagoon that
could be considered an
environmental issue. He
nearly quit in the 1990s
when the market-rate for
conventional pork was a
paltry 30-cents a pound.
“He was disgusted.
I hated to see him down,
so I got out and started
researching,” says Alease
Williams, who handles
the farm’s business and
marketing.
Her research took her
to Sampson County Extension
and agent James Hartsfield, as well
as to Cooperative Extension at A&T.
Hartsfield helped get the Williamses involved
in the Niche Pork Growers School, and in
workshops conducted through local and A&T
Cooperative Extension programs. They also
joined the marketing cooperative, the North
Carolina Natural Hog Growers Association, and
have worked with A&T agricultural faculty. By
improving their farming practices and switching
to natural methods—no antibiotics, artificial hor-mones
or growth enhancers—Donnie Williams
was able to attract such specialty markets as
upscale restaurants and grocery stores. The
change in practices has resulted in what Hartsfield
describes as “a dramatic increase” in their income.
“It made a big difference for me,” said
Williams, the only one of 10 other siblings to
maintain a long-term farm career. “I always want-ed
to be a farmer. I just like it. I grew up on it.”
After working with Cooperative Extension,
Williams also improved the environmental impact
of his farm. He developed best-management prac-tices
for avoiding contamination of groundwater
by keeping his pigs on high ground instead of
a low lying area. Williams also increased
the ground cover in his pastures to
reduce soil erosion and nutrient
runoff. He also established
buffer strips to prevent
nutrients from contaminat-ing
water sources, and
planted crops after rotat-ing
pigs to other loca-tions,
to take advantage
of the natural fertilizers
they had left behind.
Using materials from
Cooperative Extension
at A&T, County Agent
Hartsfield has also helped
D&A Farm to develop
biosecurity practices to
reduce the risk and spread of
disease.
D&A Farm has more than
140 acres in active production, includ-ing
12 acres for the hog operation, and nearly
100 acres in corn and double-cropped acres of
soybeans and wheat, used mostly for animal feed.
The Williamses cite relationships with Extension
in Sampson County and at A&T as instrumental
help in advancing their farm. As Alease Williams
put it at the awards ceremony: “I’m feeling that
Aggie pride.”
Preparing. Finding. Implementing solutions.
Would a rose by any other name smell as
sweet? Perhaps.
Come July 1 our “School” officially
becomes the “College” of Agriculture and
Environmental Sciences or CAES. And
in the garden that is N.C. A&T, calling all
roses by the same name is yet another
step on the pathway to preeminence.
The UNC Board of Governors, which
oversees N.C. A&T and the other 15 state-funded
universities, is expected to approve
the name change April 21, formally autho-rizing
what A&T’s campus restructuring
committee has recommended.
Internally, we’ll have to change our
business cards, letterhead, signage, web
sites, and the like.
Externally, though, our audiences
and supporters won’t see any appreciable
difference in our new nomenclature.
Yet, the underlying reason for the
change is that the uniformity in aligning
all A&T divisions as colleges will help us
strengthen academic programs, enhance
collaboration in curricula and research,
make more efficient use of our resources
and improve student retention. Those are
all points that Chancellor Harold L. Martin
Sr. has made in announcing the upcoming
shift. Restructuring is another aspect of
Preeminence 2020, the university’s long-term
strategic plan for reaching excel-lence
in all areas in the next four years.
As part of a campus-wide restructur-ing,
we’re also poised to get a new doc-toral
program, the details of which will be
discussed during our SAES/CAES faculty
retreat this month. I’ll keep you posted.
The other part of the restructuring
that affects our areas is the shift of our
birth-to-kindergarten program from the
Department of Family and Consumer
Sciences (FCS), to what will be A&T’s
College of Education. We won’t lose any
faculty in the shift, because enrollment
was low in the birth-to-kindergarten
program and FCS faculty will continue to
teach across other subject matter areas.
Through it all, the soon-to-be
College of Agriculture and Environmental
Sciences remains on the move.
Dr. HP’s Highlights
on the move North Carolina Agricultural and
Technical State University
School of Agriculture and
Environmental Sciences Newsletter
www.ag.ncat.edu
April 2016 • Vol. XV, No. 2
Sampson County team wins top-farm honors
How will the world feed
itself in 2050? It’s a ques-tion
that keeps many an agri-cultural
policy maker up at
night, and is the topic of high-level, round-table
discussions and white papers. All agree
the planet will need substantially more
food to feed the more than 9 billion people
who will populate the world by then, but
doing so in the face of global climate change
and mounting pressure on soil and water
resources remains a challenge.
As a land-grant university, N.C. A&T
has always been an integral part of that
conversation, but rarely more so than this
spring, as the university hosts a meeting
and webcast of the Board for International
Food and Agricultural Development
(BIFAD) 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, May 20
at the Alumni-Foundation Event Center.
The seven-member board, which includes
Chancellor Harold L. Martin Sr., advises
the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) on how the nation’s
land-grant universities can assist the agen-cy’s
mission of ending global hunger and
poverty. Martin was appointed to the board
in 2012 by President Barack Obama.
“I have been looking forward to host-ing
a BIFAD conference for some time,
to showcase the remarkable expertise and
capacity here, not only at N.C. A&T but
statewide as well, as North Carolina is a top
agricultural biotechnology state,” Martin
said.
Most SAES faculty have experience
with some aspect of international agricul-tural
development, but three who have
especially extensive global experience will
serve on a panel to share insights from their
numerous activities in developing nations:
Dr. Manuel Reyes,
professor of biological
engineering, who has
led or worked on numer-ous
USAID projects in
Southeast Asia, Central
America and Africa, will
discuss his work within
the context of “sustainable intensifica-tion
for commercial home gardens,”
a topic that has local and global
relevance.
Dr. Anthony Yeboah,
chair of the depart-ment
of Agribusiness,
Applied Economics and
Agriscience Education,
will share his experience
in African and Caribbean
development, both in
terms of agricultural and human capital
development.
Dr. Osei Yeboah, who
directs the L.C. Cooper
Jr. International Trade
Center and publishes
extensively on interna-tional
trade policy, will
discuss his activities in
education, research and
extension in Africa, Southeast Asia
and the Caribbean—not to mention in
North Carolina, where he facilitates
access to resources for small farmers.
The meeting will also feature a
presentation from the North Carolina
Biotechnology Center. A visit to the Center
for Excellence in Post-Harvest Technologies
at the North Carolina Research Campus in
Kannapolis is also on the BIFAD agenda.
Dr. Barry L. Burks, vice-chancellor
for research and economic development,
encourages stakeholders to attend or tune
in to the webinar, noting that top-level pro-gram
managers and administrators will be
part of the contingent visiting A&T to bet-ter
understand the capabilities of the institu-tion.
“We need to take advantage of that to
show them what Aggies do and what Aggies
can do,” Burks said.
Board for International Food and Agricultural Development
panel to feature SAES faculty
Chancellor Harold L. Martin Sr., who has a seat
on USAID’s Board for International Food and
Agricultural Development, spoke at the 2016
Small Farmers’ Appreciation Day in March.
on the move
Unable to attend? Log on to the web broadcast of the BIFAD meeting: http://bit.ly/ncatbifad
Dr. Carter Crawford
has joined the faculty
as assistant profes-sor
of Landscape
Architecture in the
Department of Natural
Resources and
Environmental Design,
bringing with him
more than 35 years of
teaching and professional experience
in designing large- and medium-size
public, commercial and private land-scapes,
mostly in the Triangle area.
Crawford, whose Ph.D. is from N.C.
State, is president of Carter Crawford
DESIGN PA. In addition to serving as
program coordinator, Crawford teaches
landscape design studios to freshmen
and seniors.
Dr. Sherrell Hicklen
House has joined
the faculty as assis-tant
professor in the
Child Development
and Family Studies
Program of the
Department of Family
and Consumer
Sciences. She holds
an undergraduate degree in psychol-ogy
from Howard University, a mas-ter’s
degree in psychology in education
from the University of Pittsburgh, and
a Ph.D. in Human Development and
Family Studies from Michigan State
University. House teaches FCS 260:
Introduction to Human Development,
FCS 331: Family Systems, and FCS 432:
Culture, Child and Family.
Dr. Leonard L.
Williams, an SAES
alum, was named
director of the
Center for Excellence
in Post-Harvest
Technologies (CEPHT),
at the North Carolina
Research Campus in
Kannapolis, effective
Dec. 1. Most recently, Williams served
as interim director and lead scientist
for food safety and microbiology for
CEPHT, which is administered by the
SAES and is a key partner at the North
Carolina Research Campus. Williams
obtained his Ph.D. in food science spe-cializing
in microbiology from Alabama
A&M University and also holds an
MBA from Wake Forest University,
which he earned in 2015. He received a
master’s in animal health sciences from
A&T in 1997.
faculty & staff notes
“ Right now I’d like to say I’m feeling that Aggie Pride.”
Alease Williams, who along with her husband Donnie Williams and D&A
Farm, are the 2016 Small Farmers of Year for North Carolina.
“ The population of North Carolina is changing and
increasing. There’s opportunity for small farmers
to provide local foods to these people moving in
to the state, but we’ve got to educate them about
what local foods are.”
Steve Troxler, North Carolina Commissioner
of Agriculture
“ We’ve got to have more agricultural research, not less. Because we’re
going to have 9 billion people on earth by 2050 and we need to be
able to develop the food systems to feed them. If we don’t, it can
cause a lot of problems. Hungry people are mean people.”
Steve Troxler, North Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture
“ If our nation’s small farmers prosper, then
we all prosper.”
Vernita Dore, deputy under secretary of Rural
Development, USDA, guest speaker at Small Farmers’
Appreciation Day
“ Many young and beginning farmers struggle to find access to land,
credit and technical support. As a member of the (U.S.) House
Agriculture Committee, we have been looking into these issues to
find bipartisan solutions.”
U.S. Rep. Alma Adams
Vance County Agricultural Technician Wayne Rowland, left, introduces grower Joe Parks
during the Small Farms Week kickoff tour that included Parks’ farm and two others.
Preparing. Finding. Implementing solutions.
~
Q uo tes
~
DORE
TROXLER
________________
___N_o_n_p_r_o_fi_t _O_r_g_. __
__U_S_ _P_o_s_ta_g_e_ _P_a_id__
___P_e_rm__it_ N__o_. _2_02_ __
__G_r_e_e_n_s_b_o_r_o_, N__C__
on the move
North Carolina A&T State University School of
Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Newsletter —
Produced by Agricultural Communications
Dr. Harold L. Martin Sr., Chancellor
Dr. Shirley Hymon-Parker, Interim Dean, School of
Agriculture and Environmental Sciences
Dr. Antoine J. Alston, Associate Dean, Academic Studies
Dr. Rosalind Dale, Interim Administrator,
The Cooperative Extension Program
Dr. Valerie Giddings, Interim Associate Dean,
Agricultural Research
North Carolina A&T State University is a land-grant
doctoral/research institution and AA/EEO employer.
N.C. A&T does not discriminate against employees, students,
or applicants on the basis of age, color, disability, gender,
gender identity, gender expression, national origin, political
affiliation, race, religion, sexual orientation, genetic informa-tion,
veteran status, or any other basis protected by law.
Send change of address and correspondence to:
on the move Newsletter Editor
Agricultural Research Program
CH Moore Agricultural Research Station
Greensboro, NC 27411
or online:
http://bit.ly/saesesub
7,000 copies of this public document
were printed on recycled paper at
a cost of $1,459.60 or $0.21 per copy.
Distributed in furtherance of the acts of Congress of May 8
and June 30, 1914. Employment and program opportunities
are open to all people regardless of race, color, national
origin, sex, age or disability. North Carolina A&T State
University, North Carolina State University, US Department
of Agriculture and local governments cooperating.
on the move/flip side
Kurt Taylor, program associate for The Cooperative Extension Program, looks over a newly-constructed high tunnel
greenhouse, the first stage in what will be an urban farm to serve a long-standing food desert in northeast Greensboro.
Led by Dr. Terrence Thomas and supported by USDA’s Evans-Allen Program, the project is establishing a vegetable
production enterprise that will create jobs and provide affordable fresh produce to residents. The Cooperative Extension
Program is providing technical advice, and the plan is to eventually turn management of the
project over to the community partner, Concerned Citizens of Northeast Greensboro.
May 1
May 20
June 30
Freshman fall application
deadline
Board for International
Food and Agricultural
Development meeting
Small Farms Field Day
Mark Your Calendars
Urban farm taking shape
ag.ncat.edu