I would like to announce that effective November 13, Dr. Lanny Hass has assumed the position of interim director of Personal and Organizational Development for North Carolina Cooperative Extension.

To the position, he brings 28 years of Cooperative Extension Service as well as a national reputation for expertise in organizational development. Coming to North Carolina after 11 years as an agricultural economist at Virginia Tech, Lanny has served in many roles, ranging from county agent to area farm management specialist to associate director of Personal and Organizational Development.

As the interim director, Lanny will lead the POD team as it continues to focus on building Cooperative Extension’s capacity through organizational and individual growth. Please join me in welcoming Lanny to his new position.

--Dr. Jon Ort, director, N.C. Cooperative Extension Service, N.C. State University

It's a country restaurant in a small town, with a down-home menu that is literally down on the farm. Almost all of the meat and vegetables are from local farms.

Marvin is Marvin Bost. He and his wife, Cabarrus County extension agent Debbie Bost, live on a state-recognized "century farm" - meaning a farm that has been farmed in the same family for more than 100 years - although their 145-acre spread actually dates back to an original land grant to Marvin's ancestors.

Read more in the Charlotte Observer

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.

Read more news from NC A&T State University, ag e-dispatch

Braving blustery, chilly weather, 30 delegates traveled to Hershey, Pa. to represent North Carolina at the 75th annual National Junior Horticultural Association annual convention. 4-H youth and adult leaders participated in a weekend of contests, field trips and workshops to share their interest in plants, meet new friends from across the country and learn about Mid-Atlantic horticulture.

As part of a 75th anniversary celebration, NJHA invited past alumni to return, and one of North Carolina’s Extension legends was honored. Larry Bass, retired 4-H horticulture specialist, attended and received an induction into the NJHA Hall of Fame. NJHA was founded in 1934 by Grant Snyder, and since that time, it has had annual conventions to educate youth about horticulture, careers, leadership and education. The 2010 convention will be held in Cleveland, Ohio.

Larry Bass, center back row, retired horticultural specialist from N.C. State University, is among those inducted into the NJHA Hall of Fame during the 75th anniversary conference.

Visiting Pennsylvania’s Longwood Gardens as part of the conference , youth were able to witness the possibilities of horticulture. Behind-the-scenes tours showed the promise of green efforts by the garden to compost all plant material, as well as food and paper waste from the restaurants and to turn it back into a soil amendment to grow new plants. Sculpted topiaries, elegantly trained mums, gigantic carved pumpkins and splendid bursts of colorful plants prompted Luke Hill, Bladen County 4-H’er, to contemplate a horticultural career, saying, “I think I would like to do this.” Other conference tours included visits to the Milton Hershey School and Hershey Gardens.

Our North Carolina youth excelled in their contests and brought home an overwhelming number of honors. The winners, their awards and categories are:

Luke Hill, Grand National Award, Landscaping

Allen Monk, National Award, Production

Tyler Lannon and Michael Costa, National Awards, Team Horticultural Use Demonstration

Brittany Levine, National Award, Horticultural Use

Maegan Rizer, National Award, 4-H Demonstration

Tim Sherwood, National Award, Special 19-22 Use,
National Award, Extemporaneous Speech

Michael Costa, Grand National Award, Extemporaneous Speech

Lark Williams, National Award, Illustrated Talk

Bryan Simmons, National Award, Prepared Speech

Michael Costa, Tyler Lannon, Adam Lannon, Logan Bland, Grand National Award, Performing Arts

Adam Lannon, 8th place, Horticulture Contest, 4-H Division

Justin Simmons, First Place, Open Individual, Horticulture Contest (19-22 age)

Emily Mercer, Justin Simmons, Bryan Evans, Victoria Harman, First Place, Horticulture Contest, Open Division (19-22 age)

Kait Neeland, National Award, Photography, Slightly Edited Division

Adam Lannon, Tyler Lannon, Michael Costa, Allen Monk, First Place, Horticulture Connections

David Barkley, Alumni Horticulture Contest (75th Anniversary) 2nd Place

Larry Bass, NJHA Hall of Fame Inductee

Young America Contest (youth 14 and under):

Michael Hoxie, Grand National Award, Environmental Awareness (Ages 12-14)

Toby M. Frost, National Award, Gardening, (Ages 9 – 11)

Nazeeha Aman, Grand National Award, Gardening; National Award, Plant Propagation (Ages 9 – 14)

Rebecca Dietrich, Grand National Award, Gardening (12-14)

Nayeem Hossain, National Award, Gardening (Ages 12 – 14)

Kourtney Roberts, National Award, Gardening; National Award, Plant Propagation (Ages 12 – 14)

The course will run seven weeks (March 12 – April 30) and will meet once-a-week, via Elluminate (Thursday evenings from 7-8:30pm). In addition to live (synchronous) online class discussions and lectures, the course will include a variety of assignments aimed at providing students with the opportunity to gain hands-on practical experience working with tourism businesses and professionals.

The course requires students to review literature on tourism and examine ongoing debates about important issues regarding how we travel and the structures of institutions that shape our travel. By actively engaging with course readings, assignments, and discussions with the professor and classmates, students will gain a more critical understanding of the tourism system, the role of sustainable communities, its components, and how they interact.

Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:
• Understand definitions and characteristics of tourism and typologies of tourists.
• Understand the complexity of the tourism system.
• Examine different approaches to tourist motivation, decision making, and information search.
• Realize the importance of the relationship between marketing/promotion and product planning.
• Examine the goals and challenges to sustainable tourism practices, tourism planning and development.
• Gain in-depth knowledge of the positive and negative impacts of tourism, and the need for ethical leadership.
• Demonstrate an understanding as to the importance of research in tourism.

Course Modules
This course has been divided into one orientation module and # content modules. In general, information is listed in sequential order based on the order in which students will need to access information.

• Orientation Module
• Module 1: Defining Tourism and Tourists
• Module 2: Tourism Demand, Behavior, and Motivation
• Module 3: Tourist Destination Choice – Decision Making
• Module 4: Tourism Marketing and Promotion
• Module 5: DMO’s and Destination Awareness and Image
• Module 6: Planning and Development Issues - Community Impacts
• Module 7: Tourism Research – Future of Tourism

Michael Hylton, interim director of the Cooperative Extension program in Stokes County, has been named permanent Stokes County director.

Hylton's appointment as Stokes extension director was announced by Extension Director Dr. Jon Ort and Bryan Steen, Stokes County manager. Hylton has been a member of the Stokes extension staff for seven years, serving as the county's horticulture agent before being named interim county director.

Prior to joining extension, Hylton spent nine years working for landscaping firms and a nursery. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and speech communications from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a master’s degree in agricultural science from North Carolina A&T State University.

Cowden pointed out that Hylton is a graduate of a year-long leadership training program for new county directors and extension agents who aspire to become county directors. He added that in addition to his administrative duties as county director, Hylton will have community development and horticulture education program responsibilities.

"Michael has already demonstrated that he is a valuable asset to the citizens of Stokes County. I'm confident he will provide the kind of leadership that will enable Cooperative Extension to continue to provide programs for the betterment of Stokes County," Cowden said.

The Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) is bringing Will Allen to Raleigh for its 2009 Sustainable Agriculture Lecture on Nov. 9. Allen’s Growing Power Inc. in Milwaukee has become a national model for adapting community supported agriculture to work for inner-city consumers, and he was selected for of one of the 2008 MacArthur Fellowships (the “genius award”) for urban farming initiatives he has developed. Allen will be discussing “Steps to Successful Urban Farming” during a talk that will run from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the McKimmon Center on the N.C. State campus. This talk will be free and open to the public, but seating is limited. The SAES, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State, and the N.C. Department of Agriculture & Consumer Sciences operate the CEFS jointly. Among its research units is a Small Farm Center, and the CEFS also has swine, dairy, organic cropping, farm systems and pasture-based beef units devoted to innovative practices for advancing sustainable food and farming.

Read more about the lecture
Read more from ag e-dispatch

Secretary Awards for Excellence:
Jean Carter, Campus Chapter
Rebecca Castello, Northeast District
Joan Hobbes, Southeast District
Jane McDaniel, West District
Judy Moore, West Central District
State Winner: Jean Carter, Campus Chapter

The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) invites
you to join us as we acknowledge 40 years of service at our upcoming
anniversary and Hunger Issues Forum Dec. 4, McKimmon Center, N.C. State University.

The Forum entitled "Cultivating Solutions to Hunger" will address issues in the community through keynote speeches and three breakout sessions featuring national and state experts.

Breakout session topics include:
* Hunger, Nutrition and Obesity
* Connecting People to Food
* Mobilizing Community Resources to Reduce Hunger

To participate in the event, follow the directions for registration found on the Web site. You must complete the registration form found on this site. In addition, to document participation in the training, Extension personnel should register for the
Forum through the Learning Management System.

KANNAPOLIS -- N.C. State University’s Program for Value-Added & Alternative Agriculture will become N.C. MarketReady, effective Oct. 20.

The value-added program was founded in 2006 by Dr. Blake Brown, director and a professor in the N.C. State Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, with funding from the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund Commission. Since then, the program team, based at the N.C. Research Campus in Kannapolis, has grown to five faculty and four staff members. It works closely with N.C. State University’s Plants for Human Health Institute, also based at the N.C. Research Campus, as well as with faculty from main campus and Cooperative Extension field faculty across the state.

“We are excited about this new name,” Brown said. “The new name, N.C. MarketReady, more accurately communicates the scope of our program’s work.

“Our team collaborates with faculty across the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) to develop multidisciplinary programs. Our partnerships with other departments and faculty in CALS are an essential ingredient to programs that help North Carolina farm families.”

The team’s focus areas are agricultural enterprise development, business skills education, fresh produce safety, horticultural skills education and strengthening markets. In addition to N.C. MarketReady being used as the team name, it will be the brand used on a comprehensive set of educational materials being developed. One of the first resources to be rolled out with the N.C. MarketReady brand will be the fresh produce safety curriculum in November.

Reflected in this curriculum are contributions from numerous departments within N.C. State University and N.C. A&T State University. It was developed to teach growers Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) to help them minimize fresh produce safety risks.
Brown cites the N.C. MarketReady team’s success in securing grants to carry out its mission. The team has received more than $2 million in grant funding and more than 72 percent of its operating budget this fiscal year will be from grants.

Through support from the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund Commission, Sustainable Agriculture Research and Extension, the Agricultural Advancement Consortium of the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center and USDA Rural Cooperative Development, the N.C. MarketReady team has developed numerous resources. Among them are www.ncmarketready.org, which includes the one-stop-shop growers’ information portals, fresh produce safety materials, business development files, The Produce Lady videos and value-added cost share applications and guidelines.

-L. Chester-Davis

Farmers living more than 130 miles from campus who would like to get their name in the hat for lodging, meals and waiver of registration fees for Small Farms Week activities on campus March 22 and 23 have until Jan. 15, 2010, to apply for a scholarship. In addition to living more than 130 miles from campus, applicants must rely on farming for at least 50 percent of annual gross income, and be part of a operation that has a family member making the general managerial decisions.

Read more from ag e-dispatch

Extension Day, Friday, Dec. 4, will include a three-hour morning (9 am – 12 noon) workshop focusing on local food, sustainable business practices and safe food handling and an afternoon tour of value-added facilities. Dec. 5 and 6 will be devoted to CFSA SAC.

Anyone who receives an NC SARE travel scholarship must:
* Attend Extension Day, Friday, Dec. 4, both morning and afternoon sessions.

* Complete the SARE online basic sustainable ag course before attending the conference.

For information and registration forms, contact Carol Moore at carolmoore27@gmail.com for details.

Project Learning Tree® partnered with the North Carolina Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance to present a two-day educational workshop for 22 teachers and solid waste professionals in Wilkesboro, Sept. 24 and 25. The workshop included educational activities to help bring lesson plans focusing on waste and recycling into the classroom, as well as tours of a local material recovery facility and landfill.

“With the plastic bottle ban that began on Oct. 1, this is a great time to help get teachers excited about recycling in their schools, as well as providing them tools and ideas to help that happen,” said Kelley Dennings, education and outreach project manager with DPPEA. “Every second, 100 plastic bottles are disposed of in North Carolina. Now they must be recycled, not thrown into landfills.”

To learn more about the upcoming plastic bottle ban, visit www.p2pays.org/BannedMaterials/PlasticBottles/. North Carolina citizens are also encouraged to sign the Plastic Bottle Recycling Pledge located on the web site.

For more information about PLT in North Carolina, contact Renee Strnad, North Carolina State University, at 919.515.5518 or visit www.ces.ncsu.edu/plt.

-R. Strnad

Despite drought conditions in parts of the state for most of the year, there should be plenty of colorful foliage worth seeing across North Carolina this fall, according to a North Carolina State University expert. Dr. Robert Bardon, associate professor of forestry and extension forestry specialist at N.C. State, says that in areas of the state that have experienced drought, people should expect to see colors early, and that the leaves will change color faster.

“People should be hoping for weather conditions that are warmer during the day and cooler at nighttime – since they create the most vibrant fall colors,” Bardon says. “However, if we have a wet fall, we can expect less vibrant colors this season.”

During the spring and summer, leaves manufacture most of the food necessary for a tree’s growth. The food-making process occurs in cells that contain the pigment chlorophyll, which gives the leaves their green color. The leaves also contain other pigments that are masked most of the year by the greater amount of chlorophyll.

Some of the understory trees – small trees, shrubs and vines that grow under the taller trees – across the state have already begun the chlorophyll breakdown process. Leaves at higher elevations in North Carolina, such as Mt. Mitchell, are the first to change, usually around the end of September or beginning of October, Bardon says. Then the trees in the lower elevations, moving south and east across the state, begin to change.

“North Carolina is very fortunate to have multiple opportunities to experience fall foliage, given the diversity of parks across the state, ranging from national parks, to state and local parks,” says Dr. Stacy Tomas, assistant professor and tourism extension specialist in parks, recreation and tourism management. “With the shrinking economy, everyone is feeling the pinch in their wallets. Heading out to a park to enjoy the fall foliage and taking in a picnic and a hike is a fun, affordable, family-friendly mini-vacation we can all enjoy.”

-C. Barnhill, News Services