It’s a New Year and we have a lot of exciting new things to share with you. As we wrapped up 2023, we launched the department’s new website after close to a year’s worth of work behind the scenes to create this new, more user friendly site. And, as with the start of every New Year, we are launching a new year-long social media series that will focus on young people in agriculture.   

• As we wrapped up one year, we have been looking ahead and preparing for another. I can tell you work at the Department of Agriculture has not slowed down.

• I am happy to share that the department has updated its website making it more user friendly and easier to view with your cell phone.

• This has been a big, big project when you think about all the pages and information we have online.

• Staff throughout the Department have been working on this project for close to a year in addition to their regular jobs and I commend them for all the hard work they put into this project.

• They learned how to build pages, decided on layouts and designs, selected images and did the heavy lifting of moving information from the old site over to the new one, while coordinating with IT staff.

• I hope you will check out the new site. If you have bookmarked any NCDA&CS webpages, you may likely need to delete those and bookmark the new links.

• You can still access the website at www.ncagr.gov.

• The other exciting news I want to share is the launch of the latest year-long social media series called NextGenAg.

• As you might guess this series is going to highlight young people – think high school, college students and recent college grads — who want to or are pursuing careers in agriculture and are working to make that happen.

• The first one will run Wednesday, Jan. 3.

• I teach an advanced ag class at N.C. State University and at N.C. A&T State University and I can say we have some dedicated youth who are eager to make their mark in agriculture.

• Some have run their own ag operations for many years, so they already come at this career with a level of experience and understanding, but want to find new markets, new products, new efficiencies and integrate new technology into the process.

• I am encouraged by what I see and by their determination.  

• We need more young people to pursue careers in agriculture and I am looking forward to reading about these NextGenAg young people. You can follow the series, too, every Wednesday on our In the Field blog or through a link on the Department’s Facebook or Twitter account.

• If you know a young person we should highlight, please reach out to our Public Affairs office and let us know.

• We’ve been busy networking to find young people to highlight and setting up interviews.

• I think this will be a great series.