Source: Dr. Mike Walden, NCSU COLLEGE OF AG & LIFE SCIENCES, 4/22/16

Dr. Michelle Schroeder-Moreno and the Agroecology Education Farm have racked up three wins in two weeks: an Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor Award from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences for Schroeder-Moreno, and a Green Brick Award from NC State University’s Sustainability Office and an environmental education award from the City of Raleigh for the farm.

“When I thought about how to educate, what made sense to me was to do it in a hands-on way, with students and the community, make it a two-way street,” Schroeder-Moreno said while accepting the City of Raleigh award Thursday night.
The education award nomination praised Schroeder-Moreno for her “foresight” and “tireless work” founding the farm in 2005. Nominees were evaluated on multiple criteria, including leadership, effectiveness, sustainability and innovation.

“It doesn’t just happen,” said keynote speaker Jennifer Zuckerman, who works with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation and serves on the advisory board of NC State’s Center for Environmental Farming Systems. “It requires inspiration. Oftentimes it requires perspiration. It’s connection and it’s enthusiasm…it’s not easy, but it does matter.”

Schroeder-Moreno has labored to build the farm since 2005, when facilities there were so preliminary that she had to cart in water for the plants on the back of a truck. Now, soil quality at the farm has skyrocketed thanks to proper management. The six-acre site gives practical experience to students taking agroecology-related courses or volunteering as a service project. And the abundance of produce it provides the university dining system each year – 3,222 pounds in 2015 – reminds students across campus to think about where their food comes from and how it is produced.

Schroeder-Moreno and her team – “you can have a vision, but it takes multiple partners,” she emphasized in her acceptance speech – incorporate as many sustainable practices as possible. They use zero pesticides, fungicides, herbicides or rodenticides at the farm site. Hoop houses using passive solar energy help prolong the growing season.

Awardees like the Agroecology Farm team are creating “healthy people and healthy places,” Zuckerman said.

“We’re hoping to create a city…where generations to come will have the opportunity to live happy, healthy lives because of people in this room today.”