Just five miles from downtown Raleigh and the North Carolina State University campus sits the Lake Wheeler Road Field Laboratory, a productive and diverse teaching farm that drivers passing by could easily miss. This 1,784-acre swath of farmland is actually one of the largest remaining open spaces near the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As cranes dot the city\u2019s skyline and orange cones line its roadways, dump trucks move root and earth to make way for more people. The Raleigh metro area grew 23% from 2010 to 2019, and the state as a whole had the third-highest in-migration in the United States in 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to data provided by Georgina Sanchez at the NC State Center for Geospatial Analytics, developed land in North Carolina has increased by 24% over the past two decades while agricultural land has decreased by 6%. In Wake County, the changes are much more drastic: 16% of Wake County\u2019s agricultural land has been lost since 2001 with an additional 21% projected to be lost by 2050. Indeed, N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler has highlighted the loss of farmland as one of the state\u2019s biggest issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
NC State and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services own and operate thousands of acres across the state at 24 research stations, field labs and extension centers that act as conduits between university research and North Carolina\u2019s agricultural community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n