By Sarah Bailey

Hello everyone, my name is Sarah Bailey, and I am the Rowan County Extension summer intern. I am excited to be here this summer working with all the wonderful agents and community members.

I am from Mooresville, located on the Iredell County side. While I did not grow up involved in agriculture, I did develop a passion for the outdoors and specifically gardening. During high school, I took agriculture courses at Mitchell Community College with Amy Poirer, my wonderful professor, and one of Rowan’s active community members. I am now studying soil science at N.C. State University and I am proud to be a part of the Wolfpack. I am also the social media officer for the Agronomy Club at State and a member of our soil judging team. This past school year, as an individual competitor, I won first place at the Southeast Regional Collegiate Soils Judging Contest in West Virginia and placed 13th at the National Collegiate Soils Judging Contest in Iowa.

Agriculture is such an amazing industry and North Carolina’s No. 1 industry. It really does make the world “go round” by providing the world’s food, feed and fiber. North Carolina is very diverse in agriculture as we have three contrasting regions producing over 80 different commodities. Even taking a deeper look into county-level agriculture, like Rowan County, there are so many crops and animals produced such as wheat, corn, tomatoes, cattle/calves and broilers, just to name a few. We also have over 400 different soil series in our state — that’s a lot to take care of! Sustaining and regenerating our soil must be a priority. In North Carolina, we have erosion issues, saltwater intrusion, leaching and fertility problems. I am a huge advocate for our farmers who have to protect and improve the tilth of their soil. That is why I love Extension. We are here to support our farmers with information, tools and aid. I am very excited to be at Rowan County Extension this summer and look forward to being a helping hand and meeting all of you!