We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Dara Bloom, Local Foods Extension Specialist and Associate Professor at NC State University, and Assistant Director of Community-Based Food Systems for the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS), has received the Outstanding Extension and Engagement Award, the 2025 Alumni Outstanding Engagement Scholarship Award, and induction into the Academy of Outstanding Faculty in Extension and Engagement. These honors recognize her excellence in bridging the gap between academic expertise and meaningful societal impact.

Dr. Bloom has spent over thirteen years working alongside partners to transform local food systems. Her leadership has been instrumental in bridging the gap between emerging research into Extension programming, fostering the interdisciplinary collaboration necessary to pilot and evaluate innovative local food system models. Through collective efforts in Farm to Institution - particularly within Early Care and Education (ECE) - she helped secure over a million dollars in federal funding to develop procurement strategies that boost community health and economic development. Additionally, her co-development of a graduate-level food systems course and professional certificate series has helped directly enhance agents’ and national stakeholders’ capacity to implement complex local food programming.

Beyond academic leadership, Dr. Bloom has championed the growth of high-impact, replicable initiatives like the Extension Master Food Volunteer (EMFV) and Donation Station programs. These programs rely on a vast network of dedicated volunteers and staff and now reach over half of North Carolina’s counties. Her work helps shape national strategies for values-based procurement and regional food systems, and she sits on multiple national work groups and committees providing her expertise.

A: I can’t imagine picking just one thing! I feel like I’m at a stage in my career where I’m starting to see some of the programs that I helped to develop really build momentum and take off, including the Extension Master Food Volunteer Program, Donation Station Program, and Farm to Early Care and Education. All of these programs have grown exponentially, especially post-COVID, and I think that this growth tells me that they’re meeting the needs of the agents on the ground who are implementing them in their communities. I think that is what’s most meaningful to me, the hope that the programs that I helped to create and implement are having an impact, supporting local farmers and helping community members access healthy food.

A: I first started in 2013, the year after local food was named a Flagship program for Extension. Joanna Lelekacs had been hired shortly before me as the first Local Food Program Manager, and at the time there wasn’t a lot of clarity for agents about what it meant for local food to be considered a “flagship” program. Joanna and I worked together to create an initial set of trainings and resources about local foods, including the online professional development courses that Hannah and I later converted into AEHS 554: Introduction to Local Food Systems. I met a lot of agents through these trainings and courses, and learned a lot about their work and what kind of support they needed.

It’s been amazing to see how the Local Food Program has grown in the 13 years that I’ve been here. While there was interest in local foods when I first started, it feels like these days there are a lot of agents who come on board and just expect that local food is part of the work that they do to serve communities. The Local Food Program Team has grown, and I especially love seeing how many Family and Consumer Sciences agents are represented in the different work groups. I think we’ve been fortunate in North Carolina to have administrative support for the Local Food Program; especially in the early years, Joanna and I would attend regional conferences and people from other states would be amazed that we had two dedicated staff with Local Food in their titles. A lot of other states have started to institutionalize local food in their Extension programming, but I still think of North Carolina as a leader in this field, and I’m proud to be a part of that.

A: I’m excited to see where the programs that I lead are headed. Morgan Marshall (EMFV Program Manager) and I have helped to start a new national community of practice for states with Master Food/Wellness/Preserver Programs, and I’m excited to see what comes from those collaborations. Similarly, I’ve started working with a group around the state around Farm to Institution more broadly, and have been involved in conversations nationally about aligning our Farm to Institution work across state boundaries. It’s exciting to see programs like these in a national context, both in terms of the leadership role we can play in North Carolina, and also to see the national growth in programs like these that are connecting communities to healthy, local food. My hope is that the more we can institutionalize local food into existing systems, for example through Farm to Institution programs, the more we’ll see supporting local food systems as a natural part of our daily lives.

Congratulations on these exciting accomplishments and thank you for all you have done for the local food program over the past 13 years!