Nancy Creamer

Professor Emerita and Former Director Center For Environmental Farming Systems
W.K. Kellogg Endowed Professor
nancy_creamer@ncsu.eduBio
Nancy Creamer was a Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Agriculture and Community Based Food Systems in the Horticultural Science Department at NC State University, and Director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (cefs.ncsu.edu) until she retired in 2021. In 2010, Dr. Creamer was appointed by the North Carolina Governor to the legislated NC Sustainable Local Foods Advisory Council and was Vice Chair of the Council through 2013. She was chair of the NC Local Food Council from 2016-2018. In 2012, CEFS received one of the highest awards that USDA gives: the USDA Secretary’s Honor Award for “Assisting Rural Communities in Creating Prosperity so they are Self-Sustaining, Repopulating, and Economically Thriving. Dr. Creamer was appointed in 2014 as a founding Board member for the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, which was allocated $200 million in the 2014 Farm Bill, and $185 million in the 2018 farm bill to support agricultural research, and she served on the FFAR board through 2024. In 2015, she was inducted into the Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship, and in 2016 she was appointed as a member of the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities Food Security Commission. In 2019 she was invited to serve as member of the Agriculture Subcommittee that developed recommendations for North Carolina to address climate change adaptation and mitigation in agriculture and forestry in response to Governor Cooper’s Executive Order 80. In 2022 she was invited to participate as a Mentor in the Food Systems Leadership Network, Community Food Systems Mentorship Program.
Education
PhD Ohio State University 1994
Publications
- Resilience strategies for centers and institutes focused on food systems transformation , JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE FOOD SYSTEMS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT (2024)
- Eradication of Commelina benghalensis in a long-term experiment using a multistakeholder governance model: a case of regulatory concerns defeating ecological management success , INVASIVE PLANT SCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT (2022)
- A collaborative approach to COVID-19 response: The Center for Environmental Farming Systems community-based food system initiatives , JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE FOOD SYSTEMS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT (2021)
- Cultivating community resilience: How North Carolina's food council is facilitating an effective response during COVID-19 , JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE FOOD SYSTEMS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT (2021)
- Focusing the future of farming on agroecology , AGRICULTURAL & ENVIRONMENTAL LETTERS (2020)
- Soil carbon and nitrogen fractions after 19 years of farming systems research in the Coastal Plain of North Carolina , SOIL SCIENCE SOCIETY OF AMERICA JOURNAL (2020)
- Farmer harvest decisions and vegetable loss in primary production , AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS (2019)
- Governance and innovations in local food system development: A bottom-up approach in North Carolina , JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE FOOD SYSTEMS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT (2019)
- Estimating on-farm food loss at the field level: A methodology and applied case study on a North Carolina farm , RESOURCES CONSERVATION AND RECYCLING (2018)
- Field measurement in vegetable crops indicates need for reevaluation of on-farm food loss estimates in North America , AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS (2018)