Nancy Creamer, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Agriculture and Community-Based Food Systems
North Carolina State University
Dr. Nancy Creamer is a distinguished professor of Sustainable Agriculture and Community-Based Food Systems at North Carolina State University and director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS). CEFS includes a 2000-acre sustainable and organic agriculture research, outreach and teaching facility and has programs statewide in local food systems development. She was a founding member of the International Society of Organic Agriculture Research and a member of the Scientific Congress of Organic Agriculture Research, established by the Organic Farming Research Foundation.
In 2009 she provided leadership for a statewide North Carolina initiative engaging many diverse sectors and partners resulting in a statewide action plan: From Farm to Fork, a Guide to Building North Carolina’s Sustainable Local Food Economy and has spearheaded the development of many of the strategic initiatives identified in the report. Creamer was a member of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Specialty Crops Advisory Committee and has served as a consultant to the European Commission on funding and evaluation of European-wide organic agriculture research activities. She was appointed by the North Carolina Governor to the legislated NC Sustainable Local Foods Advisory Council in 2010 and was vice chair of the council through 2013.
The CEFS team was awarded the Southern Region’s C. Peter Macgrath Community Engagement Award, a national distinction which recognizes outreach and engagement partnership efforts of four-year public universities. 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”.
Creamer is a founding board member for the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, which builds public-private partnerships to support agricultural research. In 2015 she was appointed an advisory team member to the Organic Farming Research Foundation.