Agriculture is the number two industry in Currituck County, only behind tourism, but what is agriculture? When most people hear the word agriculture, they think of farming. In our area, most large farms grow either corn, soybeans, or wheat, but we also grow numerous vegetables and raise livestock. This traditional viewpoint of agriculture, while accurate, does not encompass everything that N.C. Cooperative Extension Currituck County's Agriculture Department has to offer. So who is Currituck County's Agriculture Department and what do they do?

Our Agriculture Department is made up of Adam Formella, our Agriculture Extension Agent, and Chris Blaha, our Agriculture Technician. Adam's expertise lies with row crops, insect identification and management, and vegetable gardening. Adam also serves as the county's Pesticide Coordinator, offering pesticide safety classes for farmers while continuing our pesticide disposal programs and pesticide container recycling programs. Chris's expertise lies with lawn care and maintenance, landscape design, and tree/shrub pest and disease identification. Chris also serves as our Master Gardener Coordinator who trains and leads our Master Gardener Volunteer program into educating the public.

Adam Formella

Agriculture Extension Agent

Chris Blaha

Agriculture Technician

Together, our agriculture department offers a number of services to the community. We provide soil sample boxes and forms to determine nutrient and pH deficiencies in gardens, fields, and lawns through the N.C. Dept. of Agriculture Soils Lab. We also send disease and pest samples for identification; we take nematode samples; and we take plant tissue samples to determine nutrient deficiencies. Aside from the testing, we conduct home and field visits to advise clients on troubled plants from gardens to lawns to fields. When we're not busy running samples, we teach a plethora of home horticulture classes, the registration of which can be found on our website or through Eventbrite. Lastly, we film educational videos, like our This Week in the Garden series and our Live from Currituck Extension series.

If you have any agriculture related questions please contact us and we'll be happy to help! Adam's email is adam_formella@ncsu.edu, while Chris's is chris_blaha@ncsu.edu. If you'd prefer, you can call us at our office at 252-232-2261.