UMO AgFest sees record attendance

MOUNT OLIVE – The University of Mount Olive’s AgFest saw record attendance last Thursday as over 2,200 students, educators, exhibitors and volunteers gathered to take part in the annual celebration of all things agriculture – and to learn about valuable career and academic prospects in the rapidly growing field.

“I think there’s a lot of times that people hear agriculture and they automatically think farming. And that’s kind of the limit,” said Edward Olive, director of the Lois G. Britt Agribusiness Center at UMO. “Students have the opportunity to meet with a lot of other employers and different commodity associations to learn about different careers and opportunities that exist within the field of agriculture that they may not know or hear about in their classrooms,” he continued.

According to UMO’s PR Director Rhonda Jessup, the event is also important to the university as regards recruitment, with Olive adding that around 20 incoming students each year have attended AgFest in the past.“It does work out well for us,” Olive remarked, explaining that 75 different schools were represented at this year’s event from both North and South Carolina.

Ahead of an alumni meet-and-greet with county music singer Walker Montgomery, UMO President Dr. H. Edward Croom spoke to those who had returned to campus as exhibitors and educators for 2025’s AgFest.

“What you’re doing for bringing students here today is monumental,” said Croom in his address. “I know it’s not always easy taking a group of high school students off for field trips and this type of activity. I appreciate that, from a principal’s, from a former school superintendent’s perspective,” he added. “I believe public school teaching is a ministry.”

Wallace-Rose Hill High School agriculture teacher and UMO alumnus Danielle Trimbur expressed the importance of the event – and of agriculture itself – as alumni lined up for photographs with Montgomery prior to his performance at the festival.

“We have to eat, we wear clothes, we drive a car – all those things we can’t do without agriculture,” explained Trimbur. “This is a really good way for students to interact with other kids from around the state and with people within the industry and either learn where certain things come from or about businesses they didn’t realize were a part of agriculture. So it gives them career opportunities, or at least maybe an interest in something they’d have never experienced before.”

The university’s first-ever AgFest in 2014 saw just 400 in attendance, according to Jessup, making this year’s considerable turnout all the more impressive. “This wouldn’t be possible without the sponsors that we have,” Olive said, highlighting Piggly Wiggly, the Mt. Olive Pickle Company, and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Service’s Got to Be NC initiative which promotes North Carolina agricultural goods and products. “Those folks are the ones that make it happen,” he added. Olive also emphasized the impact volunteers have on the event’s success. “We couldn’t do this if it weren’t for our UMO students that volunteer and our faculty and staff that come together.”

Over 60 exhibitors were present at this year’s AgFest, which requires meticulous care and planning to bring into fruition.

“This is really a week-long process to get to what you see, but it’s a year-long process to actually pull it together,” Olive explained. “We’ll start next week or the week after to debrief and say: what didn’t work well? or what could work better? We want to get those things down before we forget them,” he continued. “We have tried to make it a little bit better every year.”