The North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service is an education and outreach program designed to provide citizens of North Carolina access to the knowledge generated by North Carolina State University departments working in agricultural research.

Although ad hoc extension services had been ongoing since the founding of the North Carolina State College of Agricultural and Mechanic Arts, the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service was officially formed in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act, a law providing for federal, state, and county cooperation in creating a system to expand demonstration and extension work. The law authorized land-grant colleges across the nation to sign memoranda of understanding with the United States Department of Agriculture to begin such work.

After just one year, seventy-one farm and thirty-seven home demonstration agents were employed. The 4-H program took off, and the first annual 4-H Club Week was held in 1915. That same year the new publication began. At State College, Extension received a permanent home when Ricks Hall was completed in 1922 (its earlier home was split between offices in downtown Raleigh and in Patterson Hall on campus).

During World War II, extension programs played a vital role in the local war effort. Agents ran programs on increasing farm production and conserving valuable resources. A Woman's Land Army sent women to the fields to replace the many men who joined the military. The 4-H program helped children grow Victory Gardens, operate scrap drives, and compete in their own produce productivity competitions. The work performed during the war years was so successful that agricultural production actually doubled compared to previous years. Extension continued to grow between 1945 and 1956, doubling its personnel and more than tripling its budget.

Economic difficulties in the 1970s saw the Extension Service increase its activities in rural food production and nutrition. Extension worked with the North Carolina Department of Social Service to bring meals to senior citizens, and in 1969 it established the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) to help underprivileged North Carolinians better their nutritional standards and to educate them about available food assistance programs. Extension also worked with farmers facing serious economic troubles to better their situations.

Perhaps the most noticeable change to Extension occurred in 1991, when the program changed its named from the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service to the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service in order to better reflect the service's activities that had grown beyond the development of state and local agriculture. Today, working alongside North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, and a national network of land-grant institutions, and using the resources of twenty-one academic departments at NCSU, the Service maintains centers in every county in the state, and provides education and programming in numerous subjects, among them agriculture, forestry, environmental sustainability, youth and family development, and community viability.