C. James Barker was born and educated in Tennessee. He received all three degrees from the University of Tennessee a BS in 1967, MS in 1969 and PhD in 1973. He came to NCSU in as an extension specialist and assistant professor in 1974 and became a associate professor in 1979 then full professor.

Barker worked in extension in the area of livestock waste management systems. In his years he helped to advance the working relationships between regulatory agencies, farmers, and advisory personnel. He pulled together the appropriate information for developing a range of livestock waste treatment lagoon sizing criteria and his work was adopted by regulatory agencies.

He worked on swine drylot and mountain dairy stream runoff impact studies to nurture the logical interpretation of stream pollution regulations. He developed basic criteria for flushing livestock waste from animal confinement buildings. His techniques have been widely implemented in N. C. and have been further studied and implemented by growers from the more traditional livestock areas in the Midwest.

He emphasized the need for low-cost waste and wastewater analysis services so that farmers could better match waste application rates with actual crop fertilizer needs. The North Carolina Department of Agriculture now offers this fee service and new research in the area of land application is ongoing today. He has tested and promoted low-cost, low-management wastewater treatment alternatives for small to moderately sized livestock operations. His settling basin-vegetative filter system is currently being used by dairymen.

Barker is the developer of the Animal and Poultry Manure Production & Characterization Database a very useful aid to livestock producers. He wrote extensively on livestock management and waste producing most of the Bio & Ag extension publications on this subject.