Photo by Jay Stone
Patrons at the Southeast Regional Fruit & Vegetable Conference got a closer look at all aspects of the fruit and vegetable industry on the event’s trade show floor, from the latest machinery and production techniques to this display of fresh vegetables.
Agritourism featured at Fruit & Vegetable Conference By Jay Stone __________________________________________________________________________
14 / January-February 2012
es, vegetables, Vidalia onions, watermelons, muscadines, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and pecans. The Georgia Olive Growers Association also offered an educational session for the first time. In addition to the commodity production sessions, workshops covered good agricultural (GAP) food safety practices, organic production and roadside markets. Growers heard the latest developments on Georgia’s ag labor situation. Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black and Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens gave briefings on the results of Georgia’s agricultural labor survey. Georgia Fruit & Vegetable Growers
Chafin named Sunbelt farm manager The Sunbelt Agricultural Exposition has named Michael Chafin the farm manager of its 600-acre Darrell Williams Research Farm, effective Nov. 28. Chafin is a fourth generation farmer, has attended the Sunbelt Expo each of the past 26 years and has worked periodically on the Sunbelt farm since his youth. A Georgia Master 4-Her and National FFA finalist while in high school, he attended Valdosta Technical College. “Michael brings a wealth of knowledge and energy to the Expo with his strong background in farming,” Sunbelt Executive Director Chip Blalock said. “His hands-on farming experience has prepared him well for his new position.” The 35th Sunbelt Expo will be held Oct. 16-18. Chafin may be reached by email at michael@sunbeltexpo.com or by phone at 229-921-1067.
Photo courtesy of Sunbelt
For the first time, the Georgia Agritourism Association held its annual meeting in conjunction with the 2012 Southeast Regional Fruit & Vegetable Conference. The agritourism conference offered seminars on marketing, the risks and rewards of running an agritourism enterprise, diversifying a farm business and operating roadside markets. “Agritourism is the fastest-growing segment of not only tourism but agriculture in the state of Georgia,” said Georgia Agritourism Association President Jeff Manley, who manages The Rock Ranch. “Georgia is working very hard toward getting organized and bringing a lot of collective efforts together to make agritourism a little bit more unified.” Drew Echols, of Jaemor Farms in Hall County, discussed the risks and rewards of operating an agritourism enterprise during the agritourism education session. “You can have a corn maze, a winery, a roadside market. There’s a lot of different things that fit into this industry,” Echols said. The conference, held Jan. 5-8 at the Savannah International Convention and Trade Center, offered more than 85 hours of commodity specific production training, pest management information and marketing updates for more than 2,000 attendees and featured more than 230 exhibitors. Commodities covered included peach
Association President Dick Minor said 2011, “… was a tough year for immigration policy with the passage of House Bill 87. So that was the number one issue on everybody’s mind. It’s so critical to specialty crop producers because without the harvest labor we don’t have an industry.” Minor also discussed the importance of grower-funded research, noting that the GFVGA has provided $120,000 in funding for research projects, helping to fill gaps caused by budget cuts to UGA Extension and other government programs. The funds have been used to search for a fumigant to replace methyl bromide, research into chemical resistance in insects and other stressors on fruit and vegetable crops. “It’s becoming more and more critical that we assess the growers and collect the money,” Minor said. “We’ve got a broad array of projects we’re funding. We’ve had quite a bit more projects requesting funds than we had funds to allocate.” Georgia Farm Bureau Commodities Marketing Specialist Brandon Ashley helped moderate the session on roadside markets, which included an overview of the USDA’s Farm to School initiative in Georgia and South Carolina. “I want farmers to know that school lunch programs are something that are never going to go away,” said Georgia Organics Outreach Coordinator Ashley Rouse, who works with the Farm to School program in Georgia, “and help them understand the connection they can make from what they grow in their fields to the cafeterias of their schools.”
Georgia Farm Bureau News