Browse Sustainable Stories - Page 8

Cheered on by the more than 1,000 attendees at the 20th Anniversary Georgia Organics Conference, four fledgling Georgia farmers celebrated their graduation from Georgia’s Journeyman Farmer Certificate Program — an innovative training program for beginning farmers.

For decades, farmers who have embraced conservation production have seen increased soil health, reduced irrigation demands and lowered economic risk. For the past 17 years, Georgia farmers interested in adopting new conservation practices for their farms – including those looking to swap best practices with other conservation tillers – have gathered at Georgia’s annual Conservation Production Systems Training Conference.

Relatively unknown outside of health food stores in the United States, millet has served as a staple food for families in Eastern Africa and Asia for thousands of years.

From the miracle of December tomatoes to the marvel of fresh salad greens in space, greenhouses and growth chambers may play an increasing role in creating hyperlocal or hyperportable food systems.

Weather conditions were warmer and drier than normal across most of the state during November, causing drought and extremely dry conditions to again expand across Georgia.

The University of Georgia Sustainable Food Systems Initiative has awarded three interdisciplinary teams of faculty with the initiative’s third round of Sustainable Food Systems Fellowships.

While the southern half of the state received much needed rain in September from tropical storms Hermine and Julia, farmers in the northern part of the state dealt with what some called “the worst conditions in 60 years.”

The garden at Rock Eagle 4-H Center in Eatonton, Georgia, supplies between 500 and 2,000 pounds of produce to the environmental education center’s cafeteria each year, but it’s more than a modern kitchen garden – it’s also a living museum.

University of Georgia Cooperative Extension is set to offer a second year of the Journeyman Farmer training for beginning and young farmers this August.