News Stories - Page 7

An outreach program offered by the University of Georgia has received federal funding to train military veterans to start their own farms. Farm Boot Camp, a specialized training program for military veterans and their spouses, offers free monthly trainings and specialized workshops to provide essential skills and knowledge needed to start or return to farming operations.

You don’t expect it to be here. Not after passing subdivision after subdivision with names culled from the merging of random adjectives and natural objects: Longleaf, Brightwood, Hickory Hills. But travel far enough down Turner Church Road — a smidge north of the burgeoning Georgia town of McDonough — and the tree-lined spiderweb roads of housing developments open to vast farmland adorned with berry crops and little, red-roofed structures.

In 2018, the United Nations General Assembly established June 7 as World Food Safety Day to bring awareness of foodborne risks and “to celebrate the myriad benefits of safe food.” With 25 faculty members involved in food safety microbiology, the University of Georgia has one of the largest teams of food safety researchers of any university. Their research and collaboration efforts contribute to a growing body of knowledge that ensures producers and consumers have the latest information about food safety.

A new national grant program administered by the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program will pump more than $10.2 million into research to address food loss and waste in the region. Supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the SARE Community Foods Project Food Loss and Waste Training and Technical Assistance Grants Program is seeking grant proposals from applicants working in the public sector on food loss and waste prevention.

Three years after its debut, the Georgia Green Landscape Stewards program is expanding throughout the state with the assistance of University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Master Gardener volunteers. Using a points-based system, the program has certified more than 200 private properties, public spaces and pollinator gardens in 47 counties as Georgia Green Landscapes, with new applications coming in every month.

Visual beauty meets functional research at the University of Georgia Trial Gardens. Located on South Campus, the gardens are home to seeds and plants from nearly every plant breeding company worldwide, grown to service UGA research, teaching and new crop introduction. “The Trial Gardens are the premier campus test site in the southeast for the evaluation of commercial bedding plants and perennials,” said John Ruter, the Trial Gardens director and Allan M. Armitage Professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

After nearly a decade of research trials, University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences turfgrass breeder Brian Schwartz and a dedicated team of colleagues and industry partners released a cutting-edge bermudagrass variety called ‘Tif3D’ earlier this year. ‘Tif3D’ is a specialty grass developed specifically for putting greens and boasts the unparalleled performance and playability putting greens require, said Schwartz, a professor in the CAES Department of Crop and Soil Sciences.

With a climbing global population that continues to grow since surpassing 8 billion in 2022, steadily rising food prices, changing consumer preferences and growing interest in more sustainable production methods, the challenges to the world’s food systems continue to intensify. World-renowned food processing and engineering faculty in the University of Georgia Department of Food Science and Technology are training and inspiring the next generation of food scientists to blaze trails in their research and answer the questions the future of food will bring. 

Looking for great garden inspiration that you can implement at home? Consider visiting a University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Master Gardener demonstration garden during Open Garden Days throughout the month of June. The Georgia Master Gardener Extension Volunteer program has created a comprehensive garden guide, including a 2024 garden passport, to help visitors plan garden stops around the state.