Tag Archives: Tifton Georgia

UGA Cotton and Peanut Field Day Gives Georgia Growers a Front-Row Look at the Latest Research

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Tifton, GA |

Georgia is one of the most agriculturally diverse states in the country, but when it comes to row crops, cotton and peanuts remain king — with more than six thousand farms combined dedicated to the two. That’s why researchers invest so heavily in both, and why the annual UGA Cotton and Peanut Field Day in Tifton draws growers from across the state looking for an edge heading into harvest.

“We’re very pleased and grateful that we get the support we do from the commodity commissions. If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be doing this field day or the research we’re doing,” said Scott Monfort, Peanut Agronomist with UGA Extension. “It’s the growers of the state who help support this — and this is our time to give back, express our gratitude, and talk directly to growers about what’s going on with our research.”

ALL ABOUT EFFICIENCY

Beyond an up-close look at the newest technologies, the field day gives producers a rare chance to talk face-to-face with the researchers behind the work. And the top issue on everyone’s mind is the same: efficiency.

“This is an opportunity for cotton and peanut farmers to see the research the peanut and cotton teams are conducting each and every year. Our main goal is to improve profitability and sustainability — but it’s a chance to actually see it happening in the field,” said Phillip Roberts, Extension Entomologist with UGA. “At the end of the day, it’s all about making the right decision for a return on that input. A lot of what we do here is try to understand the efficiency of each and every input we make in a cotton crop.”

COTTON JASSID LESS OF A THREAT IN 2026

One of the biggest concerns heading into this season was the cotton jassid — a pest that caught growers and researchers off guard in 2025. This year, the story is considerably more encouraging.

“If we look at cotton jassid 2026 versus 2025, we’re in a much better place. A couple of reasons for that: number one, we learned about the jassid. Growers learned how to manage it — so we were ready,” Roberts said. “Last year we were figuring out management day by day. But the other good news is jassid populations just aren’t as high this year.”

THE SEARCH FOR THE NEXT PEANUT VARIETY

On the peanut side, growers are coming off a record-breaking year for production — but researchers aren’t slowing down. Finding the next standout variety is a process that plays out over years, not seasons, as the team works to identify genetics that can hold up across the wide range of conditions Georgia growers face.

“When you’re doing on-farm testing, you’ve opened the door to a lot of environmental situations and different agronomic practices from grower to grower. Management styles differ. So we’re looking for a variety that can be stable across all those situations,” Monfort said. “That’s one of the reasons we haven’t replaced zero-six-G yet. We’re getting closer — but it’s taken us ten to fifteen years to try and find one.”

For Georgia’s cotton and peanut producers, the field day serves as an annual reminder that the research happening in Tifton’s test plots today is what ends up making a difference in their fields tomorrow.

By: Damon Jones

Georgia Ag Labor Forum Pushes for H-2A Reform as Fruit and Vegetable Growers Reach a Breaking Point

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Tifton, GA |

The Georgia Ag Labor Forum brought together growers, federal agencies, and agricultural organizations to work through the complexities of the H-2A guest worker program — a program that has become a lifeline for Georgia’s fresh fruit and vegetable industry, but one that many producers say is long overdue for reform.

“H-2A has become such a critical part of our industry. Forty to fifty percent of our costs are normally in labor when we’re talking about fresh fruits and vegetables,” said Chris Butts, Executive Vice President of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. “Across the industry, more and more of our growers are having to utilize the H-2A program. This conference brings everybody together — from the producer side, but also from the regulatory and governmental side — and we all get in the room and talk through it. It is a very complicated and complex program, but the forum offers the opportunity for growers and other organizations to hear from the folks administering these programs and learn how we can stay on the right side of compliance.”

NOT A CHOICE — A NECESSITY

The reliance on guest worker programs isn’t by preference. Butts says the domestic workforce simply isn’t applying for farm labor jobs, leaving growers with no viable alternative.

“When we try to recruit domestic workers to come do fruit and vegetable work on the farm, we don’t get people applying for those jobs. It’s hot, it’s dirty, it’s bending over, it’s lifting heavy weight over and over again — and we just don’t have domestic workers that apply,” Butts said. “The H-2A program is critical. Without it, there would not be fruit and vegetable production here in the state of Georgia.”

A PROGRAM IN NEED OF REFORM

Critical as H-2A is, it’s anything but simple to navigate. A worker going through the program can come into contact with up to seven different federal agencies — and the rules have shifted with each administration, creating a level of unpredictability that makes long-term planning nearly impossible for producers.

Butts says a new piece of legislation known as the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act represents the best opportunity in a generation to change that.

“We’re twenty-five years since we’ve had any kind of meaningful reform to ag labor. This bill represents the best chance the industry has had in a long time to bring forth some of that meaningful reform,” Butts said. “It’s really important that the industry remains together and speaks with one voice. This is a really important bill from the standpoint of making the program easier to use, more affordable to use, and frankly, more predictable — so that a grower can know and predict what his labor costs may be in the next two to three years without seeing huge swings in wages one way or the other. It’s not fair to the worker and it’s not fair to the employer. We need some stability there.”

REFORM REQUIRES FARMER VOICES

But stability and reform will only come if farmers are willing to engage in the process — and that, according to one national agricultural labor leader, is where the industry has historically fallen short.

“The future of H-2A and the future of agriculture’s success is really in the hands of the audience,” said John Hollay, President and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers. “The folks up on the stage are trying to do what they can, but it’s really going to take different tactics and different kinds of engagement from the actual farmer. One of the things we struggle with in agriculture is that Americans trust farmers more than anyone — polls continue to put that out there — but farmers often aren’t willing to speak out and utilize the trust they’ve earned. Reform isn’t going to be easy, but if we all work together, we can actually get it done.”

For Georgia’s fruit and vegetable growers, the message from Tifton was clear: the program they depend on needs fixing, the legislation to fix it exists, and the window to act on it is now.

By: John Holcomb

GFB Commodity Conference Tackles Farm Data Privacy and Georgia’s Forestry Market Crisis

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Tifton, GA |

Georgia Farm Bureau’s policy priorities took shape in Tifton recently at the organization’s annual commodity conference — a crucial step in the policy development process that gives commodity leaders a direct line to GFB’s advocacy work at the state and federal level.

“The policy development process we do here with our commodity advisory committees is important for our organization because it allows leaders from various commodity industries and growers from around the state to get together and talk through some of the more complex issues around their commodities,” said Raynor Churwell, Agricultural Programs Manager for GFB. “Our committees here today will develop and amend policy to set the roadmap for the organization and allow our advocacy specialists and legislative staff to go forth and work on those issues with our elected officials.”

WHO OWNS YOUR FARM DATA?

Beyond policy development, producers also heard from outside experts on pressing issues facing the agricultural industry. One of the most timely: agricultural data — specifically who owns it, who can access it, and how farmers can protect themselves as technology becomes more deeply embedded in everyday farm operations.

“The main issues farmers need to be aware of relate to the privacy and security of their data. They need to make sure they understand how the data is going to be used and who would have access to it, to ensure that any privacy concerns they have are going to be protected,” said Ross Pifer, Professor of Law at Penn State.

Pifer says the stakes will only grow as precision agriculture tools become more widespread — and warns that the legal landscape hasn’t kept pace.

“In order for farmers to take advantage of all of the technological advances available, they’re generating and providing data to others. You want to take advantage of the technology, but you need to be aware that there are potential risks. And at this point, there aren’t a lot of legal frameworks that have been established to provide that protection,” Pifer said.

FORESTRY FACING A MARKET ACCESS CRISIS

Attendees also received an update on one of the hardest-hit sectors in Georgia agriculture in recent years: forestry. Between hurricanes, mill closures, wildfires, and pine beetle pressure, the industry has been under sustained stress — and the root cause, according to the Georgia Forestry Commission, comes down to market access for small-diameter wood.

“The biggest issue we’re having right now in forestry is markets for small-diameter wood and what we call residual — like sawmill shavings from sawmills,” said Johnny Sabo, Director of the Georgia Forestry Commission. “We know about 8.2 million tons of wood came off the market between the early county mill closures and then the mills in Savannah and Riceborough. Of that 8.2 million, about 4.2 million tons were wood in Georgia. So we lost about 4.2 million tons of capacity going into mills.”

Sabo says finding replacement markets for that lost volume is now the central challenge for the entire forestry sector.

“If we can’t move small-diameter wood, we start having southern pine beetle issues. We lose the ability to grow saw timber. It’s really the center of the wheel that makes everything go around for forestry,” he said.

For GFB and its commodity partners, the Tifton conference was a reminder that the policy work happening in meeting rooms often has direct consequences in the field — and that the connections built here are what make that advocacy possible.

By: John Holcomb

Fertilizer Prices Surge as Georgia Row Crop Growers Begin Planting Season

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Tifton, GA |

As planting season gets underway for Georgia’s staple row crops, growers are firing up their fertilization schedules — and facing a costly start to the season. Fertilizer prices have jumped more than twenty percent across the board, with one key nutrient being hit especially hard.

“One of the biggest challenges we have right now is that a lot of fertilizers, especially nitrogen-based fertilizers, come from the Middle East. Because we have the Strait of Hormuz closed, it’s becoming a challenge for growers because not a lot of fertilizers are getting here to the U.S. — and that’s causing prices to surge,” said Doug Amarel, an agronomist with the University of Georgia Extension.

That surge includes a fifty percent jump in nitrogen prices alone, putting cotton growers in a particularly difficult position heading into the season.

A DELICATE BALANCING ACT

“Nitrogen is one of the most important fertilizers, especially if you’re doing cotton. It can account for up to fifteen to twenty percent of production costs, so growers need to find ways to cut costs,” Amarel said. “In years like this, when you have high fertilizer prices, you need to adjust. You need to manage the ways to stay profitable — whether that’s cutting back on some fertilizers, managing different crops, different rotations, or different practices in the field.”

But cutting back too aggressively carries its own risks. Amarel says fertilizer management is one of the most consequential decisions a grower can make.

“The three most important things about growing crops are genetics, the environment — something we cannot control — and management,” he said. “And management, eighty to ninety percent of it, is about nutrient management or fertilizer management in the field. If you apply too much nitrogen and not enough potassium, or too much phosphorus without the right micronutrients, you are hurting your crop. You still need to apply enough to be profitable and to produce your crop.”

START WITH A SOIL TEST

With margins already tight, Amarel says getting the most out of every application will be critical — and that starts well before the first pass across the field.

“The most important thing I’ve been telling growers: soil test. That’s the foundation,” Amarel said. “If you don’t know what’s in your soil, there is no way to manage your fertilizers properly. You don’t know how much nitrogen, potassium, or phosphorus you need to apply. A soil test is the foundation of any nutrient management plan right now.”

DROUGHT ADDS ANOTHER LAYER

All of that planning, however, will ultimately depend on whether the historically dry conditions gripping much of the state finally come to an end. Without adequate moisture, even a well-executed fertilizer plan can fall short.

“It creates another problem, especially for growers doing dryland crops,” Amarel said. “We still need water for the crop to uptake nutrients. If there is no water, the crop cannot uptake nutrients. So you may want to go slower at the beginning of the season and adjust as you go — splitting your applications to improve nutrient use efficiency.”

For Georgia’s row crop producers, the 2026 growing season is shaping up to be a test of both patience and precision — with every input decision carrying more weight than usual.

By: Damon Jones