Tag Archives: UGA Extension

Pecan Growers Gather in Ty Ty for Fall Field Day, Share Updates on Research and Recovery

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Ty Ty, GA |

Pecan growers from across Georgia recently gathered for their annual Fall Field Day, an event designed to foster connection, share research updates, and provide expert insights essential to the future of the state’s pecan industry.

“With the research being done here, they don’t get to see this facility but every three years,” says Mary Bruorton, Executive Director of the Georgia Pecan Growers Association. “So this is a new opportunity for new growers and existing growers to see what research has been done… what new varieties are being worked on, and different disease protection as well.”

Among the speakers was Dr. Lenny Wells, Extension Pecan Specialist with the University of Georgia, who offered a crop update and highlighted one of this year’s biggest challenges: rain.

“With pecans, most of the varieties that we grow… they’re susceptible to a disease called pecan scab,” says Wells. “The more rainfall you get, the more disease pressure there’s going to be. You have to spray more. In years like this one, it rains so often that especially growers with a large acreage, they really can’t get over their acreage before it rains again. It drives up the cost of production considerably.”

For producers already operating on thin margins, those increased costs can be significant—which is why having reliable, science-based guidance is more important than ever.

“In general, farmers tend to focus on production—on how many pounds they make of whatever crop they’re looking at,” Wells explains. “But probably a more important figure to look at is the net return. And that goes back to the cost of production. So we’re always looking for ways that we can cut costs without hurting the yield.”

Despite the rain and the lingering effects of Hurricane Helene from last fall, Wells says the crop has shown resilience. In fact, many trees damaged by the storm unexpectedly produced a crop this year.

“We’ve seen something very surprising,” says Wells. “A lot of the trees that were left actually came back with some crop this year… Normally what we see after these hurricanes is that they completely take that next year off… but this year something was different.”

While it may not be a record-setting harvest, Wells says the fact that growers have a crop at all—especially in previously storm-damaged orchards—is a positive sign moving forward.

By: John Holcomb

Georgia Ag Issues Summit: Lawmakers Tackle Rural Challenges Ahead of 2026 Session

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Perry, GA |

As Georgia lawmakers gear up for the 2026 legislative session, agriculture leaders and industry professionals recently gathered in Perry for the annual Joint Agriculture Committee Chairmen Ag Issues Summit. Hosted by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Russ Goodman and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Robert Dickey, the event served as a platform to discuss both ongoing concerns and opportunities within Georgia’s largest industry.

“It’s a joint summit between the House and the Senate,” said Senator Goodman. “Chairman Dickey and I are the co-hosts of it and really just bring in people from across the state that are involved in the agricultural industry or extension, or people that have an interest in the industry, and come together and talk about issues, have guest speakers, and find out what our challenges are, what our opportunities are, things that we’re doing well.”

Goodman emphasized the importance of learning from university and extension professionals, noting the summit is essentially “about all things ag.”

For Representative Dickey, the event also plays a critical role in educating colleagues who may not have direct ties to farming or rural life. He says the summit helps bridge that knowledge gap between ag leaders and state lawmakers.

“Chairman Goodman and I are certainly up to speed on a lot of these issues, but so many colleagues are not,” Dickey explained. “That is the kind of information we need to get out to the rest of our colleagues in the House and Senate and the Governor’s office—what the problems are with agriculture in Georgia, what the challenges are that we need to be working on. And there’s lots of them. Rural Georgia and agriculture are facing a lot of headwinds right now.”

Among those headwinds is economic uncertainty—something Senator Goodman says threatens the future of many family farms. He believes public policy needs to be shaped with generational survival in mind.

“Right now, ag is struggling in a lot of ways with commodity prices,” Goodman said. “We’ve seen cost of input come down, but as you heard Dr. Dorfman say, they quadrupled, and now they’re just double what they were pre-COVID. Moving forward, it’s just going to continue to be about making sure we’re implementing public policy that hopefully enables the next generation to continue to farm.”

That message was echoed by Dickey, who says when agriculture suffers, the entire rural community feels the impact.

“Our rural communities are really suffering,” he said. “High cost inputs for farmers, low crop prices—a lot we can’t do on a state level. But we’ve got to support those communities, those rural ag communities, to have the infrastructure, to have the diversity that those communities really need. Agriculture is the largest industry in those counties. When ag constricts, it really puts a burden on our school systems, our roads, and those types of things.”

By: John Holcomb

Georgia’s Cotton & Peanut Crops: What Growers Are Seeing This Season | Midville Field Day 2025

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Midville, GA |

Despite a rocky start to the growing season, Georgia’s cotton and peanut crops are showing promise as the state’s farmers gear up for harvest. At this year’s Midville Field Day, growers gathered to get the latest updates from experts across the University of Georgia’s Extension system—including insight into crop conditions, production challenges, and what lies ahead for 2025.

According to Camp Hand, UGA Extension Cotton Specialist, recent rainfall across the state was a timely blessing for cotton fields that were beginning to show signs of stress.

“Today’s August sixth. The last two days, we’ve gotten rain across the state, which was much needed,” said Hand. “We were kind of getting to a point where it was getting a little iffy in terms of what the crop was doing. It was getting really dry out there.”

Hand said the precipitation will help dryland crops bounce back and assist with irrigation recovery, putting growers in a stronger position heading into late summer.

“Of course, there’s going to be a little bit of fruit shed and things like that associated with overcast weather,” he added. “But overall, I think we’ve still got really good potential in our crop.”

However, good crop potential doesn’t always translate into good profits. With cotton prices currently sitting under seventy cents per pound, many Georgia farmers have backed away from planting it—opting instead for peanuts. But Hand warns that a shift away from cotton could disrupt the delicate infrastructure balance the state’s ag economy depends on.

“The reduction in cotton acres affects infrastructure. It affects gins, it affects warehouses, it affects people that have equipment,” Hand said. “The reason Georgia agriculture has been so successful—especially with our major row crops—is because cotton and peanuts just work. We can’t have one without the other.”

Fortunately, this year’s peanut crop appears to be holding strong. Scott Monfort, UGA Extension Peanut Agronomist, said producers enjoyed a relatively smooth planting season, with favorable soil moisture and temperatures through much of April and May.

“The crop is looking very well across most of the state,” said Monfort. “We had a little dry spell in May that caused some delays, but overall, we got the majority of our crop planted on time.”

Still, Georgia’s peanuts weren’t entirely spared from Mother Nature’s extremes. A heat wave that rolled through late July into early August placed significant stress on irrigated crops during peak bloom—a critical growth stage that demands consistent moisture.

“We were in ninety-five-plus degree temps with no rainfall, and in some of these pivots, you just can’t keep up at that point,” Monfort explained. “We did go through a stress period, but I think it was early enough that I don’t think it’s going to hurt us.”

Both Hand and Monfort stressed that resilience and adaptability remain the keys to success as producers navigate rising costs, shifting acreage, and unpredictable weather.

By: John Holcomb

Georgia Peanut Farmers Face 2025 Challenges: Weather, Yields & Market Outlook

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Tifton, GA |

With Georgia growing six times more peanuts that any other state in the country, keeping those farmers up to date on the latest research, technology and equipment is vital for the health of the industry as a whole. Events like the Georgia Peanut Farm Show help accomplish this by gathering all those involved under one roof.

“Number one, it’s very good information. It’s a chance for farmers to get together and rub elbows with their neighbors and friends that they may not have seen from people come from all over the state and the Southeast, but you also get to see the latest and greatest in machinery, technology, chemicals, and peanut production practices. We’ve got Scott Monfort is going to lead our production session, and we’ve got a seed session. It helps to just give us an opportunity,” says Joe Boddiford, Chairman of the Georgia Peanut Commission.

Even though the number of acres dedicated to peanuts in Georgia remain high, yields did take a major hit in 2024, thanks in large part to the unpredictable climate.

“Weather for the last two years have taken some yield from us. This past year has taken more than it has in a long time. You know, we lost some top end irrigated yields in ’23 of about a thousand pounds. This year, fifteen hundred pounds or better and across the state when you look at the state average, we didn’t move that much in ’23. We were at forty-one hundred and something. This year, we dropped down to thirty-eight fifty, and that’s the lowest we’ve been in twenty years,” says Scott Monfort, Extension Peanut Agronomist.

With that in mind, growers must now walk a fine line in 2025 between cutting costs and maximizing production.

“We know you need to make change. We know you need kind of cut back if you can, but the biggest thing is we know you need to make money. That’s the highest yields possible. And what we’re here trying to get them to understand is that it’s easy to say I’m going to cut this out, this out and this out. And that’s going to save me money, but in retrospect, every time you cut something, it’s going to affect your yield or potentially affect your control of a pest that affects your yield,” says Monfort.

The silver lining created by that drop in numbers is a potential for the prices to remain steady through these uncertain times.

“We did get lucky by not producing as much in the state of Georgia. So, that kind of helped us potentially. I’m not going to say it is, but it potentially did. If we would have yielded forty-one, forty-two hundred pounds, we know where we would be this year. It would be starting way low. I’m hoping that’s not going to be the case this year and we can at least keep that price up to where we can at least pay some returns back on our investment,” says Monfort.

As for advice to growers preparing for the new year, Monfort suggests working with your local county extension and sticking with the basics.

“The main thing is don’t forget your base programs. Make sure fertility, fungicides, pest management, lyme, calcium, the things you need to do, let’s make sure we do them and we’ll be okay,” says Monfort.

By: Damon Jones

Equipment Prep Important Before Season Starts

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TIFTON, GA – Let’s face it, there’s not much worse than being in the middle of something and then having to stop and fix your equipment. Believe me, been there, done that. So, in order to try and help not make that happen, I recently traveled down to Tifton to talk with a UGA extension specialist about the importance of getting your planter and irrigation systems prepared for the upcoming season.

Wesley Porter, Extension Precision Ag and Irrigation Specialist with the University of Georgia says, “if we get out there and have a breakdown with this piece of equipment or have issues with this piece of equipment, it’s really going to cripple us moving into the year. So, if we have a bearing go out, we have a seed meter system fail, we notice we have a problem somewhere else in this system, and we’re going to take two or three days to get it fixed or time to parts in, then we got to pull it back to the shop to get it fixed, that’s critical lost time.”

Here in Georgia, time is very important, as windows for planting are sometimes slim with our unpredictable shifts in weather.

“We feel like we have extremely variable weather, very few good days to get planted, so we’re already kind of in a hurry,” says Porter.

For the planter, the things you really want to focus on are the depth and down force settings and also the seed meter performance.

“We want to make sure our seed meters are actually singulating the way they’re actually supposed to, they’re dropping the correct number of seeds, that we’re not pulling too many doubles in there, too many skips or misses in there,” says Porter. “You have to have the proper downforce set to maintain that depth. If we have too light of a downforce, and too hard of a soil type or too dry of a soil type, we’re going to be too shallow of a depth.”

Perhaps the most important thing you want to make sure is running properly is your irrigation system.

Porter says, “It’s very critical from an irrigated standpoint that we have this system up and running to par prior to going out to the field and planting and trying to irrigate the system. If we try to turn on the irrigation system after we’ve got our crop in the ground, and we determine at that point we kind of have a bad failure, we’re going to get behind on our irrigation and could cause major crop issues.”

For those irrigation systems, you mainly want to focus on making sure there are no leaks and that the nozzles are working properly.

“So, a lot of times, we do see a lot of leaks on these systems, whether those leaks are occurring at the boots of the pivots, whether they’re occurring at nozzles, sprinklers that have fallen off, been broken, or busted, etc., that’s a very easy fix. If you see those leaks right now, go ahead and get those fixed, because usually they’ll translate to issues in yield in the field,” says Porter.

This may seem like a lot of extra steps, but it could save you a lot of time and possibly even a good bit of money later on into the season. If you find it difficult to find time to do this before the season starts, doing it after is also a good option.

“You’ll know if you’re having little problems with some of the parts in there; it’s fresh on your mind,” says Porter. “Go ahead and get those replaced at that time, get those serviced, maintenance, whatever else need to be done. Then when we pull it out in the spring time, there’s not as much to do, just some light greasing and stuff like that.”

Some of this can be difficult and maybe even confusing if you’re not familiar with it, but all hope is not lost.

“I would strongly encourage you if you have any questions or you kind of have a second guess about what’s going on with this piece of equipment, contact your local county extension agent and have them kind of do a look over with you and talk to you about checking the components and of course you can always go back to your local dealer that you purchased the equipment from,” says Porter.

For a step by step checklist, click here.

By: John Holcomb