The University of Georgia began a new effort to help the
state’s farmers this week when
the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences announced
the Emerging
Crop and Technologies Initiative.
“We are finding it increasingly important to generate new
opportunities for
Georgia farmers,” said Gale Buchanan, CAES dean and
director. “This is something
we have wanted to do for a number of years. The most recent
session of the Georgia General
Assembly made funds available for this purpose, and we are
committed to taking advantage
of this opportunity to develop new crops and value-added
technologies that will help make
Georgia’s agriculture more profitable.”
Hudson First
Coordinator
The program will be centered in the National Environmentally
Sound Production
Agriculture Laboratory (NESPAL) in Tifton, Ga. Randy Hudson, a
UGA professor of
entomology, will serve as its first coordinator.
“Dr. Hudson has already been intimately involved with
emerging enterprises,”
Buchanan said. “His enthusiasm and desire to develop new
crops and technologies will
be a valuable asset to this initiative.” Hudson will serve
as an intermediary between
the CAES and private enterprise and both state and federal
agencies in commercializing new
and emerging crops and technologies.
Emerging crops and potential commercial crops are often a
part
of CAES research
projects already. “But often these are a minor part of the
research scientist’s
overall program,” Hudson said. The new initiative is a way
to place more emphasis and
coordination on these research programs.
Minor Crops Can Have Big
Impact
“In some cases, minor crops can have a potentially large
impact on the state’s
agriculture,” Hudson said. He cited oilseed and biomass
initiatives as examples of
areas in which the work of the new program can have a major
impact on Georgia agriculture.
The effort would go beyond finding new crops. It would also
put together
the processing and
marketing needed to make them commercially viable. For instance,
the oilseed initiative,
Hudson said, would help develop a vertically integrated oilseed
program that would empower
growers beyond the farm gate and allow them to participate in
marketing identity-preserved
oils and proteins.
Jerry Cherry, CAES associate dean for research, said another
such area is in feed
grains for Georgia’s poultry and livestock. “Pearl millet
could have a significant
effect statewide,” he said. “Millet could replace corn.
There’s a tremendous
market for it.”
And while the term “emerging crops” tends to direct
thoughts to new plants,
Cherry said, “don’t think that precludes animal
projects.” As an example, he
said, red deer may have potential in Georgia as a livestock
“crop.”
New Crops, Added
Value
The new initiative will help UGA’s chance to discover crops
the state doesn’t grow now,
said Bill Lambert, CAES associate dean for extension. New
markets
pop up as people from
other parts of the world come to Georgia. “But the biggest
opportunity,” he
said, “is adding more value to things we already grow
here.”
Lambert said Georgia farmers will never get away from growing
traditional commodities.
“But if you look at the farmers who are doing well,” he
said, “many have
found success with niche crops. The secret is to find more niche
markets.”
Only time will tell how important the new initiative will be
to the state’s agriculture
and overall economy. “When you work with new technologies
and crops, you can’t
predict their success,” Buchanan said. “That’s the
nature of research. But we
can develop means to enhance their ability to be successful.
This
is not a panacea, but
it’s certainly one of the ways we can help agriculture continue
to be profitable.”
