The speakers have been announced for the Georgia Forage and Grasslands Council Summer Tour and we caught up with Dr. Lisa Baxter with UGA to learn more. “So I’m really excited about the lineup that we have for this year’s Summer Forage Tour. This is obviously one of my favorite events during the year to be able to connect with people across the state of Georgia, but we’ve got some really good talks and field walks lined up for this year” Dr. Baxter said.
Dr. Baxter highlighted the event saying “One thing that I’m especially excited about is going to be a joint presentation from Josh Baker, at Southeast Agri-Seeds, and John Carpenter, with Pennington Seeds, and they are giving us some insight on how we turn our plant breeding innovations into market-ready seed. There is a lot that we do not understand kind of publicly on what happens within the seed industry and why exactly it takes so long to get a new forage seed to market. We are going to be spending a good bit of time that morning outside then with Nick McKee with the Jimmy Carter Plant Materials Center talking about different native warm season grasses, seeing some silver pasture and some other things up there at the field sites in Americus, Georgia.”
“And then that afternoon, once we eat a wonderful lunch, we are going to come inside and I’m going to lead a discussion with Dan Glenn, our chairman and local grazer, and then Kendrick Holder and Philip Brown from NRCS on how we can integrate crop livestock systems better in Georgia and some of the tools that we can use and the resources that producers have available. And then before we wrap up, it is always nice to hear from Dr. Taylor Singleton here with UGA Extension on a pesticide stewardship update and some of the language being used by the Endangered Species Act and things that we need to be considering in our pesticide programs within the forage industry. So, it is a jam-packed day. We’re going to keep people hopping, but it’s going to be well worth the time for sure” added Dr. Baxter.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.