News Stories - Page 38

High school 4-H’ers are bridging technology gaps in the agriculture community with Georgia’s new 4-H Ag Tech Changemakers program, part of the national 4-H Tech Changemakers initiative. Students trained as Tech Changemakers create educational opportunities for adults to learn essential workforce-related technology, and Georgia 4-H created the 4-H Ag Tech Changemakers program to expand the subject area coverage to include agriculture-specific skills.

When government officials need expert opinions, they often turn to academia for advice. The University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety has a long history of working with such entities to help ensure a safe global food supply, and its involvement in government matters deepened last fall when the center’s director participated in a high-profile review of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Emily Edelman’s acceptance to the University of Georgia was a dream come true. “If you grew up in Georgia like I did, you know UGA is where everyone wants to go. It’s on everyone’s list,” Edelman said. “And when I got in, I also got into my dream program — poultry science.”

There is, arguably, no single individual who has brought more national attention to agriculture and the state of Georgia than Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States, who grew up in the tiny farming community of Archery, Georgia, about 3 miles outside of Plains.

The data revealing farmers’ mental health challenges is sobering to say the least. Faced with unfavorable weather, unfriendly economic conditions, labor shortages and more, farmers of all types often cope with the pressures of their profession in unhealthy ways, including considering suicide.

Five Georgia counties found success at the Western National Roundup in Denver, including a first-place victory by Oconee County 4-H in the National Family and Consumer Sciences Bowl. The Western National Roundup is the highest level of competition for many 4-H livestock, horse, and family and consumer sciences events.

The Integrative Precision Agriculture International Conference, “Local Solutions Through Global Advances,” will be held May 18-19 at the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education & Hotel. Hosted by UGA’s Institute for Integrative Precision Agriculture, the conference will feature speakers who solve problems around the globe and offer new perspectives on common challenges in the field.

Two students in the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences were selected to attend the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Outlook Forum in Washington, D.C., as part of the Future Leaders Program.

From studying the way light affects foodborne pathogens to designing innovative technology for data processing, the team at the University of Georgia Center for Food Safety is pushing the boundaries of technology to help protect a safe and secure global food chain. The center, a unit of UGA’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is critical to both domestic and international advances in food safety—an estimated 48 million people in the U.S. alone get sick from contaminated food or beverages each year, and 3,000 die from foodborne illness. CFS is the base of operations for a team of food scientists with a wide variety of backgrounds and areas of expertise working together on the front lines of food safety research.