Our Impact
Making A Difference in Our County
University of Georgia Cooperative Extension is working hard for its constituents. The following are examples of Extension’s impact in the county over the past year.
4-H
Echols County 4-H strives to provide an environment where all youth and families feel welcome and experience belonging, one of the essential elements of 4-H. To combat this, the 4-H agent completed a hybrid 12-week course on engaging Latino youth and families for 4-H professionals. Along with education and in-school programming, staff have also made an intentional effort to build a relationship with families. Staff worked diligently to ensure the only reason a child would not be able to participate in a 4-H function would be due to parent permission or scheduling conflicts, not because of funding or a sense of belonging. Building relationships with families, youth and community partners and securing financial support and adequate fundraising were all integral pieces.
In 2019, 12% of youth attending Cloverleaf Camp were Hispanic. In 2023, the number of Hispanic youth attending Cloverleaf Camp more than doubled with 32% being Hispanic, which exceeds parity for Echols County. One camper noted Cloverleaf Camp was the first time his mom had ever allowed him to stay away from home without a parent or family member present. This remark notes the trust and relationship building efforts at work and the family’s recognition of a positive, caring adult in their child’s life through the 4-H program. The overall total participation for the Echols County 4-H program for 2022-2023 meets parity based on the number of Hispanic/Latino youth who are aged 18 and under in Echols County. The Echols County 4-H agent has been tapped to serve as a mentor for other county 4-H agents and staff and will provide future training to peers on engaging the Hispanic/Latino community in county programming.
Agriculture and Natural Resources
Black Shank is a problem that many tobacco farmers face each year. Most tobacco growers dealing with black shank find themselves limited on acres for necessary crop rotation due to lack of available disease free land. In most cases, tobacco growers dealing with black shank eventually find all regularly used land infested with Phytophthora nicotianae, the pathogen causing black shank. Tobacco growers often wash and sanitize their equipment before they move from field to field while planting, cultivating and harvesting their tobacco crop to avoid spreading the soil borne disease from an infested field to non-infested field and or newly purchased or rented land. This sensible operation is often included in good IPM practices. However, growers are admittedly lax in washing their truck tires, harrows, planters, tractors, and harvesting equipment used for other crops when leaving fields, the years when tobacco is not being grown. An on-farm trial was conducted to evaluate NC 1226 and NC 960 with both varieties containing a high level of FL-301 resistance as well as the Wz Gene against five new varieties, NC 986, NC 991, NC 993, NC 994 and NC 996. During the study each variety was evaluated on their level of black shank resistance with no chemical control products used at transplant and for visual yield, quality and ease of curing. All varieties evaluated performed excellent under a grower’s standard program. Little to no black shank was found in any of the plots. This was considered to be a positive giving the known levels of black shank in the plot location. Also, an unexpected positive of this level of resistance across the board was we were able to also evaluate each variety on plant height, leaf size and uniformity which in disease plots is rarely possible.