News Stories - Page 355

Daniel Hillel, the 2012 World Food Prize Laureate and a 1950 graduate of the University of Georgia, spent the better part of his career perfecting arid- land farming methods in Israel and sharing them with farmers across the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia. On Nov. 8, Hillel will return to Athens to deliver the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences’ 2012 D.W. Brooks Lecture at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education.

Every year around this time the national news is filled with stories of monument-sized pumpkins from places like Maine and Michigan, but Georgians are no slouches when it comes to giant produce.

Giant pumpkins don't just happen. It takes time and patience if you want to be the only person on your block who has a 300-pound jack-o-lantern.

With the majority of American children at least two generations removed from the farm, it is common for them to think their food originates at the grocery store. Or even worse, they may think it comes from a fast food restaurant. The Farm to School program was established to help battle this misperception and to help children connect and appreciate the food they eat.

Sweeping changes were approved in last year’s House Bill 386 that exempt inputs used in agricultural production from Georgia sales tax collections. For certified producers or farmers this means most of the items they buy to use in agricultural production will be sales tax exempt beginning in 2013.

The University of Georgia Traffic Injury Prevention Institute was awarded a $650,000 grant from the Georgia Governor’s Office of Highway Safety to continue its statewide education programs in the areas of child passenger safety, parent-teen driving safety and senior driver education.

If something appears to be chewing off the ends of tree branches in your landscape, that something is most likely a twig girdler.

Roses are typically viewed as one of the most beautiful flowers, but in rare cases a tiny pest can cause gnarly looking, new growth on rose bushes. Rose leaf-curl mites feed on roses and cause rose rosette virus, also known as RRV.

A survey of local food hubs in Georgia found that the state already has some working models for providing local produce for growing local markets.