Commodity Teams

Each year, as planting season approaches, one of the most common questions Robyn Stewart receives is how to safely and effectively use manure in home gardens. Stewart, the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Agriculture and Natural Resources agent for Lincoln County, said the benefit of incorporating manure into garden soil is that it provides some fertility and nutritional value, but the real advantage is in the addition of organic matter, which improves soil composition and drainage.

Wayne-Sanderson Farms has announced an additional $2 million donation for the new Poultry Science Building at the University of Georgia. The gift brings project support from the Georgia-based poultry producer to $4.1 million. The combined gift will name the Poultry Science Building student lobby, a 1,300-square-foot space for students to study and network with industry partners. Situated on UGA’s South Campus, the 70,000-plus square-foot Poultry Science Building provides nearly double the space per student in each classroom than the previous facility.

Long before a ripe blueberry makes it into a grocery cart or muffin mix, a native bee has likely played a quiet but critical role in its journey. Now, thanks to a robust study on wild bee diversity in blueberry fields, we know more about just how essential those wild pollinators are to one of the state’s most valuable fruit crops. Sarah Rezende, a doctoral candidate in entomology at the University of Georgia, is working to uncover what Georgia’s wild bees need to thrive — and how their movements shape the productivity of commercial blueberry farms.