Browse Agricultural Policy Stories

Arriving on the Athens campus of the University of Georgia in August 2023, five Romanian scholars experienced the same anticipation, excitement and apprehension as many first-year students.  Chosen as Fulbright Romanian-American Foundation Scholars, each serves on the faculty at one of three Romanian universities, specializing in fields from economics and engineering to plant breeding and biotechnology. The five scholars comprised the first cohort of the Romanian Extension Education Development Program, an ambitious three-year pilot effort to facilitate planning and implementation of extension services in Romania. 

Third-year University of Georgia student and Banks County 4-H alum Georgia Simmons has been in the center of the political action this fall with the Georgia 4-H Washington DC Intern Program. Simmons, an environmental resource science major in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, works in the office of U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock. As an intern on his staff, she interacts directly with policy experts and lawmakers, participating in the legislative process while earning a semester of credit hours.

For more than two decades, the Georgia Farm Gate Value Report has offered a comprehensive analysis of the county-level production value for commodities in Georgia’s No. 1 industry, agriculture. The reports provide essential data to farmers in the state’s 159 counties. Now the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences is providing Georgia’s producers with a new tool, the Georgia Farm Gate Value 20-Year Trends.

The gold dome of the Georgia Capitol was complemented with shades of green on Feb. 14 as 4-H youth and adult leaders joined elected officials for the largest Georgia 4-H Day at the Capitol on record. With nearly 700 in attendance, outstanding 4-H’ers from counties across the state gathered to engage with legislators, observe leadership in action and learn about the civic process.

As an essential part of the U.S. agricultural industry, the H-2A program offers a lifeline for farmers facing seasonal labor shortages. The program enables them to hire migrant workers on a temporary basis when attempts to hire domestic workers are unsuccessful. Yet, as the agricultural sector navigates the delicate balance between productivity and financial viability, the high costs associated with the H-2A program present a very real and present challenge for farmers striving to sustain their operations.

For decades, economists have studied the impact of immigration on domestic labor markets. As a shortage of domestic farm labor has led to increased participation in the H-2A visa program, a brief look back at past immigration policies helps frame why migrants from Central and South America have largely been associated with filling necessary agricultural jobs in the U.S.

Georgia is consistently one of the top five states to use the H-2A visa program, employing workers for 60% of agricultural jobs. Last year, the U.S. Department of Labor passed legislation to raise the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), which establishes the minimum wage for H-2A workers, by a sharp 14% for several states including Georgia. For University of Georgia Professor Cesar Escalante, this poses the question: How do you balance supporting the interests of farm businesses while fairly compensating the people doing the hard work in the field?

If you’ve ever driven down a rural road lined with fields of cotton plants festooned with fluffy bolls and wondered how much cotton is grown in your county, forget Google — the University of Georgia’s Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development has what you need. Each year experts in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences perform the Sisyphean task of compiling agricultural production data for every commodity produced in the state.

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.

University of Georgia Professor Cesar Escalante has been awarded the 2022 Ketchum Prize — the FINRA Investor Education Foundation’s (FINRA Foundation) highest honor — in recognition of his pioneering research and advocacy to advance financial inclusion and alleviate racial and gender bias in agricultural lending.