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 teaches youth valuable communication and presentation skills through in-school programming and provides them the opportunity to showcase newly acquired skills through project achievement. The 2020-2021 Georgia Milestones End of Grade (EOG) Assessments for English Language Arts (ELA) indicated students tested in Echols County had an average reading proficiency score of 40%, falling below the state average of 45%. Participation in project achievement was a catalyst for total program growth and essential for youth to gain stronger reading skills and experiences in the subject of English Language Arts. Students were granted the opportunity to receive experiential learning by participating in District Project Achievement. Twenty Cloverleaf 4-H’ers (4th-6th graders) participated at the District Contest in Tifton. Cloverleaf District Project Achievement participation increased by 200% from Fall 2020 to Fall 2021. The Echols County 4-H agent provided means for students to develop relationships with her and other caring adults who support them through expression and giving them challenging opportunities to grow and share power in a safe environment.
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.