Thank you to everyone who joined us for this year’s Killer Tomato events! Between our pop-up farmers market and the 13th annual Attack of the Killer Tomato Festival (AKTF), this year’s tomato season was one for the books.
The Winter Farmer Series consisted of in-person networking and educational events hosted at farms across Georgia in February and March. These farmer field days took place in lieu of the annual Georgia Organics Conference & Expo, which has evolved to engage regenerative farm and food advocates across the U.S. Southeastern region under the moniker “SOWTH.”
On February 19, 2024, Georgia Organics kicked off the Winter Farmer Series with a Collective Organic Purchasing and Accessing Organic Markets Organic Growers Farmer Field Day in Keysville, Georgia. This Farmer Field Day, in particular, highlighted the strength that collective farming and selling models have in accessing more markets.
Last May, we engaged multiple organizations for anti-racism audits, ultimately choosing Widerstand Consulting, whose process involves document review and focus groups with staff, board, farmers, and partners to inform necessary changes.
Georgia Organics hosts a series of educational workshops, Organic Growers Farmer Field Days (OGFFDs), as part of the Farmer Services GO Organic! program to provide a portfolio of services geared specifically towards transitioning and Certified Organic farmers.
At Grateful Pastures Farm — the only Certified Organic poultry farm in Georgia — field day attendees took an autumnal farm tour while learning about pasture management and, later, the importance of record keeping.
By Ain Chiké
Ain is a Farmer Services Coordinator at Georgia Organics
On a sunny and moderately breezy morning in June, the Georgia Organics Farmers Services team, representatives from Seven Springs Farm Supply, researchers from the University of Georgia, and over 50 attendees gathered at Crystal Organic Farm in Newborn, GA for a Farmer Field Day to discuss the ins and outs of Integrated Pest Management. The definition of Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, varied from one presenter to the next, but all agreed that it is an environmentally sensitive tiered approach to long-term pest management.
Armed with a bullhorn and a combined lifetime of farming and IPM experience, farm hosts Nicolas Donck and Jeni Jarrard-Donck started the field day farm tour by welcoming participants with a condensed overview of the farm’s thirty-year history as a Certified Organic farm. Once acclimated, participants walked the 30-acre farm and learned more about how their hosts manage insect pests and crop diseases.
IPM is a core pillar of organic farming, and the seasoned growers at Crystal Organic Farm demonstrated this foundational organic principle in their farm planning and systems. Certified Organic farms must have a pest, weed, and disease management plan to comply with the National Organic Program (NOP) standard 205.206. This standard states that Organic growers must use a hierarchical approach to managing pests, weeds, and disease, meaning they must first use prevention practices, then control practices, and as a last resort, input applications may be used. IPM strategies use non-chemical and chemical approaches to suppress and control pest populations. To determine how to respond to an outbreak, farmers using IPM strategies monitor the pest or disease, accurately identify the issue, assess and consider the economic injury threshold (a threshold is the point at which action should be taken), implement a treatment strategy, and evaluate the success of treatments.
Daniel Sweeney of Seven Springs Farm Supply standing in front of aging cucumbers
Photo by Meg Darnell of Georgia Organics
One of the first stops on the tour was a swath of perennial herbs. While taking in the herbs and flowers Jeni explained how this type of planting uses cultural practices and biological control. The native plants encourage beneficial species and predators to remain on the land, helping to keep pesky bugs populations in check. Further down the row, attendees came upon season-extending high tunnels filled with cucumbers in varying degrees of age and health and were asked to determine if the presenting issues were pest or disease-related. Attendees learned from Daniel Sweeney, a Seven Springs Farm Supply crop adviser, that a “pest” is any animal or plant harmful to crops or humans. In this case, the cucumbers were suffering from age and heat. At this point, Nicolas explains that part of his strategy was not spending lots of time keeping the fast-growing, disease prone crop alive past its initial harvest. However, he does use successive plantings to keep a good flow available throughout the growing season. To keep disease from spreading, Nicolas and Jeni’s team harvest the youngest and healthiest fruits first before tending to the older vines.
Within an IPM system, farmers employ multiple tactics and levels of control to reduce crop damage. The IPM control tiers are:
Cultural Practices: Agricultural practices using biodiversity to make the environment less favorable to crop damaging insects and disease. Examples include crop rotation, plant selection, trap crops, and adjusting the timing of planting or harvest. These strategies are considered ‘prevention practices’ in the NOP standard 205.206.
Physical and Mechanical Control: Mulching to suppress splash back from the soil, placing barriers that keep birds or insects out, reducing breeding sites through mowing, and physically removing pests from plants. These strategies are considered ‘control practices’ in the NOP standard 205.206.
Biological Control: Using beneficial predators, parasitoids, pathogens, and plants to combat and control the insect pest, or “bad bug,” population. These strategies are considered ‘control practices’ in the NOP standard 205.206.
Chemical Control: Applying natural or synthetic chemical substances to repel or eradicate pests. This is usually a last resort as chemical control can affect the beneficials within the area. Pheromone disruptors or specialized bacteria like Bacillus Thuringiensis (B.T.) are specialized means of control that target a specific type of pest. These strategies are considered ‘input applications’ in the NOP standard 205.206. Certified Organic and transitioning to Organic growers should verify that any synthetic inputs they use are included on the National list of synthetic substances allowed for use in Organic crop production.
Photo by: Alena Ivakhnenko of Seven Spring Farm Supply
As the tour continued, the group split in two. Jeni took one group to learn more about various herbs and their medicinal properties, while others went with Nicolas to learn more about crop production and management.
As the sun began to make its presence known, everyone settled in the shade and recharged with a delicious lunch from Taqueria El Futuro. Following the intermission, UGA professor and entomologist Dr. Jason Schmidt, presented on how to deal with insects through identification and learning about their life cycles. Knowing when a pest population will peak and what it likes to eat is instrumental in crop planning. Dr. Henry Sintim, a UGA professor in the Crop & Soil Sciences department, followed with an impassioned speech about the necessities of soil fertility and nutrient management. He performed a percolation test which he mentioned is one of the fundamental keys to determining if your soil will allow water to penetrate and move through the medium, and it evaluates the ability of the soil to absorb nutrients. Last but certainly not least, the final presenter Daniel Sweeney, gave insight into the services that Seven Spring Farm Supply provides and an overview of foundational and practical integrated pest management.
As the day wrapped up, attendees left with their heads full of information on how to tackle the issues presented within their growing operations, equipped with a multitude of different IPM strategies to quell the influx of pests that routinely visit their crops.
RESOURCES
To learn more about Integrated Pest Management, visit the University of Georgia IPM handbook for home and commercial growers.
Curious about performing a percolation test? Follow these step-by-step directions
Visit the Seven Springs Farm Supply website to view their pest management solutions and check out their field day recap blog!
Access the Farmer Field Day presentations by Dr. Jason Schmidt, Dr. Henry Sintim, and Daniel Sweeney via Google Drive here.
Are you transitioning to Organic Certification and have questions about IPM or the other NOP standards Organic growers have to adhere to? Visit Georgia Organics’ GO Organic! page for resources and more information on receiving one-on-one technical assistance.
Are you a current Certified Organic grower in Georgia? Visit Georgia Organics’ GO Organic! page for cost-share resources and more information on joining the Georgia Certified Organic Network (GCON).
