The Pitch
Slug: Climate Change in Athens
Headline: Georgia Farmers Use Climate Change to Their Advantage
Premise: Cliamte change has affected the agribusiness in Georgia enormously with mass crop losses and costly equipment.
New Value: The audience will learn about the effects of climate change on Georgia farmers that are using it to their advantage. I will be including a brief history on the ag business in Georgia as well as how climate change is affecting farmers in Georgia.
So what? This matters becuase the ag business offer over 300,000 jobs in Georgia. With farmers planting new and different crops, this can continue to grow instead of decreasing because of climate change making farmers have crop losses.
Characters:
- Joe Franklin: CEO and founder of Franklins Citrus Farm
- Cristian Pilon: associate professor at UGA in row crop physialogy
- Pam Knox: Senior Public Service Associate and director of the UGA Weather Network and Agricultural Climatologist
- Jason Wallace: associate professor in quantitative genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, and crop microbiomes
- Extension Agent for Bacon County: Zackary Williams
- One or two blueberry farmers from Alma/Bacon County
Research
- Background: How did it start?"Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, people have burned more and more fossil fuels and changed vast areas of land from forests to farmland."
- Reference: Journalism piece by AP NewsInfo on Climate ChangeSolutions provided by th government for climate change
- Calls: All can be seen in this spreadsheet on who I have reached out to
Opposition: Those who do not believe that climate change is real. How Do I make it fair to both sides? Well, climate change is backed by actual science and farmers. There is no way to showcase both sides because this is ongoing and happening.
Visuals/Audio: On camera interviews with some of the people, pictures of the farms and maybe a visuals of data. Audio will come from the interviews and then perhaps some enviromental ambience.
Logistics: Story is in Georgia with professors at or around UGA and the farmers are in south Georgia that I will either call or have an interview with in-person to capture photos.
Presentation: Just blog/website format for publishing.
The Story
The Draft
Headline: Georgia Farmers Uses Climate Change to Their Advantage
Byline: Melanie Velasquez
Lede: Georgia farmers are testing the boundaries in agribusiness in planting citrus trees, blueberries and other crops in response to warmer weather. Climate change has created numerous obstacles for farmers that has caused them to adapt and adopt new tactics.
Nutgraf: Georgia’s agriculture has an enormous contribution to the economy of Georgia. According to the UGA Center for Agribusiness & Economic Development, Agriculture contributes approximately $69.4 billion annually to Georgia's economy. Climate change in Georgia has become an expensive concern that has caused farmers to lose crops and purchase more or new equipment to compensate. Nonetheless, some farmers are attempting to use climate change to their benefit to gain profit.
Georgia has been a hub of agricultural ventures since the colony was conceived. In the 18th century, the state of Georgia’s main commodities were cotton and tobacco. Fast forward to the 21st century and the main commodities are broilers and cotton which make up 30.1% of the agribusiness bringing in approximately 3.7 billion dollars in revenue.
In Georgia, there is 9.9 million acres of farmland with each. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, in 2019, Georgia there were 42,000 individual farms with more than $9.5 billion worth of agricultural products being sold.
Nevertheless, climate change has been extremely hard on farmers, especially ones that are farming blueberries which only made a major appearance as a top ten commodity in Georgia until 2014.
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(Data sourced from University of Georgia’s Agribusiness and Economic Development)
In an interview with Pam Knox, Senior Public Service Associate and director of the UGA Weather Network and agricultural climatologist, she said, “One of the problems that we have seen is that as the winters have gotten warmer the plants don’t get enough chill hours cause the blueberry plants, peaches and other fruit bearing plants require a certain amount of cold weather”. The lack of chill hours causes the blooms to either not come at all or in scattered times which makes it difficult for farmers to get crops in when they are getting ripe at different times.
“As we have had warmer winters, sometimes we have had enough chill hours for the plants to be ready to bloom but it is so warm that they bloom early and the chance of the frost getting to them increases and we have seen that several times in the last 5 years,” said Knox.
In speaking with Jason Wallace, associate professor in quantitative genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, and crop microbiomes, he stated that things are becoming less predictable.
However, farmers like Joe Franklin, founder and CEO of Franklin’s Citrus Farm, have come to workaround the warmer weather by planting citrus species that can withandle the colder temperatures in Georgia versus Florida but flourish during mild winters that Georgia has been having.
[Interview with Joe Franklin March 6th]
In speaking with blueberry farmers from Alma, Georgia, known as the blueberry capital of Georgia.
[Waiting for extension agent to get back to me about farmer]
Georgia is the number one producer of peanuts in the United States and with droughts, have caused concerns regarding the promise in keeping the number one spot. In speaking with Cristiane Pilon, Assistant Professor in row crop physiology and specializing in peanut crop and production she stated [waiting for her to get back about interview]
[Conclusion will go here once all the interviews have been completed]
The Production
To be cont...