From the latest in cotton pickers — satellite-steered machines that pick, form and deposit bales as they ride across a field — to an Auburn University truck that runs on wood chips, Sunbelt has always been about increasing economic efficiency, Executive Director Chip Blalock said.
With a spotlight this year on Kentucky, known for its thoroughbred horses and row crops, especially tobacco, Sunbelt is fortunate not to have seen the economy detract from the 1,200 exhibitors slated to be at the Expo Oct. 14-16, he said.
Organizers work year-round to bring the three-day event to the Expo’s nearly 700-acre complex just outside of Moultrie, networking with farm organizations, farmers and educators around the Southeast, he said.
This 2008 Expo is also one of several firsts, including programs for the non-farmer.
Besides bringing back barrel-racing, the Expo is introducing a horsemanship program for the pleasure horse owner, a first.
It’s also launching backyard gardening seminars, with spotlights on organic gardening, ornamental plants, fruits, and building and growing in raised beds, he said.
“Snakes Alive” is an exciting program for kids and a humane predator control program teaches methods for controlling armadillos, opossums and other “critters,” Blalock said.
Among 10 state farmers of the year competing to become Swisher Sweets-Sunbelt Expo Farmer of Year are two more firsts, including the first female, Loretta Lyons of Kentucky.
After her husband died suddenly in his 30s, Lyons, with help from her children, “kept the family farm — and the rest, as they say, is history,” Blalock said.
Another first is Alabama Farmer of the Year Lamar Dewberry, a full-time forester who grows nothing but trees, he said.
The Southeastern Farmer of the Year — named at a luncheon featuring Gov. Sonny Perdue; U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Moultrie; U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary for Farm and Foreign Ag Services Mark Keenum, and others — is a reminder that despite all the technological advances, farming is still a “people business,” Blalock said.
“There’s not another group of folks like folks in agriculture, just salt of the earth.”
