Spotlight Series
Collaborating to Advance Cotton and Peanut Sustainability in Georgia
In Southeast and Southwest Georgia, three Field to Market members – the University of Georgia (UGA), American Peanut Council, and Cotton Incorporated – have joined forces with the Georgia Peanut Commission (GPC) in the “Georgia Cotton & Peanut Project,” meant to evaluate sustainability trends across cotton and peanut production in the state.
Given Georgia’s unique agriculture landscape, the state’s most viable row crops (cotton and peanuts) are typically grown in a conventional crop rotation. With the growing need to address consumers’ desires for sustainably sourced products, this project’s collaborators set out to establish sustainability trends across these two crops and equip farmers with the tools and knowledge to make on-farm sustainability improvement decisions.
The project began back in 2014 with a single grower and slowly and steadily evolved each year. In 2020, project partners decided a full-time staffer was needed to complete the project’s goals and hired a full-time Cotton and Peanut Sustainability Extension Educator. When Kaylyn Groce Reagin came on board in that role in the fall of 2020, there were 35-40 producers enrolled and she began her work helping Georgia cotton and peanut farmers continuously improve their sustainability efforts.
“Our goal has been to add at least five producers to the project each year,” says Reagin. “By the time the project is complete, we should have upwards of 50 growers enrolled.”
In the spring of each year, Reagin meets one-on-one with each enrolled producer to gather the information needed for the Field to Market’s Fieldprint Platform™. At these meetings, they discuss their operation and goals, what worked and did not work the previous season, and ways they could improve their on-farm sustainability efforts.
“When I first started these meetings in the spring of 2021, I felt like something was missing – these growers needed something tailored to their operation that I could walk through with them. Something that would allow them to see clearly what they were doing and how they could improve,” recalls Reagin.
Georgia Cotton & Peanut Project
“We’re continuing to see the importance of reporting and measuring on-farm sustainability. This collaboration has been critical in showing that organizations can come together and create a unified front to assist growers along their journey.”
Kaylyn Groce Reagin
Cotton & Peanut Sustainability Educator
University of Georgia
So, with the assistance and support of her colleagues, Reagin adopted the process of creating individualized grower reports for each of her spring meetings. Presented in the form of a PowerPoint at each one-on-one meeting, Reagin shows each grower side-by-side field spidergrams, generated by the Fieldprint Platform, that detail each field’s scores across eight sustainability metrics. Equipped with those comparisons, Reagin discusses opportunities for improvement in each metric.
“I’ve received some great feedback from our growers, especially those who have been enrolled for a number of years, and they really like these grower reports,” says Reagin. “Providing them with a side-by-side comparison has helped them have a great visual and see more clearly where they want to improve.”
Aside from helping producers explore how their production practices can affect, and have affected, their farm’s sustainability and bottom line, the collaborative efforts of this project have created new opportunities for participating producers. Project participants have been able to familiarize themselves with the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol and Sustainable U.S. Peanuts Initiative, both of which use the Fieldprint Platform, and have learned about the enrollment process and what is involved with each.
“American Peanut Council and Cotton Incorporated are making strides in sustainability verification systems and the measurement of sustainability,” says Reagin. “With the help of their funding, I’ve been able to help farmers learn more about these initiatives. It has been great to see how these verification programs and our in-field research can work together to help producers.”
“The participation of Georgia peanut farmers in UGA’s project has been essential to show how an industry, from growers to manufacturers, can get behind a sustainability program. The lessons learned from the fantastic work of Kaylyn Reagin and her interaction with growers have provided an example to follow,” remarks Eric Cornel, Director of Sustainability at the American Peanut Council. “The UGA project established the foundation for the Sustainable U.S. Peanuts Initiative, a program that now covers all peanut-producing states. We are grateful for the collaboration with UGA and Cotton Incorporated, and the convening power of Field to Market, without which these interactions would not have occurred.”
With over 34,000 acres impacted to date, the project is equipping producers with the information they need, and can use, to make the best on-farm practice decisions to improve their sustainability efforts.
“The Georgia Peanut Commission has funded the Field to Market research for a number of years through the University of Georgia,” explains Donald Chase, GPC board member and chairman of the GPC Research Committee. “We are committed to opportunities to determine the sustainability of peanuts and look forward to our continued partnership with the University of Georgia. Farmers continue to face challenges with rising costs and Field to Market’s metrics should help us to focus on areas where we can save costs and improve our financial sustainability.”
“We’re continuing to see the importance of reporting and measuring on-farm sustainability,” highlights Reagin. “This collaboration has been critical in showing that organizations can come together and create a unified front to assist growers along their journey.”
“Providing growers with the tools to connect farming practices with sustainability outcomes is a powerful way to catalyze on-farm continual improvement,” says Steven Pires, associate director of sustainability at Cotton Incorporated. “The U.S. cotton industry has made huge strides in sustainability over the past 40 years. With further adoption of benchmarking tools, such as the Fieldprint Calculator, this trend is likely to continue well into the future.”
"The participation of Georgia peanut farmers in UGA’s project has been essential to show how an industry, from growers to manufacturers, can get behind a sustainability program.”
Eric Cornel
Director of Sustainability
American Peanut Council
