Feature Story from 2016

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- Creative landscape experts will offer advice and inspiration to professionals and home gardeners alike at an Oct. 19 design symposium at Mississippi State University.

The 61st Edward C. Martin Jr. Landscape Design Symposium is a half-day event held in the MSU Bost Auditorium from 9 a.m. until noon. The event is presented by the MSU Department of Landscape Architecture and the Garden Clubs of Mississippi. It is coordinated by MSU Extension professor Bob Brzuszek.

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- Recent data suggests Mississippians are learning that more is not always better when it comes to body weight.

The adult obesity rate has been increasing in the state for many years, but a recent report by the State of Obesity organization shows that a lot of hard work by many Mississippians is making progress. However, much work remains to be done. According to the Sept. 1, 2016, report, Mississippi remains tied with Alabama, West Virginia and Arkansas for second to last with an obesity rate of 35.6 percent.

LAMBERT, Miss. -- Ask anybody in Quitman County, and they will describe the food pantry that opened there in 2014 as one of the rural town’s most important resources.

“Sometimes after my husband and I pay our bills, we don’t have enough money to buy enough food for us,” said Archie Bell, a longtime resident of Lambert, one of several communities in the area served by the pantry. “The food we get here is a blessing because sometimes, it’s what gets us by.”

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- Having access to and knowledge of digital devices and Internet use opens up community economic development prospects, and a new report from the Mississippi State University Extension Service offers county-level insights.

COLUMBUS, Miss. -- Two Mississippi State University Extension Service specialists are among featured speakers at this year’s Mississippi-Tennessee-Alabama Rural Tourism Conference Oct. 24-26.

The annual meeting will provide marketing and communication strategies to assist groups involved in creating attractions and tourism events in their communities. These groups include tourism professionals, fair boards, festival committees, garden clubs, community volunteers and local elected officials.

DUCK HILL, Miss. -- Mississippi is one of many states to proclaim October as Agritourism Month, but the industry’s peak season has already begun in earnest.

Katie Robinson, owner of Bull Bottom Farms in Montgomery County and president of the Mississippi Agritourism Association, opened her family farm’s seventh annual fall festival to the public Sept. 23. She and her husband, Nic, a row crop producer, will host families, students and church groups for the next five weekends.

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- The North Mississippi Beef Expo and Cattlemen’s College will offer producers opportunities to hear from a variety of industry experts on Oct. 28 in Batesville.

Mississippi State University Extension Service is coordinating the program with the Mississippi Cattlemen’s Association. The event begins at 8:30 a.m. and concludes at 2 p.m. at the Batesville Civic Center. Lunch is provided.

VARDAMAN, Miss. -- After 30 years behind a desk, Jan Cook Houston has returned to her first love and her second career, this time seated on a tractor pulling a sweet potato digger.

“Growing up here, I never thought farming was an option for a woman,” Houston said. “Dad didn’t expect me to farm, but he knew I could.”

Houston returned to her roots in 2009, a year that lives in infamy for growers in the heart of Mississippi’s sweet potato country.

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- Gardeners can add fresh color to their landscapes with plants purchased at the Mississippi State University horticulture club’s annual fall plant sale.

This year’s sale will take place from 8 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. Oct. 6 and 7 at the Veterans Memorial Rose Garden, located at the Highway 182 entrance to the R.R. Foil Plant Science Research Facility.

Popular flowering plants, such as chrysanthemums, pansies and snapdragons, will be available for purchase. Pumpkins and flowering kale also will be for sale.

TUPELO, Miss. -- Farmers can learn about growing and selling produce directly to the consumer during an on-farm field day organized by the Alliance for Sustainable Agricultural Production.

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- A recipe for cinnamon rolls that she found in college turned into a profitable hobby business and now a cottage industry for Christa Lee and her husband, Tyson.

Their business, LoveLee Rolls, sells pans of baked cinnamon rolls at the Starkville farmers market all summer and by word of mouth the rest of the year.

“We started in July 2014. I was staying home with the baby, and we didn’t really need more money -- just thought it would be a fun hobby,” Christa Lee said. “On the way home from the beach one day, we said, let’s just do it.”

Mississippi State University agribusiness student A.J. Bland is among 21 U.S. students to receive a National Black Farmers Association scholarship.

Bland, a Tunica native, is the recipient of a $5,000 scholarship that will help him pursue his degree in agribusiness.

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STARKVILLE, Miss. – Local 4-H’ers weren't waiting until 4-H National Youth Science Day on Wednesday to open their 4-H Drone Discovery Challenge kits. Instead, the Clover Dawgs robotics engineering club began work Friday.

Each Oktibbeha County kid looked skeptically at the first set of components for the much-anticipated activity: a green, plastic tube that resembled a thick-walled straw, along with a short, white, lightweight propeller. Their mission was to build plastic helicopters.

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- There's no reason for cotton farmers to sing the blues this year.

Darrin Dodds, cotton specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, said cotton harvest was nearly halfway done by the first week of October. Early yields suggest the state will average more than 1,000 pounds of cotton per acre.

Good prices provided the icing on the cake.

TUPELO, Miss. -- Some eighth-grade students may have career dreams but no clue how to make them real. Others may not even have dreams yet.

Bill Burdine, a regional specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, helped assemble professionals to staff exhibits in the agriculture and natural resources section of a recent career expo in Tupelo. The 2016 Imagine the Possibilities Northeast Mississippi Career Expo targeted 7,000 eighth-graders from 72 school districts in 17 counties.

By Jessica Smith
MSU Extension Service

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- Kids spend a lot of time indoors, and while that inactivity contributes to a lack of exercise, it also can cause other kinds of health problems.

David Buys, health specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, suggested five important tips for keeping the home environment healthy.

HOLLANDALE, Miss. -- Marjan de Regt and her husband, Jan, planned to spend three years farming in the Mississippi Delta before returning to their native Netherlands.

That was 29 years ago, and the family still calls Hollandale home.

The de Regts farmed 2,600 acres of soybeans, 500 acres of rice and 200 acres of corn in 2016. This year was only the third time they tried corn.

TUPELO, Miss. -- For more than a quarter century, Mississippians with a love for horticulture have been helping to educate and serve their communities through a nationwide Extension Service program.

STARKVILLE, Miss. – Mississippi State University agricultural economists are hosting an Oct. 27-28 sustainable agriculture conference that integrates environmental health, economic profitability and consumer demand for efficient, long-term use of resources.

The Mississippi Agricultural Economics Association is holding its 42nd annual meeting at MSU to discuss sustainability in agriculture.

The Geosystems Research Institute (GRI) at Mississippi State University has released a new web application, "GeoDawg," that gives Mississippians the ability to easily use the capabilities of a powerful geographic information system (GIS).

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