Mental Health Day at the Georgia State Capitol will be held from 8 a.m. to noon Tuesday, Jan. 31, to raise awareness of mental health issues and allow mental health advocates to share their insights with lawmakers. The event is an opportunity to increase awareness about mental health and health services, especially for those in rural areas, according to University of Georgia Cooperative Extension agent Jennifer Dunn.

As temperatures continue to drop and many pollinators fade from view, you may be wondering what happens to bees during the cold season. Do they hibernate? Are they hiding in plain sight? How a bee spends the winter depends on the species of bee, but the insects have an arsenal of strategies to survive the chill, including burrowing, gathering in tight clusters, or hiding in flower stems or leaf piles.

Over the last few decades, water use-related disagreements between Georgia and its surrounding states have held the spotlight in the Southeast. To address the need for conservation, the Agricultural Water Efficiency Team (AgWET) was created to train University of Georgia Cooperative Extension agents to transfer advanced irrigation scheduling knowledge to growers through a unique one-on-one educational approach.

A multidisciplinary team of University of Georgia agriculture experts are working to determine causes and solutions to postharvest quality problems that have hit Georgia’s blueberry growers hard in recent seasons. Funded by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Office of Research and UGA Cooperative Extension, the project will address “major issues” with fruit quality, particularly in rabbiteye blueberries.

The University of Georgia's Institute for Integrative Precision Agriculture (IIPA), a new interdisciplinary unit dedicated to the research and application of new technologies in agriculture, has made three new faculty hires. Leonardo Bastos, Lorena Lacerda and Guoyu Lu joined IIPA full time during fall 2022, each contributing to the strategic mission of the institute to harness the power of technology and big data to sustainably provide for our planet’s growing population.

The University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences has launched a podcast, now available on all streaming services. Cultivating Curiosity will augment existing CAES news and storytelling platforms, including the CAES Newswire, where you are reading this; Almanac, the college's annual publication; and Cultivate, which highlights members of the CAES and UGA Cooperative Extension community.

Walking barefoot through soft grass is one of life’s greatest joys — the warmth of the ground, the tickling of the blades of grass on your feet, toes wriggling free from the confinement of shoes — it is just spectacular. In the summer. In the midst of winter, after cold and rainy weeks, it sounds miserable, but if you are looking forward to that summer experience, you may want to prepare your lawn now.

Percy Hunter Stone, Georgia’s first Black 4-H state leader in the era of segregation, was inducted into the National 4-H Hall of Fame on Oct. 7, 2022, in Washington, D.C. Stone led the organization formerly known as the Negro 4-H Club. He was recognized for his unwavering dedication to creating equal opportunities for all 4-H’ers.

Registration is now open for the 2023 Georgia Ag Forecast, which will be held Jan. 27 at the University of Georgia Tifton Conference Center on the UGA Tifton campus and online. The annual seminar, offered by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and UGA Extension, shares the latest research and information from UGA faculty to help agribusinesses and producers prepare for the new year.