News Release Distributed 11/15/10

The LSU AgCenter has received a grant from the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry to fund public awareness programs on specialty crops directed at Louisiana residents, particularly children and youth.

The two-year grant for $28,000 is part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to provide educational materials to teach Louisianians about specialty crops grown in the state, said Frankie Gould, director of communications for the LSU AgCenter.

“The grant will help us produce and distribute educational materials through our ag awareness events to school groups and the general public that will focus on specialty crops,” Gould said. “We identified 16 crops – eight for each year – based on categories within the USDA definition of specialty crops and their economic value to Louisiana.

“We also wanted to make sure that if we included information or activities about growing plants, that we had some that would be easy to grow,” she said. “Many of these could be grown in a large school garden, many could be grown in home gardens and some could be grown on a smaller scale in pots, such as flowers, strawberries and tomatoes.”

The LSU AgCenter conducts ag awareness events in many areas of the state. AgMagic on the LSU AgCenter campus in Baton Rouge and AgMagic at the State Fair in Shreveport are the largest, Gould said. Other events are held in Lake Charles, Monroe and Delhi. All are open to school groups and the general pubic.

“We plan to expand these events to other audiences, especially in urban areas such as New Orleans and Lafayette,” Gould said.

The funds will be used to develop resource materials for teachers and activity materials for children to help develop a greater sense of the origin of food and fiber products and the unique balance between the environment and the food chain, she said.

Rick Bogren