On March 11, 22 students took part in the first class of the Grow Louisiana Beginning Farmer Training Program at the Hill Farm Teaching Facility on the LSU campus. The program is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Transition to Organic Partnership Program, as it focuses on teaching new farmers how to grow a sustainable and profitable organic farm.
Read MoreFrom bustling farmers markets to safer sidewalks, Franklin Parish communities are seeing positive changes and many of them can be traced back to a growing partnership with the LSU Ag Center. Through its Healthy Communities initiative, the AgCenter is helping rural towns identify needs, secure funding and implement programs that are already improving residents' quality of life.
Read MoreThe LSU AgCenter Healthy Communities team will host the second Louisiana Charitable Food Summit on April 24 at LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge.
This year’s theme, “Moving Forward Together,” highlights the importance of collaboration in addressing food insecurity. Makenzie Miller, AgCenter local food systems specialist, emphasized the impact of working together to support both those experiencing hunger and the organizations that serve them.
Read MoreBehind a library in the community of Innis, Louisiana, a new colorful story walk lines the sidewalk. Children and parents have the opportunity to stay healthy by strolling or running along with the story as the library tries to bring more people through its doors.
Read MoreCommunity organizers in several of the rural towns and villages that dot Franklin Parish have banded together to improve quality of life in their communities.
New festivals, farmers markets and town events fill the parish calendar. Park improvements draw families to once neglected areas. Grant-funded programs are making the areas more pedestrian-friendly.
Read MoreThe LSU AgCenter Food Innovation Institute (FOODii) and the School of Nutrition and Food Sciences are planning to continue the food demonstration series, Unlocking the Secrets of Food Sciences, that will delve into food science with a culinary twist.
The second session of the series will focus on chips and salsa and will be held Friday, April 25, from 5 to 8:30 p.m. in the test kitchen at the Animal and Food Sciences Laboratory Building on the LSU campus at 39 Forestry Ln.
Read MoreThis month’s 2024/25 U.S. corn outlook remains unchanged relative to last month. The season-average corn price received by producers also remains unchanged at $4.35 per bushel. As with corn, U.S. 2024/25 soybean supply and use projections remain unchanged. The soybean oil balance sheet includes higher exports and lower soybean oil used for biofuel. But unlike corn, seasonaverage soybean price has been revised downward by 15 cents to $9.95 per bushel.
Read More“Eat your vegetables” is a refrain that children have heard, and often bristled at, for as long as there have been both children and vegetables. But a few innovative LSU AgCenter agents have developed a formula that eases youth into making healthier choices while also shining a spotlight on how their food is sourced.
Read MoreSpring is near in Louisiana. The birds are singing, and flowers are beginning to blossom in our landscapes.
It’s a great time to be outdoors. Watch your step, though, or you might become a victim of another sign of the changing seasons: fire ants.
Read MoreLSU’s Agriculture Center and LSU School of Plant, Environmental and Soil Sciences (SPESS) presented the 22nd annual Baton Rouge Spring Show at the John M. Parker Coliseum this past weekend.
The LSU AgCenter was established in 1972 by the LSU Board of Chancellors with the intention of giving the university system’s agricultural programs their own distinct identity.
Read MoreIn 2023, Anna Timmerman, a horticulture agent for St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parish, had to think swiftly to deal with a salt wedge that was rising up the Mississippi River. There were concerns about this causing issues for nursery irrigation systems, Timmerman was particularly worried about how the saltwater would affect one segment of her clientele: Plaquemines Parish citrus producers.
Read MoreThis report projects corn, soybeans, wheat and rice futures prices for the United States for the first quarter (Q1) of 2025. Our analysis utilizes historical data on both cash prices (the price for immediate delivery) and futures prices (the price agreed upon for delivery at a future date).
We aggregate the daily futures prices into quarterly averages to simplify our analysis. Using this dataset, we train several machine learning models to predict futures prices for all the four commodities.
Read MoreAt the 90th annual LSU AgCenter Livestock Show, AgCenter vice president and dean of the College of Agriculture Matt Lee surprised and — by the sound of the applause from those in attendance — delighted the crowd when he named Todd Tarifa official associate director of youth development.
Read MoreFor the past two decades, dozens of researchers and scientists have come through the LSU AgCenter as a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s collaborative research programs, including its Scientific Exchange Program. The program brings in scholars from around the world to become acclimated to agriculture research in the United States.
Read MoreThat might seem like an impossible dream for most of the U.S. Rice Belt, but it’s getting closer to reality as rice farmers in south Louisiana plant more of their acres using minimum-till or no-till practices.
The key seems to be doing any needed field preparation in the fall and spraying a burndown herbicide to kill winter vegetation prior to planting, according to Ronnie Levy, Extension rice specialist for Louisiana with the LSU AgCenter.
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