Sunbelt Ag Expo opens 38th annual show

MOULTRIE — Billed as North America’s Premier Farm Show, the 38th annual Sunbelt Ag Expo opened Tuesday to for three days of agricultural excitement featuring more than 1,200 exhibitors and 4,000 product lines.

“The Ag Expo is a wonderful celebration of agriculture where we bring hundreds of thousands of visitors together who learn from one another,” said Chip Blalock, executive director of the Sunbelt Expo. “As a result of this educational process, they do business with one another. The ultimate goal of the process is to make life better on the farm.”

Mississippi was the 2015 “Spotlight State,” promoting the theme “Sweeter in Mississippi.” Products from the state included apparel from Mississippi, cotton, fried catfish, honey candy, famous Edam cheese, sweet potato cake bites, soy nut cookies and shrimp.

“The expo is growing every year,” Gov. Nathan Deal said Tuesday. “It’s a great day for it, and I’ve met a lot of folks who came in from out of state. I encourage them to spend a lot money while they’re here … to help our economy.”

During a special luncheon Tuesday, Danny Kornegay, a diversified farmer from Princeton, N.C., was named the Swisher Sweets/Sunbelt Expo Southeastern Farmer of the Year. Kornegay was selected top choice from representatives of the 10 Southeastern farming states, including Georgia Farmer of the Year for 2015 James Lyles.

Kornegay operates about 5,500 acres, with major commodities including sweet potatoes, cotton, soybeans, wheat, peanuts and hogs.

A major crowd-pleaser at every Expo are the field demonstrations on the 600 acre research farm at the Spencer Field location. Visitors watch tractors, combines, peanut pickers, cotton pickers, hay equipment, and global positioning systems working side by side.

More than 300 seminars are taught at exhibits on beef, dairy, backyard gardening, poultry, forestry, pond management, equine, dairy and cattle management, expo officials say.

Another popular attraction is the Hoss Tools Sustainable Living Center, where the emphasis is away from corporate and mechanized farming and aimed at the backyard growers. On the expo’s demonstration fields, visitors viewed a variety of backyard crops from pumpkins, to green peas, squash and okra.

“Not everybody has a big farm, but they can grow a lot in their back yards,” said Travis Key with Hoss Tools. “The big benefits are that you have the enjoyment of growing the food yourself, and also that you know what’s in it. There’s a lot of talk about food labeling nowadays but the only real way to know what’s in your food is to grow it yourself.”

Expo media coordinator Tyon Spearman said he began the Sunbelt Ag Expo at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton in 1964. Back then it was known as “Dealer’s Day.”

“Jessie Chambliss in the Agricultural Engineering Department brought in all the new tractors that were made at the time, just for the kids to see them,” Spearman said. “We wound up expanding it into the Farm Progress Show, and then expanding even further because it got so big in ‘65 and ‘66 the ABAC campus couldn’t handle it.

“We took it across the street to the Rural Development Center for a couple of years and then we found that Spence Field in Moultrie was available.”

The Sunbelt Ag Expo is set to continue through Thursday at 4 p.m., Spearman said.