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Science Translators on the Front Lines: Urban Extension in Metro Atlanta — Blooms and Beyond, S01E11

Science Translators on the Front Lines: Urban Extension in Metro Atlanta

Host: Dr. Ping Yu, UGA Department of Horticulture Guests: Gabrielle LaTora, Agriculture and Natural Resources Agent, UGA Extension Fulton County; Eric Marlowe, Agriculture and Natural Resources Agent, UGA Extension Gwinnett County Producer: Rich Braman Episode: S01E11 — Blooms and Beyond, Season 1 Duration: 60:44 Air Date: March 29th, 2026

Welcome and Introduction

Ping Yu: Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to the Blooms and Beyond podcast, a podcast that uncovers plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. I’m your host, Ping. How’s everyone doing today?

I’m doing great because here I not only have one but two of my dear colleagues and friends, Gabrielle LaTora and Eric Marlowe here with me today on the show to talk about one of the foundations of our land-grant university system. I don’t want to steal any more thunder from our speakers today. Let’s just jump right into it. Without further ado, here is my conversation with those two dear extension agents. I hope you enjoy it. So hello, Gabrielle and Eric. Welcome to the podcast. But first, let’s start off with the introduction. Can you tell our audience a little bit about who you are and what you do? Gabrielle, you want to go first?

Two Meandering Paths to a Dream Job

Gabrielle LaTora: Okay, I’m Gabrielle LaTora. I am an agriculture and natural resources agent in Fulton County, Georgia, which is Georgia’s most populous county, followed closely by Gwinnett County, I think. And I’m an entomologist by training. I was an insect scientist before I got this job as an extension agent, and I’ve got a long and winding story, as most people do, about how I became interested in insects and what I was doing, working with insect collections. And then I was working on farms and working on integrated pest management stuff to help farmers manage insects. And I just realized through that experience that research was not for me. And I realized how important the communication part of the scientific process is. We’ve got to have all these smart, creative people doing research and generating knowledge, but then it really doesn’t mean anything if there isn’t somebody to communicate that to the public. And I felt like that was the place for me. And so doing a few more jobs, I was trying to make my way into Extension. And so I ended up getting my dream job here in Fulton County.

Eric Marlowe: For me, equally meandering my story is, but maybe a little different in the actual content. But I graduated with a degree in landscape architecture from UGA back in 2012. And so I started out just doing private sector stuff, working for a company doing patios and pools and outdoor kitchens around Atlanta, some in Gwinnett County. And I kind of bumbled my way through the trades landscaping for about 10 years, so trying different jobs. My wife and I were having more and more kids and my jobs were often halfway a mix of what interested me and what I wanted to learn and what was going to kind of provide for the family and keep me close to home. So at one point after like four years of working at a cabinet shop, I was starting to kind of miss plants and people. Cause I—and my wife said that I was probably had enough career changes in me for one more, one more time before I needed to settle down. So extension was kind of an opportunity to get back in front of—I’m an extrovert and I like growing stuff and I like learning. And so this, Gabrielle mentioned dream job. This really is, it’s a fun, if I dreamed up this job where I’m writing an article every week and I’m getting to interact with all these different growers, and there’s a huge diversity of just what kinds of people are growing what kinds of stuff in these metro counties, and I’m right next door, depending on what part of Fulton you’re talking about, I’m right next door to Fulton County. So basically, that’s where I am. I’m in extension because this is the next thing conquered. This is a good place to learn. This is a good place to grow. And I think the key takeaway from both those might be that it takes a while to brew somebody into what’s going to make them adequate as an extension agent. I like to think. That’s my story. Did you guys both grow up with plants or insects in that regard and were…

Gabrielle LaTora: This is just something that come to your journey by training or experience where you met somebody mentioned this to you and then all of a sudden it becomes the interest of yours. I did not grow up with a garden. I think there was maybe one summer that my dad decided he was going to try and grow some tomatoes in five gallon buckets and I think it was successful but it was kind of a one off. You know, every so often we would go to a you-pick blueberry farm or the corn maze type old-school you-pick farms. But we didn’t have a vegetable garden. We didn’t really have a lot of landscaping. So that just wasn’t a thing for me. I was like kind of an indoor kid, I think. And in high school, I took an AP environmental studies class and I became obsessed with ecology and environmental studies. I really didn’t start doing a lot of hiking and camping and outdoor stuff until college. But those high school classes kind of planted the seed about, you know, an interest in nature and ecology. And I got a National Geographic subscription and that kind of changed my life. And so in college, I studied biology and I was on track to be a wetland biologist. I had the coolest professor who was a wetland ecologist, basically. And I was like, I want to be like that guy. But nobody told me about grad school or what it takes to be a scientist. And so I just went through, got my bio degree and graduated. And then I started working on a small-scale vegetable farm, like an organic two-acre farm. I wasn’t interested in farming, so I really don’t even remember how or why I got that job, but I did. And that completely changed my life. I was tasting the best food I had ever tasted in my life. I was seeing these insects interacting with plants and doing cool stuff. I just became really passionate about small-scale agriculture, this human-powered, sustainable ag, and also the process of planting the seed in the plug tray and taking care of the transplants. And then you transplant them into the field, and then you care for them and harvest them. And then you take them to market, and you see the person buy them. And then they come back the next week and tell you how good they were. That process was so satisfying to me that I said, I need to be involved with this somehow, but it was too hard for me to continue being a farmer. It’s like those who can’t do teach. But I knew that in some way I wanted to support farmers like that. And so I was also kind of like interested in insects at the time, seeing them on the farm interacting with plants. And so that kind of like kickstarted my journey. I’m getting a little bit better with houseplants, as you can see behind me. But other than that, you know, it’s vegetables all the way for me.

Seeds Planted Early

Eric Marlowe: What about you, Eric? For me, it was a mix. I mean, I was an outdoor kid as much as I could be. We can’t. But I also grew up in cities and suburbs. So we had a backyard that was very vibrant and lush, and there was a lot of fruit being produced. And so that was a little pocket in a very urban situation in which I guess it did not to try to be overly poetic, but it planted some seeds. And then I would try my hand at gardening here and out again, usually not terribly successfully. But my mom was good about getting us out on field trips and things. So we got some minimal exposure. But really, mine was, I think, a story a lot of people grew up like I did and like Gabriel did, where we’re suburban and city folk. The curiosity and the kind of just that deep-rooted wanting to at least figure out what we’re missing out on and learn more about it. I think really drove a lot of my decision making. And so while I was working all these construction jobs and landscaping jobs and the landscaping, I don’t even count as agriculture in some senses, because, you know, you’re dealing with a very urbanized aesthetic kind of sometimes very unnatural seeming way of doing things. And so that was enlightening just even in kind of getting to see not only am I an urban suburban kid, but even what I do know about nature is enforced and manipulated and not really lining up with natural rhythms and seasons necessarily. So reading books like that guy, Jean-Martin Fortier, that Québécois farmer guy, the market gardener and kind of getting an intellectual curiosity about it was fueled also by my wife’s aunt has a little hobby organic farm up in North Georgia so we spend as much time as we can up there and so that that all was getting me excited about yeah I want to be a farmer too right but but feasibly you know and and logistically and financially and all that stuff it actually fits the part of my personality more to be in an office like this where I can be reading books about it and then trying to disseminate that information. So this has been a really good fit for me because you get to help people, but you’re also constantly learning. And yeah, I couldn’t really ask for anything more at this point. [laughs] We need to go out to some farms sometimes.

Ping Yu: Yeah. And one of the misconceptions for a lot of folks out there who, like you said, in urban areas, or especially those urban folks or city folks, that what they say in the urban area, like it’s not agriculture in general, but it is. Like you said, the landscape and architecture is a big sector of agriculture, especially in green industry. And everything that we say in the landscape or in the urban city ways—plants, ways like the normal things that you would think are not agriculture, but it is. So that’s one of the misconceptions that most folks out there are taking a lot of time. They think they are so far away from agriculture, but they are walking in the agriculture world every single day. But you guys both mentioned that extension is—it’s kind of your dream job for whatever works best for you. But did you guys know extension when you, like in high school or in your education, when do you know the extension and extension jobs exist?

Discovering Extension

Eric’s Wife Said, “Try Extension”

Gabrielle LaTora: Eric, you can take this line.

Eric Marlowe: My whole story, I—another reason I like extension is because I don’t have to have original thoughts. I’m like the Mouth of Sauron. I just, you know, with the university. And so my whole life has been like that. Like my degree, I was an excitable kid that was going to go in whatever direction. So my parents pointed me towards landscape architecture. They said, you like drawing stuff and you like being outside. And I said, that sounds great. I’ll do that. And so actually extension, I had no idea what it was. I’d never heard about it. I remember doing landscaping one time and somebody showed me a soil report and I was like, I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what to do with this. I didn’t know what extension was. So it really was during that, I guess, like that first round of midlife crisis season, probably going to be having where I was rethinking my career decisions. And my wife was saying, you should probably figure this out while you still have a few minutes left. And she actually pointed me to this thing called extensions because she was, she’s good about research and stuff on the internet and said, well, look at these. And I was watching the videos. I was like, this is cool. I don’t really know what these people are actually doing for work, but this seems interesting. So I applied and I got my first interview and I was like, we’re talking, they’re asking these questions, I’m just kind of like answering frankly, and then they’re describing things, and I read the job description and all, but even after the first interview, I came away, I was like, this sounds really cool. I still don’t quite get what it is, but it sounds really intriguing, and so like that, and now I’m about to be in my third year, and I feel like I’m still kind of like, this is really cool. It was easier to explain what I did to my kids when I was actually carrying a hammer around. But they’re catching on. They come to the office and they play with stuffed bees on the floor. So no, I did not know what extension was. I was not a 4-H-er. I did not know what 4-H was. I considered FFA when I was in high school, but couldn’t find the FFA people.

Gabrielle’s Grad School Revelation

Gabrielle LaTora: And that’s it. So yeah, my wife said, try Extension. Here I am. I’m trying it out. I’m liking it. I’m not going anywhere. It’s working. I love that you didn’t quite know what the job is when you were actively interviewing for it. I was also not in 4-H, although I wish that I had been because, gosh, I would be so much better at public speaking now, I think. The first time I heard about Extension was in grad school because my graduate advisor was an Extension specialist. And he, so I went to University of Florida, sorry, for grad school. And he was the vegetable integrated pest management specialist. Maybe we’ll talk about the extension system, but he was like the researcher that the agents would go to if they had questions about integrated pest management with insects and vegetable crops. And he never took me along to any of the cool stuff that he was doing, but I heard about it secondhand in our lab meetings. And yeah, I was reading all the University of Florida Extension publications that are just taking the scientific papers and scientific knowledge and synthesizing it for the audience in that state. And so I think that’s how I became aware of extension and realizing that those people are the science translators for the university. And again, I’m trying to figure out at this time, I’m trying to figure out a way to support farmers and that small scale farmer community that I was so passionate about. I thought maybe extension would be the right thing.

A Shared Discovery

Ping Yu: So don’t worry if you are from University of Florida. Because I, I think, as long as we don’t see Gators in front of the bulldogs, you know, we don’t get trouble in that. But I think I didn’t know extension growing up. Cause where I grew up, we don’t have that extension system like we have here. And the first time I know about, I heard, hear about extension was from my advisor, who is an extension specialist. I like what you have back in grad school. And I get to, I was able to go to say some firsthand of extension work. And I was able to go to different trade shows and we have direct interact with the growers and all that. So that’s, that’s the first time that I hear about extension. And I really loved it because like you said, we are the translators for the, you know, and you guys actually, extension agents, are actually the bridge between the academia and the grower to deliver the message that we generated from the research program to the growers. So I always say that Extension Agents is actually the front line or first responders of our whole system. So kudos to you guys. But now since you guys and me, we have been Extension for a while, can you tell our audience with your knowledge and understanding, what is extension? And what is the land grant institution? What service does our extension provide to the general public? Eric, are you a history guy? Do you want to talk about the land grant stuff?

The Land-Grant Story and Extension’s Modern Mission

The Reluctant Farmer

Eric Marlowe: I’ll say first of all, because I am, I do happen to be reading a little book right now called The Reluctant Farmer. And it is about the story of extension and its relationships with the farmers that’s been trying to serve. I’m near and halfway through it. And we have not even gotten to the part where we formally established an extension system. It’s still all the garden clubs and the agricultural institutes. But in a nutshell, this is what I tell people, the elevator pitch. We had to go through our foundations trainings, Gabrielle and I, and we had to practice and try to hone. How do you explain the whole history of this big, beautiful bureaucratic organization in a 30-second speech? And it’s impossible, but I can get close to it. So what I tell people is that I start like this. I say, you know, first of all, we’re the extension of the research from the universities to the farmers, the homeowners, the landscapers, the people under that umbrella of agriculture and horticulture for which the knowledge is being acquired and needs to be dispersed. But basically, then I go into the whole 100 years ago. Imagine 100 years ago, you know, you’ve got these land grant or the agricultural and mechanical universities doing good research and the farmer who needs it. And the farmer is typically not aware of any of that research being made. So the extension model was born with that three-pronged attack, right, of the agricultural and environmental, the agricultural natural resources agent like Gabrielle and myself. Then you have what we call now the family and consumer science agent and then the 4-H agent. And so way back in the day, you’d have the ag agents like us. We’d go out and be talking to the farmer about soil health about how to grow more corn, better corn. And then you’d have the family consumer science agent equivalent back then generally talking to what would have been most likely the farmer’s wife talking about preserving, canning, making use of the crops being produced. And then, because there was, as the title suggests, that reluctant farmer, because, you know, why would you trust the government? Why would you trust the universities? Why would you trust academia? There was that attempt to kind of infiltrate the, not in a way, but farmers, these clubs, you know, let’s have a competition to grow more and better effective corn. And then the process, the methodologies being learned in that could be taken back home. And so it was a way of addressing the whole unit, which, you know, tons of possible tangents philosophically on, you know, they were addressing the entire family unit. There was a, there was a, not just an individualistic, but a communal aspect being approached, which I think, I think is kind of beautiful, but that’s probably way over 30 seconds, I would think. So I’m going to kind of pin it right there and we can parse that out more if you want.

The Morrill Acts and Dual Land-Grant Systems

Gabrielle LaTora: I think that covered a lot of it. They did teach us a lot of the history of land-grant universities and colleges and the extension system when we started. And really these the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 established these land-grant institutions of higher learning that were meant to add on to, I guess, in the time of 1862, classics were what you learn when you go to college or university, right? And so they wanted to add on. And then in 1890, the federal government said to every state, your land-grant universities or colleges need to allow admissions regardless of race. And so they were either given the chance to, or I guess the choice to allow admissions regardless of race, which we know that was after the Civil War. And so we had segregated institutions at that time. Or the states could establish a separate institution using these land-grant funds for Black students. And so that’s why we see mostly in the southern states that we actually have two land-grant universities or colleges in the states because the Southern states opted to open a separate institution to allow black students. And so here in Georgia, we have two land-grant universities, University of Georgia and Fort Valley State. And so we actually have two extension systems because all of our land-grant institutions have this three-pillar model of education. One, teaching. So that’s the students that go to the university to take classes and the professors who teach them. And then our second pillar is research. So those professors and other faculty are also doing research to generate this new knowledge. And the third pillar of all these land-grant universities and colleges is extension. So this system to, Eric said, distribute all that knowledge that’s being created out into the communities throughout the state. And it was actually a separate act, Smith-Lever, in 1914 or something, that established this extension system that would be housed at the land-grant universities. We’re essentially faculty at the university, but they deploy us into every county in the state to be those science translators. One of our extension specialists, Dr. Kemwright, calls us the tip of the spear. So we’re that connecting point between the rest of the university knowledge and that person who lives in the county who needs unbiased evidence-based information. And it’s interesting to think about what extension agents were doing way back then versus what we’re doing now because our clientele—like, I’m thinking about a gardener a farmer they go online and Google how their problem but when you go online now especially with AI it’s like you don’t know what is reliable information you don’t know on somebody’s YouTube channel if they, you know, how if that’s backed by science or if it’s anecdotal, if it just happened to that person or if it could work for you to solve your problem. And so I think that’s something we have going for us, that we are only bringing evidence-based, reliable and unbiased recommendations and resources. And I think that’s how we’re able to compete in this modern landscape with all this information overload and AI summaries at the fingertips because you just don’t know what to trust online. And at least with extension, you have a person to talk to. We don’t know the answer to everything, but we have people like our extension specialists and all these resources at the university level where we can find out the answer and have some reliability and some trust. That’s going to be a good recommendation.

Extension in the Age of AI

Ping Yu: Yeah, exactly. And I think you both get a pretty good training with your extension. With that you didn’t know what extension to begin with. But now look at you guys. So for the land grant in the history of the United States, we actually, those land grant institutions are based on the three like a federal acts of the Morrill Acts of 1862, 1890 and 1994. So for like you said, the UGA is the 1862 land-grant institution system that’s for general one. And the 1890 is the historically Black colleges and universities in Fort Valley State University is a perfect example at UGA at Georgia. And then the other one is the 1994, which we normally don’t talk too much. That’s the Equity in Educational Land Granted Status Act. That’s basically known for tribes. In Georgia, we don’t have that. So that’s another, but it is another type of land-grant institution system in there. And the core mission for us is to basically provide accessible, relevant education or science-based information to the common citizens or public in agriculture, mechanic and technical fields. And I like what you said about them with AI. What we have here is to provide science-based information and provide all the resources for the general public. You guys, Eric mentioned the different services or different type of agents. And you guys are both from the N.R. And we also have the 4-H and homeowners. Can you guys explain a little bit about the service that you provide to the general public with other agents like the 4-H and family and homeowners?

What Extension Actually Does

Eric Marlowe: So generally speaking, at least in the agriculture and natural resources field, there are certain services that are housed on the campuses, like Athens, for example, that kind of go through us, but we don’t always, we’re more like the gatekeepers for it. So things like soil testing and plant pathology samples, we could send these physical samples to the lab and get the reports back, and then we’re able to talk the customer through that. Then, as far as the family and consumer sciences group goes, they have the radon testing, I know, and they’re also the ones who are doing things like ServSafe, where they’re basically getting the certifications to restaurant workers. As the evolution from that kind of really oversimplified example I gave earlier has been worked itself out over the last hundred years. They still do canning. It’s a family consumer science group. Still do canning and fruit preservation, but it’s evolved more into a general nutrition and well-being approach. And then 4-H youth. That is fascinating and just how it plays out differently from county to county. We’re in very urban and in my case, urban, suburban and urbanizing. And so we’re not doing very many livestock shows. We’re not having students show off goats or enter competitions for pigs. There are a lot of wildlife judging things or tree ID or consumer, basically tracing the lifespan of that cotton plant and how it becomes a product, a commodity that gets worn. And so there’s a lot more, it’s contextualized to a more suburban county in that regard for 4-H. And then other stuff, I can go back to A&R because that’s the area I actually know more about. We also operate as a your county’s consultants, or at least the gatekeeper for all that information. Basically, like Gabrielle mentioned before, that we may not know all the answers right off the bat. I know that each agent has his or her own specialty and area of expertise, but mostly we’re jacks of all trades. And what’s beautiful about this whole model is that we have this whole team of extension specialists behind us whose whole job is to make me not look like an idiot. So if someone does have questions about dealing with their pines and in South Georgia, but they live up here, I’ve got specialists I can talk to and relay that information. Same thing applies to really just about anything you want to talk about. Irrigation systems, we can talk about organic farming. So that’s where we end up being a resource to a person is we’re putting on programs and classes because we’re educators. We’re also doing kind of one-off exchanges via email, phone, or in person, doing site visits, doing field assessments of, in our case, it may be a farmer or it may be someone who wants to be a farmer and is very much maybe not a farmer, but we’re helping them get to that point. It may be a homeowner who’s got a lawn that is not doing what they wanted to do and we’re able to coach through there. Gabrielle LaTora: You wouldn’t believe how much money and research goes into keeping these lawns pristine. So there’s a few of the things. There’s a lot we do. This is at the point where I’m at those booths at these festivals and fairs trying to explain what we are doing here. People are walking away at this point as I’m still rattling off all the… All right, so I’ll toss this back over to Gabrielle to fill in the gaps that I’ve… No, I completely agree. And I just want to second that we just I think that’s why the job is so interesting and can be so fun is because we do such a wide variety of things and you never know what type of question is going to come into the office at any given time. Of course, we get the same types of questions over and over again. And you get your elevator pitch, your spiel for every question, every European hornet question I get, every why is my tree dying type question. I’ve got those like questions ready to go in my email folder of templates, but we get some really interesting stuff. And I heard somebody boil it down to like when we’re talking about our three program areas, A&R, Family Consumer Sciences and 4-H of A&R handles everything outside the home. So like outside. FACS handles everything inside the home. And then 4-H is like youth. There’s, of course, a lot of crossover and overlap between those things. But I think that’s an easy way to think about it. And so especially in these metro Atlanta counties, you know, not all of Fulton is like concrete jungle. Most of it is suburban, actually. And then we even have areas in north and south Fulton that I think I would consider exurbs or like a little bit rural. Probably the rural Georgia folks would not agree with that. But like we have cattlemen. We’ve got hay and forage producers, stuff like that that you would think of as more traditional agriculture. And so we just get tons of different types of people with all of these different enterprises and projects they want to do at home. And they’ve heard about us through something. And another program that we manage is the Master Gardener Extension Volunteer Program. And I think a lot of people hear about extension through the Master Gardeners program.

The Purpose of This Episode

Ping Yu: Or have you ever submitted a soil test? A lot of people have submitted soil tests and they don’t realize that that’s extension. Or have you ever heard of 4-H? Those are like the three things, the three ways that people know extension, I think. Yeah, and that’s the whole point of me wanting to do this episode on extension because I wanted to showcase what we do, what impact that we have in the society without getting all those appreciation or awareness of what we do, what we provide, in the hope that more people would take advantage of what we have, of what service we provide. Can you, I know for all the extension agents, especially N.R.s, you guys are carrying all the hats from different commodity and doing all sorts of stuff. So I always think that you guys are doing a harder job than I am. Because as an extension specialist, I only need to know the area that I am specialized with. In my case, I’m an ornamental production and for commercial or production. But you guys have to answer all the questions from plant pathologists, from plant paths, from entomology, from horticulture, from even row crops and anything in between. So can you give us a description of what is a typical working day look like for you guys?

A Week in the Life

What Does a Typical Week Look Like?

Gabrielle LaTora: It’s a lot of email for me. And probably you’re getting a biased view of what an extension agent does because that’s kind of the beauty of our model in Georgia is called the county delivery system where we’ve got an agent for each of these program areas. Extension is going to hire somebody with different skills to serve that role. And so I think that really makes us really effective in the different areas. And so that is a disclaimer. Like you’re talking to two Metro County agents. Not to say that we don’t have farmers, but, you know, we’ve got a lot more residential horticulture type stuff going on. But yeah, for me, it’s a lot of emails. That’s kind of like the first thing that I do every day is just sit down and do emails. But I might go out and teach a class. Sometimes we’re invited by other county extension agents to teach a class for them. I met with a master gardener at my office to talk about somewhere I needed help in our community garden that we manage. And so we might be meeting with one of our volunteers, definitely answering client questions. That’s something that happens almost every day. You know, there’s all the admin stuff. So we report everything. So I’m certainly not doing all my reporting every single day, but at least once or twice a month I’m going into our system and I’m reporting all of our contacts and the impact that we’re having with our programs. Or I might be planning for a program in a couple weeks or down the line.

Eric Marlowe: Yeah, it’s less a typical workday and it’s more like what’s a typical work week because there are certain days that we’ll try to block off for reporting for getting the weekly article written out in my case. I think most of us are writing articles in some capacity. And then there’s also the days that get blocked off for the admin stuff. But then something kind of important does happen. Like we do have some farmers like Gabriel said, and a lot of drop-ins from landscapers or homeowners. The site visits is a big area that would be a difference between us and a smaller county because we have to really be careful about the volume of what things could become if we were on the road all the time and not catching up with those emails. Luckily, the technology is at a point where we can troubleshoot most things via some good photos, some well-snap photos. But yes, it’s a good big mix. Site visits are hard to come by, but I really like doing them. I like getting out of the office and getting to explore, especially when we had yourself Ping and we had some other specialists come and tour some of the plant nurseries that we had around town and got to really help some of those growers, those producers out. And anytime we can have a specialist come in, I really enjoy the collaborative stuff. So when like Gabrielle mentioned, she gets invited to go speak in another county. I like that too. I also like when we can have people come in and we can get multiple either specialists or agents or other organizations outside of extension kind of work together to put on some kind of program that’s going to meet a need because yeah, these are populous counties. So a lot of different interests and a lot of different sets of needs and concerns at any given time. But yeah, yeah, I’m trying to dress it up to make it sound like I’m not just sitting at my desk all the time. Because I’m not. But there is a lot of writing, a lot of sitting here writing and submitting reports. But it’s fun. It’s the fun kind of writing and submitting reports, you know. [laughs]

Identifying Stakeholder Needs

Ping Yu: Yeah. And I’m not intentionally having two people from or two agents from the metro Atlanta area just to begin with. But it just happened to be the way that But I do know that in Georgia, we have almost every county has extension agent one way or another. Some of them, most of them has the three agents carrying different categories with A&R, 4-H, and in-home and consumer. But, Gabriella, you mentioned something about the stakeholders. And since you guys are in a more populated or urban area, how do you guys identify the needs from the stakeholder in your county specifically?

Gabrielle LaTora: That’s a good question. It can be a challenge when there’s so many people and there’s just so much going on. But I try to simplify it when I’m thinking about my audience. I try to simplify it to commercial, which could be green industry, business and other industries, farmers, somebody who’s coming to us for recommendations or advice about their business or some economic enterprise. Right. And then I’ve got a residential audience who are just want to know for their own home, landscape, livelihood, just their own space. And it doesn’t directly impact their job or their business. And so really, we have to just focus on some main priorities. We’ve got this system where we choose what priorities we want to work on a two-year rotation. My interest is in urban farming and small-scale farming and this diversified environment. And so I knew that I wanted to focus on that. And so in order to learn more about that, I started getting involved with other organizations. So Food Well Alliance is an amazing organization that serves like all six of the metro counties. And so I started attending their events and following them on social media and seeing what they were doing and started networking with the staff, getting their e-newsletter to see what are the topics that they are doing stuff around. I started following the online presence of Atlanta, which is through the city of Atlanta, and they support farmers through their programming. So just like keeping tabs on what some of the other farmer services organizations in the county are are doing. Gives you a good sense of what’s happening in that small scale urban farmer audience. I also love to go to farmer’s markets. And do market research, so to speak. So just going to farmer’s markets gives you a good sense of what’s happening in that small scale urban farmer audience of what people are growing. And most of those growers at all the farmers markets in Atlanta are not in Atlanta, but they are probably in north to middle Georgia. And so what are people able to grow? That gives you a good sense of seasonality. If you get to know the vendors at the market, like me, you’ll notice when somebody’s new. And what are they doing? What are they diversifying with? And so you start to see trends over time. And then, of course, just like keeping tabs on what types of questions and requests are coming into the office will give you a good sense of what’s going on. I think for me, a lot of it is just watching other organizations in the space, their online presence and social media, just talking to people and getting to know people and networking has really given us a lot and kind of trying to take this like zoom out approach and look at trends in terms of what types of requests and questions we’re getting.

Reactive, Social, and Data-Driven

Eric Marlowe: Yeah. What about you, Eric? If I were saying all this kind of with the intention of a new agent or someone who’s considering this job coming in, I would probably say something to the effect of there’s going to be the stuff that we’re passionate about. Gabrielle’s really into urban farming. I’ve got my passion projects. Most of my programming and needs assessments has been very reactionary so far. And what I mean by that is that people ask you for things. They’ll ask you for this kind of programming or that kind of programming or if you have that. And so most of the stuff that I would have thought that I wanted to push immediately has often gone to the back burner so that I could adapt and pivot to the thing that was being presented to me by the stakeholders as what they really wanted. I’m not saying there’s not room for both because you do need to have that long vision for what are you trying to contribute over these next 10 years or so. But at the same time, there’s a lot of different opportunities. So my typical response to these in extension has been somewhat like my whole professional career, which is I’m in a room with a bunch of people and someone’s talking about this idea. And so we’re talking about that person’s idea. And then we’re trying to combine the ideas. And I think for me, it being a social, being a very sociable, being a socially inclined, perhaps I could say ag agent is how I figured out what the needs are. And I’m also, I’m very blessed too, because I came into this, none of us, extension has been around for 100 years plus, right? So we came into pre-existing cultures and you do that for better and for worse, right? But luckily, we have had some rhythms and had, there was some staff, I have program assistants who helped me. And so I’ve got people who are dedicated to certain, there are certain areas that are huge and full-time like trying to get into schools, trying to support schools outside of the 4-H capacity by doing STEM-related agriculture activities. So I’ve got a teammate who’s able to really run with that and I can provide support, but it frees me up to do some of the vision work and long-term thinking. By the same token, Master Gardeners is a huge component of what we do. They are an essential part of the lifeblood of extension. Like Gabrielle said, more people know what they are than they know what extension is. And also, there’s a way of us getting out into the community in a way that one person couldn’t with a million people. But that also requires a lot of coordination. So in my case, I’ve got someone to help me coordinate that so that then I can be the one who’s actually physically dropping in surprise to come to help on a workday or help with whatever master gardener initiative is going on there. And so it basically, it looks like the needs assessment in my case does look like trying to be in big rooms with people hearing what they’re saying and indulging even maybe some weird requests on email that might turn into that I’ve had some cool programs evolve out of some really maybe this is the most important thing, but evolved into something. And so it’s being flexible and rolling with it and looking for lemonade out of lemons, wherever you go. Gabrielle LaTora: I’ll just add something. Like sometimes we’re called cooperative extension and that sort of comes from the land-grant university cooperating with the county government or the school board. And so at least the way that our system works in Georgia is for the most part, the county government provides us with a lot of resources. So it provides us with a location. In Fulton, they do our IT and provide us with equipment, computers, stuff like that and other resources. And so we’re also accountable to the county commissioners. And so sometimes a needs assessment is not really happening when a commissioner says, hey, I need you to be at this event. Or sometimes the commissioners will set their priorities and we are responsive to that. And I just have one more example, which I think is cool for Fulton. I try to keep an eye on data that’s coming out. So I think last year or the year before USDA released its census of agriculture, which hadn’t come out since 2017. And so I was just like really curious and looked at Fulton and, you know, we have a huge, like the biggest number on our whole ag census for Fulton County was in equine production. So it’s like horses, mules and ponies, the value of sales in that field. And it actually ranked us like number one county in that field in Georgia and something like 42nd county in the whole country. And I was like, oh my gosh, I never do any equine programming. This is a huge need. And the initiative cycle came up last year. We added an initiative to work with equine producers and cattlemen on sustainable forage production. So that was directly in response to seeing some of that data and realizing this is a huge sector in Fulton that we’re not addressing right now.

The Unique Challenges of Urban Extension

Soil Contamination and Stormwater

Ping Yu: Circle back to the two of the county that’s more in urban area rather than rural areas. How do you say the challenges were the unique challenges that stakeholders from your county facing that’s different from, let’s say, rural areas?

Gabrielle LaTora: For me, soil contamination is a big thing that keeps coming up, both for my farmer audience, people who are growing food. Community gardens are really big in Fulton County, and this is an issue for those folks as well as residential gardeners who are growing food crops. Just because we don’t know the land use history for a lot of these properties. We don’t know if there was a picnic table there at some point that had arsenic-treated wood. We don’t know if there was a building there or sometimes we can parse out, oh, this was an industrial area or the highway is right next to this property. But it’s just hard to know. And we’ve got all these people kind of producing food on a small scale. At the UGA level, we don’t have a lot of good recommendations on mitigation. And sometimes the recommendation is, well, you’ll just have to build all raised beds and fill them with potting mix and grow in that. And that is extremely expensive and not always an option for people. And soil contamination testing, the actual testing methodology is different than fertility testing if you want to get a reliable result. And so talking through that with people has has been a major concern. I don’t know that we see that as much in the rural counties. Also, stormwater management has been an issue in Fulton, again, both for our farmer clientele and for gardeners, just because we’ve got so much impervious surface that’s funneling water, you know, just so much water into people’s gardens, onto farms. Like we’ve got a small scale farm that in South Atlanta that is on a really cool property. And the farmer told me at one point that that property, like, 100 years ago or something was a catfish pond. So that tells you the elevation that that farm is at. And that farm floods all the time because it’s getting so much water funneled into that space from all the surrounding neighborhoods. And so they’re currently working on how can we divert this water, which is for food production has a lot of food safety issues, but also horticulture issues for gardeners and for farmers in terms of how do we grow crops, avoid disease and all the good things about growing crops when we’ve got all this influx of water. So I think those are kind of the two big things that come to mind for me.

Green Industry and Reconnecting with Nature

Eric Marlowe: Water Erosion, Streaming Stabilization, that’s a big one here too, but I won’t focus on that one. An area that we could, like I say, is an interest in a big green industry. Lots of landscapers, lots of events and opportunities to be more involved with the Georgia Green Industry Association and Urban Ag Council. And we’ve got a good relationship with the Technical College here in town. So I think to make it simple, I think I’m trying to figure out where is Extension’s role to play in contributing to workforce development, basically. The Center for Urban Ag out of Griffin, Georgia, through UGA Extension has got the Georgia Certified Landscape Professional, Georgia Certified Plant Professional, and a lot of those trainings, at least one of them happens every year in Gwinnett County. Conferences and trade shows happen around here, so that’s a big area. And then in a less concrete, maybe more being in the urban, suburban, urbanizing environment, Gabrielle mentioned way back, a few questions ago, how there’s this an agent gets keyed to the county that they may be most effective in, you could say. And so you could take our stories as a couple of suburban kids with a hunger to learn and reconnect with nature somehow. That’s what you could almost boil down as the zeitgeist of these urban counties is you’ve got a bunch of people. We have a lot of community gardens too. And a lot of people calling and saying, I want to grow this thing, but I don’t know where to start. Or someone saying, I’m basically in their own words, if I were to totally warp what they’re saying, I’d say, they say, I have, I want to take care of my grass. What they’re saying is I’m growing this monoculture crop. How do I farm this thing? And so what we’re trying to answer is, okay, let’s talk about how do we reconnect these human beings to this most human of all practices, which is cultivate the land in some way, shape or form. And that’s one way of answering that question.

Gabrielle LaTora: Yeah, yeah. And we have a lot of beginners, too. That might be unique in the urban counties. Like, even in our farmer audience, we’ve got a lot of people who don’t have a family history in farming. They don’t have a legacy in their family of farmers. And maybe they’re coming to farming as a second career or something to do in their spare time or they are like bored to tears by their corporate job and Eric said, want to reconnect with nature and with this fundamentally human enterprise. And so I think we just and we have a lot of beginner gardeners as well. And so we are always coming back, at least in Fulton, we’re usually coming back to these basic things and yeah, ushering in new farmers and gardeners all the time.

Skills Every Agent Needs

Ping Yu: I know that all the agents are, they keep like educating themselves by through different trainings, programs and all that. But as an extension agent yourself, what kind of skills or trainings do you think that every extension agent needs or your in your case that you need?

Gabrielle LaTora: Eric, you can go first.

Eric Marlowe: This is a good question because I want to learn it all. And I know we everyone has a some point pick a lane to be in. I really enjoyed our foundations training with it for the whole first year being an agent, they send you all over the state and sometimes it gets to be a little overmuch because you’re traveling so much, but getting even to see how the cotton industry works, even though we’re not growing cotton in Gwinnett County, but it was a fascinating thing to see. Getting to see all the center pivots and irrigation systems down south, even though we really use that very seldomly, at least on our side of the district. So the initial answer is that I want to learn it all. The more I learn, the more I can connect the dots because we do have, we’ve got a little bit of everything in our urban counties. It’s just not sometimes represented in such a big capacity is to be worth putting on the report necessarily. But if I had to talk about specific stuff to here, it would be stuff that’s going to make me more effective in servicing the bigger constituents like the landscapers. And so a lot of that may just look like a lot of the stuff we do, the program we already put on, is stuff like basics of pruning and basics of ornamental irrigation practices and lawn care. I personally, I’m not someone who gets super passionate about a lawn. But it matters to the people who I serve. So it matters to me by extension. And so I’m becoming more of an expert in lawns responsibly to that. So I think that’s what I would say. All that bumbling, rambling I just did. The aging, what’s most important to the county, right? That’s where we need to kind of cater our own educational interests is with allowing a few weird things like I want to grow Roselle in Georgia more. Make space for that stuff. It’s going to keep you on fire. But the rest of it may be lawns every now and again.

Gabrielle LaTora: I was also going to say lawns. That’s so funny. [both laugh] But probably because every county in Georgia has resonance with lawns. And when I came into Extension, I didn’t know anything about lawns. Like, I think when I started, we did the turfgrass field day a month after I started. And so I went down to Griffin for that event. And one of the other agents who was more experienced was trying to teach me the different turfgrass types. And that was just not happening. I was like, this looks like grass, right? I’ve since learned a little bit more about lawns. And we’ve got some amazing lawn care resources like the lawn care calendar and stuff. But I still want to know more about lawns. Not for my own personal interest because I find lawns to be boring, but because we get so many questions about lawns. And I’m sure that almost every other county agent gets questions about lawns. And it’s just, yeah, you just got to know lawns. I also would say some basics about plant path. Plant pathology would be really good for any agent to know just because the majority of the questions that we get from homeowners and from farmers are plant path questions. And they’re not, a lot of times they boil down to like incorrect cultural practices, wrong plant, wrong place, stormwater, like the basic growing practices need to be tweaked, but they’re coming to us like, my tree is dying. This shrub looks terrible. Blah, blah, blah. Look at these leaf spots. What’s happening? And so some basic knowledge of plant path would be good. And I’ve been telling some people higher up in the chain that it would be great in foundations if we got some event planning training. Because at least in the metro counties, we’re putting on a lot of educational events. And that involves sometimes bringing in food, acquiring sponsors, like scheduling speakers, finding a venue, making sure that the AV stuff works. And all of that stuff is like the same kind of stuff that a wedding planner would do or something or somebody scheduling a conference. And I didn’t, I was an entomologist. I didn’t know how to do any of that. And so I’ve learned some of that on the job. But yeah, basic event planning, I think would be awesome. Yeah, well, thank you.

Eric Marlowe: Thinking is interesting. They’re bad enough to do it in a training. They probably did actually touch on it a little bit in our foundations trainings, but this is my first foray into academia or government. So there were so many interactions my first year where I would meet somebody, chairman of something, and I was just basically I don’t think this person realizes how much I don’t realize how important this person is. You just kind of have to play on and figure out who everybody is. There is this underlying political nature to it as well, that whether it’s Joe Schmo or chairman of something, they’re still all your stakeholders. But some definitely do carry more weight with others. And so that’s just kind of been a fun thing. Sometimes Seinfeld type interactions happen and you kind of just got to laugh it off and enjoy it. But that’s some kind of coaching probably is good in not messing yourself up with the important people in the county. Yeah, yeah. And political training. And we kind of have to kind of end somewhere, but…

One Sentence for the Audience

Ping Yu: To wrap this up, what if you have to say one sentence to our audience out there about your job, about whatever, what would that be?

Gabrielle LaTora: I think my take home for people is we are here to act as a public resource for the people in our county. So I highly encourage people to reach out to us. Even if we don’t know the answer, we’ll find somebody who does or will at least point you in the right direction. That’s one big thing. Just reach out to us and you’ll get a real person to talk to who might not know everything, but at least you’ll be talking to a real person and figuring that out. And the other thing that I want listeners to take away is really the amount and diversity of agriculture that happens in the Atlanta metro area. I get the sense that a lot of people don’t realize that, but our farmers may not look exactly like the farmers in rural areas. Their farms might not look like what you think of as traditional farms. Although we do in Fulton, we have cattlemen. We have these more traditional type farms as well. But we’ve got a lot of people who are producing food for this super densely populated area in really creative and unique ways. We’ve got these small-scale urban farms. We’ve got really high-value equine facilities. We’ve got community gardens. We’ve got municipalities who are involved in community farming. We’ve got you pick strawberries and blueberries. We’ve got cut flowers, indoor farming, hay and forage, nursery, you name it. We even had a mealworm producer who was growing mealworms in a shipping container that she would process into a protein powder. That’s not what we think about as agriculture, but I think there’s just a lot happening in the metro area, and it’s a privilege to be able to serve this community.

Ping Yu: Thank you. What about you, Eric?

Eric Marlowe: It was a really long sentence, Gabriel. [laughs] Oh, was it supposed to be one sentence? I’m sorry. You got mine. Here’s my sentence. That’s fine. All the stuff that AI that we’re apparently in competition with as ag agents, most of the stuff they’re pulling on is stuff that Extension already published. Cut away the nonsense and get to the source. And then the second part of my sentence would be, if you start scratching the surface, which is talking to the agent, you will find there is a depth of and a history and a just a plethora, a plenitude of resources at your disposal tied to universities. And the universities are on the same team. Really, it’s a big resource that took a long time to build that that should be taken advantage of because you own it. Taxpayers use it.

Ping Yu: Yeah, that’s a very good way to put it. Use us. Take advantage of the extension system that we have. But thank you, Gabriella and Eric, for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with us. And to the general public, this is what we do. And again, just use us. We are here to help. But thank you guys for what you do and let’s keep going.

Credits

Ping Yu: Conversation like this only happen when you support the show. For more information and find ways to support us, please go to bandbpod.com. bandbpod.com. If you like what you are hearing, spread the word and share this podcast with the people you love. Make sure you hit that subscription button and give a review for the podcast. And as always, go check out the show notes to learn more about this topic and other topics we featured on the show at bandbpod.com. Thank you for listening. Till the next time, stay healthy and go plants!

Transcript produced for Blooms and Beyond / UGA Center for Urban Agriculture