Just in CASE
This one-of-kind agricultural project at Irwin County High School keeps on growing

BY VICTORIA S. DECASTRO

"Once you've tasted these grits, you'll never eat instant grits again," says Wesley Paulk, Irwin County High School agriculture teacher. "They're all-natural, no preservatives, no additives -- and they're good." The grits are one of several products produced at the Center of Agricultural Study and Excellence (CASE), a 25-acre farm laboratory adjacent to the high school.

About five years ago, a county agent in Irwin County proposed an idea for a school farm to a group of local farmers and community leaders. Together they created a project that would serve several purposes: promote agritourism; provide area farmers and other interested parties with information that would enhance farm profitability of new crops, products and technologies; and create jobs to generate revenue in a county where 80 percent of its tax base consists of agriculture.

Another goal was attracting the area's younger citizens to agriculture through education. "One of the purposes was to have an outdoor laboratory for our ag students to take the knowledge they learned in the classroom and transfer it into a real-life situation," explains Paulk.

With the help of grants from the United States Department of Agriculture, ag education and a significant number of private donations, the CASE Farm took off in 2002 and has been growing ever since.

Each year, the CASE Farm provides internships to two promising ag students. Interns take care of the day-to-day operations, which include maintaining the facilities and feeding and cleaning up after livestock. "We pay our interns a salary," Paulk explains. "And three of our local businesses here sponsor those internships -- the Irwin EMC Foundation, Ag Georgia and the Irwin County Farm Bureau."

The project's first intern, Tyler Harper, exemplifies how the experience can help students find their niche. Because of his work on the CASE Farm, Harper has received more than $10,000 in ag-related scholarships. In 2005, he won the spokesperson contest at the National Young Farmer Educational Association Institute's national convention in Denver, Colo., giving a speech on the CASE Farm project.

In addition to Paulk, ag teachers Shayla Kisling, Ira Tucker and Stacey Jones also work on the project. And it's a considerable undertaking. The farm boasts a 2,400-square-foot, state-of-the-art conference center, a greenhouse, a catfish pond, a show barn for livestock shows, a swine operation where students produce show pigs and a food-processing center where area residents come to have their own produce canned or blanched for freezing.

The conference center is used by students, local organizations, agricultural suppliers and seed producers for meetings, demonstrations and other educational meetings. "Besides having a farm just for the students, we wanted to have a farm that would be able to showcase new and emerging technologies," says Paulk.

"Just to give you an example," he says, "we had a meeting here recently where a company came in and demonstrated their auto-steer technology. This is where you can put a GPS [Global Positioning System, which utilizes satellite navigation technology] unit on a tractor and give it auto-steer capabilities. So basically, the tractor will drive itself in the field."

GPS technology also plays a role in one of the farm's more popular activities. Each spring, students throughout the county are encouraged to participate in a contest to design a maze for the farm's cornfield. The winning design becomes "the" maze for that year. The farm uses GPS technology to lay out the design in the cornfield when the plants are still small.

"We have a guy in Tifton who helps us out with some GPS work," says Paulk. "He'll take that design and overlay it in his GPS handheld unit, and he'll walk out into the field. Wherever that design starts, he'll start walking, and then I'll follow him with a lawnmower. Hopefully, we've cut what that picture shows."

The maze contest also promotes agritourism, Paulk explains, emphasizing, "Our No. 1 goal for agri-tourism is to create ag awareness." One way the farm accomplishes this goal is through farm tours.

Touring the farm, which costs $5 per person, enables groups of schoolchildren to see firsthand that their food and clothing don't just come from supermarkets and department stores. Ag students often conduct the tours.
Typical tours include visiting the gristmill, wandering through the cornfield maze, taking a hayride, viewing the greenhouse and seeing the show pigs. Here, children learn how a farm operates, what food- and fiber-producing plants actually look like, and how the crops are grown.

"Our three main crops are cotton, corn and peanuts," says Paulk. Other secondary crops include sunflowers and pumpkins. Paramount to the CASE Farm is the value-added program. "Value-added is when you do something to a product, whether it's processing, packaging or marketing, that adds value to that commodity," Paulk explains.
This is where the grits come in. Students plant a four-acre field of white corn. Then at the gristmill, they grind the corn into cornmeal or grits and sell these products for a profit, which goes back into the farm.

In 2005, ag students grew 400 bushels (20,000 pounds) of corn for the value-added project and then ground and sold 7,000 pounds. Every spring, they attend the National Grits Festival in Warwick, and each October, take their portable gristmill to the Sunbelt Expo in Moultrie where they provide demonstrations and sell their grits. The grits have also been presented as gifts to the Georgia legislators and at conferences for MARTA, the Hilton Garden Inn and the State Department of Transportation. They also are purchased by e-mail and by phone for mail orders.

Last August, students raised money by boiling peanuts at the food-processing center and then selling them by the case. This year they have doubled their acreage and plan to continue the project.

High school senior Haley Gibbs, who grew up on a farm and aspires to become a veterinarian, has gained valuable insight through her work on the project. "It's definitely helped me see different aspects of agriculture. I thought that it mainly consisted of traditional farming such as planting crops or feeding livestock, but here I've learned how many different careers I could have in agriculture," she says. "I could sell crop insurance, or raise fish, or go into agribusiness and still be engaged in agriculture."

To sell, students must communicate effectively. "Another thing we try to do here is expose our students to a lot of leadership activities," says Paulk, who is a strong believer in getting involved not only in the community, but with ag-related activities, such as the Georgia Young Farmer Association. "One of the main things we try to teach these kids and expose them to is public speaking," says Paulk who points to Harper and Gibbs. Both students have addressed numerous groups speaking on the CASE Farm project.

At present, there are no other CASE Farm projects. "This is it," he says. "There's been a lot of interest throughout the state in what we're doing, but I don't know of any school that's actually pursuing it on the scale we're at right now. We're in a unique situation because we've got farmland next to the school. And we've got a lot of community support, and a board of education and business leaders that support it."

Can the CASE Farm serve as a model for other communities? Only time will tell. But in Irwin County, there's no doubt about it. The future looks bright.

Victoria Scharf DeCastro is a Cobb EMC consumer and an associate editor at GEORGIA Magazine.

Sun Power at Irwin County High's CASE Farm

The solar panels at the Irwin County High School campus are part of the Sun Power for Schools Project. The project was made possible through a $10,000 grant from Green Power EMC.

Statewide, 28 electric cooperatives, including Ocilla-based Irwin EMC, are now members of Green Power EMC, which provides renewable energy from landfill gas, low impact hydropower and a recently announced poultry litter generation project

The solar installation is an important component in the school's curriculum. It provides students with a hands-on example of renewable energy generation.

A monitoring device enables students to see the amount of energy produced each day, and the accumulated data are used in math and science classes to provide additional resource materials to support classroom projects. The data, available on the Internet, can be shared by other schools.