Agriculture in Oconee County, as well as in the rest of the state and country, faces a number of challenges--from population growth, climate change, cuts in federal funding, an aging farmer population, and a high suicide rate among farmers.
Agriculture remains important to Oconee County, however, with the farm gate value, or value of the cultivated product, at $64.4 million, according to the most recent annual estimate.
Agriculture in the county is changing, however, with a noticeable increase in agritourism, from self-picking farms for blueberries and strawberries to wedding and event venues on farms.
These were some of the messages delivered to the Oconee County Democrats last week by Carson Dean, Oconee County Agriculture and National Resources Agent, and Joel Burnsed, county extension coordinator for Oconee and Walton counties.
Burnsed also is the Agriculture and National Resources Agent in Walton County.
Agriculture in Oconee County is simply becoming more urban, the pair said.
Format of Meeting
Burnsed led off the comments at the meeting on April 17 at the Oconee County Library in Wire Park, and Dean offered insights from her experiences in Oconee County as the discussion progressed.
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| Burnsed And Dean 4/17/2025 |
Burnsed, who lives in Oconee County, said he has been working in agriculture extension since 2013. He is from south Georgia.
Dean, who is from Indiana, said she came to Georgia to study Poultry Science at the University of Georgia and has been in her job “for three years now and love it.”
She said she is married to an Oconee County native and has family in the county, but she and her husband live in Oglethorpe County.
Twenty-six people were in the audience at the library as Burnsed and Dean spoke, and another three attended online.
The pair spoke for just less than 50 minutes, interacting with the audience and responding to questions as they made their comments.
Oconee County Democratic Party Chair Harold Thompson introduced the two by saying “We are looking for ways to reach out to the community.”
“Hopefully tonight we'll learn about the state of agriculture in the county and what are some of the challenges and opportunities that they're facing. And maybe there are areas where we can help.”
Population Growth
Burnsed said both Oconee and Walton counties are experiencing a transition from a rural to an urban population.
“The growth, the population increase and the development has really affected your traditional type agriculture farm,” he said.
“If you want a percentage from 2010 to 2024--14 years,” Dean said, “population has grown about 37 percent.”
According to U.S. Census Reports, Oconee County had a population of 32,808 in 2010, and the population is estimated to have reached 44,751 in 2024, or a 36.4 percent change.
Climate Change
In addition to population change, Burnsed said, the climate has changed.
“Georgia has experienced a lot of hurricanes and things of that nature,” he said. “And that really takes a toll on farmers. We're a little bit more protected here. In the southern counties, they have really struggled with the devastation from the hurricanes.”
Pecan orchards in particular have been hard hit, he said.
A positive result of climate change, he said, is the growth of the citrus industry in south Georgia and the emergence of an olive oil industry there as well.
Dean said that while the whole state has seen a change in its crop zoning map, with everything shifting north, this has had little impact on what can be grown in Oconee County to this point.
One result of climate change in the county that is obvious, however, is the presence of armadillos, she said.
“They were not here, especially not here in Oconee County,” she said. “They have a very low body temperature for a mammal. And so they cannot survive in cold winters.”
“And by cold winters, I mean pretty much anything under like 50--where they can't hibernate underground and keep their burrow 50 degrees.”
“And now since it's getting warmer, they're able to travel farther and farther north,” she said.
Poultry Industry
Climate change also has played a role in the spread of the avian influenza, Burnsed said, which has had a negative impact on the state’s poultry industry.
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| Dean 4/17/2025 |
“We're poultry capital of the world,” Dean said. “If we were our own country, we would be ranked seventh in poultry production just by ourselves.”
According to the Farm Gate Value Report by the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, which is the source of the 2023 estimate of $64.4 million in value for Oconee County, the poultry industry contributed $33.6 million.
That figure is for Broilers, or chickens raised for meat.
According to that report, Beef Cows contributed $8.3 million, followed by Container Nursery with $8.1 million and Field Nursery with $6.4 million.
In 2022, Broilers contributed $39.2 million, Container Nursery contributed $8.1 million, Field Nursery was $6.4 million, and Beef Cows was $4.3 million. The total Farm Gate Value in 2022 was $66.3 million.
The Farm Gate Value in 2020 was $49.4 million, in 2010 it was $121.1 million, in 2001 it was $104.8 million. None of these figures appear to be inflation adjusted.
Other Challenges
Burnsed said funding cuts at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) “will affect or has affected farmers.”
“That trickles down through loans that are available for farmers,” he said. “A lot of startup farmers relied on USDA for loans to start farms because it's not cheap.”
“There's also grants for conservation, things of that nature,” he continued. “So I don't know exactly what's been cut there. I know it's been frozen. So that's kind of in limbo. But it definitely would have an impact on agriculture in Georgia.”
“The aging farmer population” is another challenge, he said. “The average age of a farmer in the US is 58. “And a lot of their heirs, they don’t take over the farms. A lot of times it ends there.”
Another problem, Burnsed said, is that “farmers are three and a half times as likely to commit suicide than the average population.”
“I grew up in farming” he said. “Farming's not easy. It's hard on a good day, and especially with all the challenges.”
Shift In Oconee County
Dean said Oconee County is experiencing “a shift from what we call traditional agriculture, which is our row crops, those types of things.”
Emerging in its place is “U pick farms,” she said.
“Washington Farms is a prime example,” Burnsed chimed in. Washington Farms, on Hog Mountain Road, features strawberries in the spring and pumpkins in the fall.
Those are considered agritourism, Dean said, “because it is a working farm. People can go out and learn about the farm or do activities at the farm.”
“There are also some other working farms here that fall under agritourism," she said. “They act as event venues. So weddings is big, those types of things.”
“They’re still working farms, they still produce, but most of their income now falls under agritourism,” she said.
“So Oconee County is definitely shifting from traditional agriculture,” she said, “into more of what we would consider urban agriculture, which is a lot of smaller farms, a lot of specialty farms, and a lot of agritourism.”
“Agriculture is not gone,” she said. “It just looks different.”
The USDA Census of Agriculture for 2022 lists 292 farms in Oconee County, totaling 38,713 acres, with the mean (average) farm size of 133 acres and median (average) of 31 acres.
In 2002, the number of farms had been 198, and in 1997 it had been 197, according to the USDA Census of Agriculture for those years.
Rural Smells
The development in the county creates other problems for farmers,” Burnsed said.
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| Burnsed 4/17/2025 |
“People move to rural areas to get away from the city,” he said, “but then at the same time they don't like some of the things that come along with it.”
He mentioned chicken manure and soil amendments as examples.
“So there is a lot of complaints, a lot of pressure on the farmers sometimes,” he said.
“That adds to some of the challenges we have,” he said.
Small Farms
Burnsed and Dean, in response to a question, said they didn’t know what percentage of the farmers in Oconee and Walton counties “live primarily off their agricultural business.”
Dean said in Oconee County “we still have our traditional, our generational farmers here, but there is a lot more people coming in who have dreams of doing something agriculture related, even if it's just a hobby farm.”
“And a lot of them are all in,” she said. “They're like, if you can get me started, I have dreams of doing specialty crops, or I have dreams of doing my own U pick or something like that.”
“They're usually at least 40 plus,” she continued, referring to age, “where they've spent most of their life working in the private sector, in the corporate world, and are now wanting to get back into agriculture.”
“I don't know if a lot of them are up and running enough to be able to say, I fully support myself off of this. But I definitely think that there is that shift over going on right now.”
Burnsed said the same is happening in Walton County.
“That is a really good thing where people do want to have like hobby farms or small farms that they can sell at the farmers market,” he said.
“But at the end of the day,” he said, “those small farms cannot feed the population.”
Video
The video below is of the entire meeting of the Oconee County Democrats on March 17 at the Oconee County Library in Wire Park.
Burnsed and Dean began their comments at 4:11 in the video.
Thompson began the business meeting at 53:29 in the video.
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