Sunbelt Expo celebrates 30th anniversary
by Jennifer Whittaker

Sunbelt visitors saw Case IH and John Deere give dueling harvest demonstrations with their new cotton pickers, which both have on-board cotton module builders.

A record number of exhibitors, 1,209, showcased agriculture equipment and products during the 30th Annual Sunbelt Expo in Moultrie.

Georgia Farm Bureau was one of 26 thirty-year exhibitors who have participated in Sunbelt Expo since it began in 1978 on the campus of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College.

“We’ve come a long way over the years. Today, Expo has a sixteen million dollar impact on the surrounding 20-county area. For three days Moultrie is the largest city in southwest Georgia,” Chip Blalock, Sunbelt Agricultural Exposition executive director, said.

During the opening day festivities, Oct. 16, Sunbelt and Georgia elected officials including Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, House Speaker Glenn Richardson, Secretary of State Karen Handel and Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tommy Irvin were on hand to celebrate the renovation of Sunbelt infrastructure through a $406,954 grant from the One Georgia Authority. The grant has been used to upgrade Expo’s electrical system, renovate three restroom facilities and pave 2,000 linear feet of streets to cut down on dust and improve drainage.

“This grant is allowing us to make the Expo grounds safer and more enjoyable for our visitors, and the silver lining is it’s also allowing us to decrease our dependence on services provided by the City of Moultrie,” Blalock said.

Thanks to the Georgia Poultry Equipment Company, Sunbelt visitors will now be able to learn about Georgia’s top agriculture sector - poultry - in a new building. Poultry experts from UGA, Mississippi State and Arkansas delivered poultry management seminars in the new facility that is fully equipped with the latest poultry technology to show visitors what a chicken house looks like.

“We as a company decided to get involved with Expo and have a place for educational seminars to be held and to show how modern poultry houses are equipped,” Georgia Poultry Equipment Sales Manager Scott Campbell explained.

Out in the harvest demonstration fields, visitors flocked to the cotton fields to see the Case IH Module Express cotton picker and the John Deere 7760 self-propelled cotton picker with an on-board round module builder in action. Representatives from both companies said the goal of the new pickers is to help cotton producers increase efficiency and minimize the number of laborers needed to harvest the crop. The Case picker turns out a module that is half the size of a traditional module and requires no new equipment to process the module. The John Deere round modules are wrapped 360&Mac251; with a waterproof material.

Bill Cameron, Jr., a North Carolina diversified row crop and cattle farmer, was named the Sunbelt Expo Farmer of the Year. GFB 10th District Director Daniel Johnson, of Pierce County, represented Georgia in the competition.