Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants

Project Summary: Increased global demand as well as Georgia’s favorable climate, abundant water resources, suitable land, and influential markets make the state a promising candidate for expanding and diversifying its domestic aquaculture industry. However, factors such as access to financing, regulatory complexities, workforce and infrastructure needs, environmental and food safety concerns, and market dynamics need to be investigated more systematically and collaboratively to ensure sustainable growth.

GOALS: The long-term goals of this interdisciplinary effort are to bolster the capacity of Georgia’s aquaculture industry to meet the growing demand for high-quality seafood, support local economic development opportunities, and contribute to the sustainable growth of the U.S. aquaculture sector. This will not only provide economic development opportunities to many rural areas of Georgia but will also create more secure food supply chains and promote the local and sustainable food movement.

APPROACH: The project team will develop a white paper with input from the project team as well as critical partners around the state that justifies why aquaculture development would be good for Georgia, analyzes barriers for advancing aquaculture in Georgia, develops and prioritizes collaborative strategies to overcome these challenges and leverage project results to seek to expand extramural funding opportunities from USDA and NOAA that support the initiative’s long-term goals. We will present the results of the paper at a Georgia Aquaculture Conference in late Summer of 2024. We will invite state elected officials as well as representatives from State agencies such as the Georgia Department of Agriculture, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Georgia Economic Development Authority, Farm Bureau, the Georgia Aquaculture Association, existiing producers and other interested parties to this conference with an anticipated outcome of producing a State level initiative to grow the aquaculture opportunities in Georgia. In addition to increased funding for research and extension efforts, the broader impacts of this effort will be increased economic development and food security in Georgia.

Team Lead

Mark Risse
Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant
mrisse@uga.edu

Team Members

Amrit Bart
Animal and Dairy Sciences

Daniel Remar
Agricultural Econimics

James Shelton
Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources

Issmat Kassem
Food Science

Thomas Bliss
Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant

Bryan Fluech
Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant

Eugene Frimpong
Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant