The Georgia Cotton Commission sponsored the King Cotton Awards to recognize outstanding contributions of county Extension agents to Georgia cotton producers for the 20th year in a row. The senior award honors agents with 10 or more years of experience.
The junior award, named the Allen B. Fulford Award, honors the accomplishments and memory of Allen B. Fulford, who served as a county Extension agent and state cotton agronomist. This award credits those with less than 10 years of service.
The awards were presented at the virtual 2020 Georgia Association of County Agricultural Agents Annual Meeting & Professional Improvement Conference in November.
The 2020 Senior King Cotton Award winner is Tucker Price of Cook County, where he serves as county Extension coordinator as well as agriculture and natural resources agent. A native of Ashburn, Georgia, Price has 25 years of UGA Extension Service experience in counties including Quitman, Crisp and currently Cook.
In addition to holding producer education programs regarding agronomics and defoliation, Price conducts local cotton research and demonstrations. The priorities for the local research are determined in collaboration with local growers. Recent trials have been conducted with a focus on white fly monitoring as well as multiple cotton variety trials.
The 2020 Allen B. Fulford Award Winner is Seth McAllister of Terrell County. McAllister has served as the agriculture and natural resources agent since 2016. For the past three years, he has also worked on the AgWET team, a group of agents and collaborators that have used moisture sensors to help producers efficiently manage irrigation for cotton and peanuts.
In addition to this work, he has collaborated with the surrounding county agents to implement a statewide cotton variety trial for the past two years on the Southwest Georgia Research and Education Center in Plains, Georgia.
This data is compiled with all the other statewide variety trials and presented to local cotton producers during winter production meetings. McAllister has hosted numerous “Using Pesticides Wisely Training” in Terrell County, which are mandatory for growers to legally purchase and apply the newest dicamba herbicides over the top of cotton.