Building an Agribusiness Pipeline in Augusta
At today’s Greater Augusta Black Chamber of Commerce meeting, Lashawndra Robinson gave the Agribusiness Committee update, drawing from information I supplied on some of the work currently taking shape across the region.
What stood out to me is that we are no longer dealing with separate agriculture projects.
We are beginning to build a pipeline.
Across the work of Grow With Joy, Inc., Black Farm Street, Growing Augusta, AgLab Institute, and other regional partners, several pieces are starting to connect: youth agriculture education, workforce development, producer visibility, entrepreneurship, market access, food systems, and policy.
Joy Brown and I are working with Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Augusta on hands-on agriculture and entrepreneurship programming. Through AgLab Institute, that work is being shaped into modular experiences around chick hatching, urban agriculture, food enterprise, and other practical pathways into the broader agricultural economy.
Lashawndra continues building Black Farm Street as a platform for Black farmers, producers, and agriculture-related businesses - strengthening visibility and market connections with her healthy food programs and classes;
At the same time, Augusta’s zoning rewrite has opened wider conversations around urban agriculture, community gardens, local food access, and the policies that shape where and how agriculture can happen inside the city.
Later in the meeting, I also shared an update on the CSRA Food Policy Council, under the leadership of Founding Director Priscilla Elliott and Board Chair Cassandra Loftlin. The Council is preparing for a community listening session on December 8, with more details to come.
That work adds another important layer: regional coordination around food access, policy, infrastructure, and the lived experience of residents across the CSRA.
And now there is a statewide development worth watching.
Georgia voters elected Katherine Juhan-Arnold as the state’s next Commissioner of Agriculture on November 3. Her background includes community agriculture, local food production, farm-to-school work, grower education, farmers markets, and connecting producers with markets and families with fresh food. Her stated priorities also include farm profitability, local food access, processing infrastructure, land access, agricultural workforce development, and resilience.
That does not automatically change anything for Augusta.
But it may create a different statewide context for some of the work already happening here.
Youth exposure to agriculture. Producer visibility. Local markets. Urban agriculture. Food access. Land use. Workforce. Regional food systems.
These are different lanes.
But they are part of the same system.
A young person exposed to agriculture today may become tomorrow’s producer, food entrepreneur, conservation professional, logistics manager, policymaker, chef, marketer, or agribusiness owner.
A farmer gaining visibility today may find a new market tomorrow.
A zoning decision made today may determine whether that entrepreneur has a place to grow, sell, or expand five years from now.
And a change in statewide leadership may open new conversations about how local and regional agriculture connects to Georgia’s broader food and farm economy.
The question is becoming less:
What agriculture program should we do next?
And more:
How do we connect education, producers, markets, policy, and workforce into something that lasts?
That is the work.
Not another isolated project.
A pipeline.