Georgia Grown Building Teaches Fair Goers About Locally Grown Produce

PERRY, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – The Georgia Grown building at the Georgia National Fair is open and seeing a lot of foot traffic from fair goers.

Peaches, pecans, peanuts, and strawberries…..

You can find all of those things growing across the state of Georgia, but at the Georgia National Fair….it’s all under one roof.

“The main point of this is just to further share with the fair goer the role agriculture plays in the state, agriculture is the number one industry in the state, tourism is number two,” Michele Treptow, Director of Communications for the fair said.

The Georgia Grown building is allowing people to see where there food is coming from and vendors are also teaching people how important agriculture is to the state.

“Education is so important, children need to know more about agriculture, and it’s surprising how little they know. We love being out here in this building because it gives the groups the opportunity to come through and talk to us about produce about animals in the state and about the different jobs the Georgia department of agriculture has,” Happy Wyatt said.

Wyatt is one of the vendors and also a manager at the Macon farmer’s market. She says fresh produce grown and sold in Georgia tastes significantly different than the fruits and veggies sold in the bigger stores.

“I want people to understand the diversity in Georgia, we have so many commodities here and there’s no reason for you not to be able to shop local and take care of your family,” Wyatt said.

Hundreds of fair goers file in the building daily and they’re excited to learn about the large variety of recipes made and produce grown in the peach state.

“Learned about where we can go on the web, to look for Georgia grown products, they list the Georgia growers, shopping local…what better than shopping Georgia’s farmers,” a few guests said.

The Georgia Grown building is open every day the fair is.

Some of the proceeds from the Georgia Grown building will go towards youth scholarships for students interested in getting involved with agriculture.