Sound Effect: 0:14

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Jordan Powers: 0:15

Welcome to Cultivating Curiosity where we get down and dirty with the experts on all the ways science and agriculture touch our lives, from what we eat to how we live. I'm Jordan Powers.

Emily Cabrera: 0:27

And I'm Emily Cabrera. We're from the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

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Jordan Powers: 0:35

Emily and I had a chance to visit the J. Phil Campbell Senior Research and Education Center in Watkinsville, Georgia, where we spoke with Eric Elsner, superintendent of the center. One of the core missions of CAES is to seek, verify and apply knowledge related to agriculture and the environment, and to disseminate this knowledge through student education and public outreach programs, the research and education centers, or RECs, play an integral role in providing faculty and students with the opportunity to conduct experiments across a wide range of production systems, soil types and climates. The college has eight off campus REC facilities located throughout the state, including the 1700 acre J. Phil Campbell Sr. REC. Now on to the show.

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Jordan Powers: 1:20

So thanks so much for having us out to the center today, Eric, we really appreciate it, As we kick off, can you tell us about the function of a Research and Education Center and its role in supporting the colleges three missions of research, education and Extension and addressing local production concerns?

Eric Elsner: 1:36

You bet, I'll be glad to. Thank you guys for coming out, for having me on the show. Been looking forward to it. You know, my staff spend their whole day actively supporting research projects from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. They're strategically located around the state, in part to address local concerns, right? The limestone valley has different challenges than Attapulgus, Georgia has, and so we're there in both of those places. Georgia Mountain in Blairsville [Georgia Mountain REC] clearly has different challenges than some of the other places have. So we're in those strategic locations to address those local concerns. Extension, with respect to JPC[J. Phil Campbell REC], that's an easy one too. We house the Oconee County Extension Service in our building. So when you guys came in this afternoon, you walked through the Extension office in down here. Around the state, Extension agents, Extension specialists, we work with them closely to support their demonstration projects. They work with us to support our field days, to transfer knowledge that's being gained on the station out into the public, right? So we work hand in hand with Extension agents and specialists on a daily basis, and we rely on that network of Extension agents. They have their finger on the pulse of the communities, the ag industry there, and so that's what we rely on is our sort of litmus test for how is ag going, and what are the emerging problems.

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Emily Cabrera: 3:01

UGA Cooperative Extension encompasses three main program areas; agriculture and natural resources, family and consumer sciences, and 4-H. County offices are the home base for these agents who serve their communities as an extension of the University of Georgia. Agents work directly with residents and tend to have a broader scope of information addressing a variety of topics within their subject area. Whereas Extension specialists are faculty members or researchers based at the University who focus on developing expertise in specific topics. Specialists support agents with complex questions and help solve local challenges through targeted research. While agents work directly with the community to deliver hands on education, specialists support those efforts through focused expertise and research. Together, they create a valuable network that helps translate university knowledge into real world solutions. An extra note for our Georgia listeners will include a link in the show notes on how to find your county Extension agent.

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Eric Elsner: 3:59

Teaching is another easy one for JPC. We're so close to main campus here in Athens that we get a lot of traffic from college level academic classes. We're a place for an outdoor lab. Beyond that, most research and education centers work hand in hand again through their Extension agents in the local counties supporting 4-H programming. You work with your local schools, and you're supporting FFA [Future Farmers of America] programming. We all have some iteration of a third grade Ag Day or, you know, right? Kids come out to touch a tractor, all the way up through high school. And even adult programming, a lot of times, hand in hand with Extension, again, Master Gardener programs, those sorts of things. If the college can dream it up, right? It's an outreach or an educational program, then a lot of times a Research and Education Center is the place where it's happening.

Jordan Powers: 4:50

It's really cool to see an environment where there is that combination of so much local input and local participation, but then it's also this statewide network right where you're able to maybe, even if the concerns aren't the same, work with your colleagues across the RECs on a broader scale. So it's really cool to see something that is both so local and statewide.

Eric Elsner: 5:13

Yeah, statewide variety testing. They're growing the same varieties of corn in Attapulgus [REC] that they're growing in Blairsville.

Jordan Powers: 5:20

Wow.

Eric Elsner: 5:20

Huge difference in climate between those two locations. And so the farmers in Blairsville are getting literally the same information that the farmers in Attapulgus are getting, but it's tailored to their growing environment. And so the guy in Attapulgus or the gal is probably picking a different variety of corn than the person in Blairsville is. And we talk about, right, Extension being the technology transfer arm of that process, the land grant process, right the county delivery system. We're finding the answers on the Research and Education Center. And that's also the place, in a lot of instances where the technology is being transferred to the public.

Emily Cabrera: 6:00

Mm hmm. And I'm wondering, so with all of these different research projects throughout the centers, your role as a superintendent, what does the day to day look like for you? What is your role as superintendent?

Eric Elsner: 6:13

Which day?[everyone laughing] My job as the superintendent is first and foremost to make sure that I create an environment where a scientist has the opportunity to conduct successful research. I can't conduct that research for him. I can't make them successful, but I can create an environment where they have the opportunity to be successful. That means a lot of different things. Late winter, early spring, I'm working really closely with faculty to get an understanding of what they need to do this year. A lot of that in the spring, as they're going into planting season, through the growing season, we provide a lot of the management of the crops that are growing or the cattle that are subjects of the research. And so I engage with my staff. I have some folks that are primarily responsible for my small plot research at our West Unit. I have a farm manager who has a primary responsibility for our cattle herd. I have a farm manager at the Iron Horse Farm who's responsible for overseeing those operations, and so I'm in close contact with those folks, right? Just like that local Extension agent's taking pulses, I'm taking pulses too. I'm not a micro manager. I'm empowering you to do your job. Come see me if you need me. Otherwise, you're better at it than I am. Go do it. Right? I'm managing, okay? We're a working farm, livestock too. So we don't have an off season. If we were strictly row crop, then we'd be winding down right now. Harvest, and then put everything in the shop and start working on things that broke. With livestock, Christmas Day, somebody's here, right? New Year's Day, somebody's here. We never stop coming to work. 365 days a year I have somebody here in Watkinsville.

Emily Cabrera: 7:58

Wow.

Jordan Powers: 7:59

That is a big lift indeed. So you just mentioned a couple components of this, of different research plots and Iron Horse [Farm], etc. How many projects are happening at the center at any given time?

Eric Elsner: 8:11

This year, we have about 65 individual research projects, and those are spread between here and Iron Horse. It's not uncommon for us to encompass all but maybe one or two of the academic departments in the college, and it's the same this year. We span entomology, crop and soils, plant pathology, ag econ, animal and dairy science, horticulture. We're supporting research projects from all of those schools, along with a few from the Franklin College too. The geology folks are out here from time to time. Plant bio[biology] folks are out here as well.

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Jordan Powers: 8:46

Part of the reason we came out to JPC to record today instead of the studio, is because, in addition to helping manage all the faculty led research projects Eric just mentioned, he and his team also work year-round to produce commodity crops, like cotton.

Emily Cabrera: 9:00

Right, so they manage all aspects of production, from field prep and planting through harvest, just like cotton producers around the state. Sales from cotton grown at UGA Research and Education Centers cover operational costs for equipment, crop inputs and other necessary production related materials.

Jordan Powers: 9:18

And today, we had the opportunity to watch a cotton module builder in action.

Ambient Sound: 9:25

[field machinery in operation]

Jordan Powers: 9:26

Okay, so Eric, we are out here in the field. I am gonna admit I don't fully know what I'm looking at, but I see a tractor. I see a whole lot of cotton, and it looks like it's compacting it down. Can you tell us what's actually happening out here?

Eric Elsner: 9:40

Sure. That's a module builder that you're looking at, and we use it when we're harvesting cotton. So when we run a cotton picker over the crop, the picker obviously collects the cotton, but it's loose cotton, by definition, or nature, is really fluffy, and so in order to efficiently store the cotton, we pack it into what's called a module. It's a little bit of an older technology. Modern cotton pickers are making their own round module that you see when you travel through the southern part of the state. This is an older technology that is, we're using a module builder, and either our cotton picker or our boll buggy will pull up to this module builder and actually dump all of the cotton that we just harvested into the module builder. And then we have a gentleman on top of the module builder, operating some hydraulic cylinders and a big press that is just almost constantly packing that cotton, packing that cotton, packing that cotton, probably down to three or four times less volume than it would take if we just dumped it without packing it.

Jordan Powers: 10:59

How do you measure how much cotton is there? Is that pounds? Or is that? How is that? I don't even know how to explain how much cotton I'm looking at.

Eric Elsner: 11:05

Okay, so cotton is sold and marketed by the bale, and for all intents and purposes, a bale of cotton is 500 pounds. And in this module that we're looking right here with the yellow tarp on it, I can't give you an exact number. You'll never know an exact number until it's ginned, but I'm going to tell you that there's probably 12 to 14 bales of cotton inside that module.

Jordan Powers: 11:32

Wow. That's a lot of cotton.

Eric Elsner: 11:35

It is a lot of cotton.

Jordan Powers: 11:37

Awesome. Thanks, Eric.

Eric Elsner: 11:38

You're welcome.

Emily Cabrera: 11:42

We'll put a link in the show notes so you can watch the module builder in action. And now let's get back to the interview.

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Jordan Powers: 11:49

Can you tell us about a research project or two that you might be particularly excited about this year? I don't want to get anybody feeling bad if you don't talk about their project.

Eric Elsner: 11:58

I love them all, right? [everyone laughing]. They're all my favorite.

Emily Cabrera: 12:01

That's a diplomatic answer.

Eric Elsner: 12:04

I've always kind of had a soft spot for genetics, the ability of our scientists in the college to literally go back in time, to ancient times and cherry pick genes that will help us today. I'm easily impressed, maybe, but they're literally able to reach back in time, 10,000 years, grab a gene that we need today and put it in a plant that can help a farmer today. That's incredible to me. Also, this is our first year, Dr. Donglin Zhang, from horticulture, has his first hops yard out at our West Unit. I think there's a hops yard now at the Durham Horticultural Farm, and there are plans for a hops yard at the Georgia Mountain Research and Education Center, too. So we've started a breeding program, he has, to try to identify some lines of hops that will produce in the southeast, right? They're in the Pacific Northwest, usually. So we're trying to find some stuff that works down here, and maybe involve some of the local brewing companies, that sort of thing. Generate some interest there in some Georgia Grown hops.

Emily Cabrera: 13:07

Well, speaking of Georgia Grown, you're a Georgia boy.

Eric Elsner: 13:11

I'm Georgia Grown.

Emily Cabrera: 13:12

[laughter] You're Georgia Grown. And we learned that you grew up here in Oconee County, and knowing that farming tends to be a family endeavor, that not only did you grow up in Oconee, but your family had a farm, and your father was also a UGA faculty member. So how did this combination influence your educational and career trajectory?

Eric Elsner: 13:32

Gosh, we could talk about this, whichever rabbit hole you guys want to go down.

Emily Cabrera: 13:36

[overlapping talk] Let's go down both.

Eric Elsner: 13:37

For the next 30 minutes, then we can talk about it for a while. So my dad was faculty in, at that time it was the Agronomy Department. He was the weed scientist when my sister and I were born, and transitioned from that into the state soybean specialist in the 70s, and then transitioned from that to state of Georgia, Georgia Seed Development Commission. So when I was a young child, like 4, 5, 6, 7 years old, I literally grew up riding a rolling chair around the third floor of the Miller Plant Sciences Building in the fourth floor.

Jordan Powers: 14:12

[laughter] Wow.

Eric Elsner: 14:13

And so names like Kim Tan, and Roger Boerma, and Harold Brown and some of these, some of those giants, at least in my mind, giants of the agronomy department, those folks, they're part of the fabric of my life. And so, I mean, what did Eddie Van Halen's son do? Right? He's playing the guitar. So what do you think Earl Elsner's son's gonna do? He's gonna, you know, kind of that sort of thing. You just sort of follow in footsteps. So it was just a natural progression to me in 1980 - I'll date myself - in 1988 my dad, because he was an academic, put a lot of emphasis on when I went to college, he wanted me to go to a place where there was a lot of knowledge stored. In 1988 you needed a library for that. And so the fact that the University of Georgia had the library system that it has made that the obvious choice. And he was, you know, I could have done whatever I wanted to do, but it was pretty, it was uh, he's probably going to hear this, so I'm looking for the right words.[everyone laughing] It was encouraged, I think probably, to go to University of Georgia, and so that's what I did. I love the smell of fresh turned earth, and I just grew up around it, and it's part of who I am.

Emily Cabrera: 15:23

That is so wholesome.

Eric Elsner: 15:24

University of Georgia too, you know, for that matter.

Jordan Powers: 15:26

So we know that you also worked at this, this exact center as a student. Does that experience continue to inform you in your role now as a superintendent?

Eric Elsner: 15:36

One hundred percent. For reasons that you may not realize. And I'm gonna try to find a really good way to say this too. I always had a really good work ethic, and my dad was a known quantity to the people that worked at this station. He was a known quantity to faculty that worked on campus. And so that prior existing relationship cracked doors open for me, but it was my responsibility to stay in the room, right? It opened doors, but once I got in the room, it's my responsibility to stay there. I always had a good work ethic outside of work sometimes, let us say I would make less than ideal decisions for my late teen and early 20s years [everyone laughing].

Jordan Powers: 16:20

Didn't we all?

Emily Cabrera: 16:21

No shame.

Eric Elsner: 16:22

And so, in spite of that, I always showed up and always got after it when I was at work. I didn't really know what specific direction I wanted to go in. I just showed up to work and built fence, and I did it good, and I did it hard. But I didn't really know whether I wanted to be president, or a rock star, or a superintendent, right? I'm just trying to figure all that out and making some bad decisions in that process. But the people that I worked for saw something in me that I didn't see. I didn't know was there yet. I won't call names, but there's some significant people in my life that did and so all of that to say, it turns out I'm not the only person that had some of those challenges. And when I hire student workers, sometimes they'll I'll hire student workers that already have it all figured out. Life just goes, click, click, click, click, click, and that's great, you know. But I also hire some student workers who remind me a lot of me, still trying to figure it out. If you work for Eric, and you show up to work and get after it, you can screw up a little bit. That's fine, because I see something and, you know, I kind of pay that forward. You get a shot to figure it out. Makes sense?

Jordan Powers: 17:30

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And I feel like it's safe to say we need more people in the world operate that way of creating a safe space to grow. I mean literally. I mean we're growing things in the ground, but for our students to grow into who they're going to become, that's exciting.

Eric Elsner: 17:45

One hundred percent.

Emily Cabrera: 17:46

And learning from mistakes. You know, mistakes were made, you said, and I'm sure those were some of the biggest learning opportunities for yourself.

Eric Elsner: 17:53

And some of the best times. [everyone laughing]

Jordan Powers: 17:58

That took a turn you weren't expecting, Em.

Eric Elsner: 18:01

Sorry, dad.

Emily Cabrera: 18:02

So what do students gain from having these opportunities to participate in research projects at RECs?

Eric Elsner: 18:09

They're introduced to a lot of things. It's up to them to decide what they absorb and what they do with it, right? So first and foremost, you're introduced to a working farm if you've never been introduced to one before. And what that means? That means 630, or seven o'clock in the morning, cold, hot, wet, rainy, whatever, you've got things that have to happen. There are things out there that are alive, that are relying on you. Right? Pretty straightforward. You're introduced to the scientific method. Why do I have to treat this one the same way that I treated that one? I'm tired now. Can I do this half as good as I did the one before? You're introduced to the scientific method and what that means, and to some really critical thinkers, you're introduced to some people that are some ultra high achievers, and they expect things to be done a certain way, and they expect them to be done right now, and they expect them to be done right. And so, you can be exposed to the consequences of not living up to people's expectations or not doing the job that you're getting paid to do. Learning experiences.

Jordan Powers: 19:06

Well, I feel like we could talk all afternoon. I mean, the stories that you have and the research that's happening here, we could talk for hours. But we also want to be sensitive of time, because we know the work never stops. Is there anything that we've missed?

Eric Elsner: 19:20

One of my priorities here, I have to tell a bit of a story to get to it. So indulge me. This facility has been in continuous operation since 1937 and has been one of the pieces of fabric of this community ever since then. I was working here as a student worker on 9/11. I can tell you where I was when that happened. Within two days of 9/11, the federal government had literally put gates up and closed them around the building that we're sitting in right now to prevent access. And I understand why they did that. That coincided, at least in Oconee County, with a time of rapid growth of the population here. And so this facility went from being a part of the fabric of the community almost overnight to becoming an odd collection of buildings on the hill, and nobody knew what happened there. So I have a picture in the office of the old house that was here, the manager's house, and there's a sign in front of it that says,"Visitors Welcome." And so one of my goals when I took this job in 2012 was to try to push this facility back into the community and sort of reintegrate it into the community. That's why we have a corn boil. That's why I think it's important to have the Extension office here, because there's constant traffic of the community onto this site and into that Extension office. And so if there's a legacy that Eric leaves, that's favorable, I hope that we've taken this facility, over time, back into the community from being an odd collection of buildings on the hill.

Jordan Powers: 20:52

Absolutely, it's such an important part of the community. And we'll also make sure that we link the website for JPC and for the Extension office in the show notes, so that folks out in the public can figure out how to get involved, whether it is just stopping by the Extension office, or I can personally say I've come to the corn boil, and it is phenomenal. So we'll put that out there so that folks can keep an eye on those calendars and come on out whenever they need to.

Eric Elsner: 21:13

Super

Jordan Powers: 21:13

Well, Eric, thank you. It is always wonderful to get to come out and spend some time with you, whether we're with a touring African delegation or whether we're here today, just sitting here the three of us having a conversation. So it is always a wonderful time. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to have us out today.

Eric Elsner: 21:28

One hundred percent my pleasure. You guys are welcome back anytime.

Jordan Powers: 21:31

We'll take you up on that.

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Jordan Powers: 21:32

Thanks for listening to Cultivating Curiosity, a podcast produced by the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. A special thanks to Mason McClintock for our music and sound effects. Find more episodes wherever you get your podcasts.