Program Highlights

Family Nutrition and Health
Nutrition programs, such as Smart Choices and others provide research-based information to help individuals and families increase their nutrition knowledge, gain skills in healthy food preparation, and improve eating and activity habits in order to live a healthy lifestyle. The issue of Childhood Obesity has been adopted as a major initiative of the LSU AgCenter. Programs such as Family Nutrition Night and Smart Bodies address this issue and promote healthy lifestyles through hands-on educational activities for children, parents and caregivers. The Germ Cave exhibit is used to teach proper hand washing to prevent foodborne illness and the spread of germs.

4-H Youth and Family Development
With the fast paced society that youth live in today they are constantly making choices about their health. Educational programs have been taught each month on areas related to Health/Fitness. The highest participation in contests have been with the 4-H Pet Show, 4-H Cookery and 4-H Bicycle Rodeo all of which fit into the Health and Fitness focus area. Youth have learned to give back to their communities through service learning pro-jects including - 4-H CAN Fight Hunger Campaign, Pet Food for Animal Shelter, and drink tab collections for St. Jude. These activities have given the youth a sense of belonging and an appreciation for helping others. Youth continue to learn agriculture through the par-ish livestock and school gardening programs which pro-vide youth with hands on opportunities.

Agriculture & Natural Resources
The production of row crops is a major economic stimu-lus to Concordia parish economy. On farm variety test; soybean verification trials, rice verification trials, soybean fungicide trials along with insecticide test are done with parish farmers. These tests are vital in the support of this agriculture industry. The Field of Excellence award was given to Vidalia High School for following recommended pest control practices, weed, grass fertili-zation, watering and insect control. The award was developed by Dr. Ron Strahan, LSU AgCenter associate professor of turf sciences, and presented at halftime of one of the teams home football games.

Who we reach:

 2,736 -Youth (includes 4-H members and FCS programming), 2,566 - Adults, 1,035 Ag & Natural Resources, 1,531 Family Consumer, Sciences

How we reach them:

4-H Clubs, Class Series, School Enrichment, Demonstrations, Field Days, Workshops, Newsletters, Web Sites, Publications, Social Media, Summer Programs, and  Health Fairs.

Expanding our efforts:

134 Volunteers - 4-H, & Family & Community

Parish Facts  

LSU AgCenter County Agents provide research-based information on plant, aqua-culture, wildlife and animal enterprises to Concordia Parish clientele. The 2010 total dollar amount from these commodities were:

• Plant enterprises - $67,313,795.
• Fisheries and wildlife -$1,686,008.
• Animal enterprises -$8,177,909

Data from the Louisiana Ag Summary Web site: LSUAgCenter.com/agsummary  

Population - 20,822
Land area (square miles) - 696.92
Persons under 18 years old - 25.1%
Persons 65 years old and over - 14.5%
Median household income - $30,062
Persons below poverty - 30.8%

Local Issues & Plans for this year

Ag and Natural Resources
1. Increase Profitability in agriculture  

• Study saltwater intrusion.
• Conduct annual crop production meetings
• Conduct farm variety trials
• Write news articles, circular letters, and web page content on agriculture practices
• Conduct farm and home educational visits

Family and Consumer Sciences
2. Enhancing life quality through family, health, nutrition, and community development  

• Diabetes education for parents, families, and school staff.
• Programs for elderly addressing medication compliance, food safety, and nutrition.
• Programs for parents to increase accountability.
• Programs for youth addressing nutrition, physical exercise, and positive behaviors.

4-H Youth and Family Development
3. Opportunities for youth to be more health conscience and active  

• Conducting activities that get youth involved using technol-ogy ( computers, GPS, hands on, etc.)
• Educational focus for the year is " Health/ Fitness" - bottled water, food allergies, managing stress, other allergies, hazards in the home, and recognizing substances in the home that look the same but are harmful.
• School garden projects provide youth with exercise and consumption of grown products
• 4-H involve youth in hands-on on exercise/ physical fitness activities