Farm, ranch, wildlife expo slated
By Sam Waller
Agriculture producers and landowners have an opportunity to earn continuing education units and TREC credits at the Texas Farm, Ranch and Wildlife Expo scheduled for Tuesday-Wednesday, Feb. 21-22, at Taylor County Expo Center in Abilene.
The two-day event, hosted by the Taylor County Extension Service and the Abilene Chamber of Commerce, offers seminars from crop production to range management and wildlife management. Vendors can interface directly with a combination of farm, ranch and/or wildlife managers and rural consumers in the Big Country.
Shackelford County extension agent Kelsey Bell, who will assist with the show, said the programs are designed to help producers in several areas of agribusiness.
And Bell said that one doesn’t have to be a full-time farmer or rancher to benefit.
“When you look at the Big Country area, not so much Shackelford County but Taylor and the surrounding counties, there’ are many new landowners,” she said. “A lot of the large tracts of land have been broken up. Most new landowners don’t have a lot of knowledge at this point.”
But there are also benefits for those who have been engaged in agriculture all their lives.
“I’ve heard them say that they go to these programs and hear a lot of what they already know,” Bell said. “But it’s worth it because they pick up that tidbit of the latest research they haven’t heard yet. They can take that home and implement it.”
Bell said the program is set up to allow attendees to take part in multiple seminars covering particular or related topics, but not everything.
“A person who’s interested in range management could make it to all of that,” she said. “A person looking for real estate CEUs should be able to get most of those.”
The program starts at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday with a seminar on cotton production followed by the Rolling Plains Cotton Growers annual meeting at 10:00 a.m. Other seminars Tuesday cover hemp production, stock pond management, property tax valuations, and intellectual property.
Wednesday’s schedule starts at 7:30 a.m. with range management. Other seminars include tree care, wildlife management, backyard poultry production, and real estate market outlook.
Bell said the real estate seminars are new for this year and broaden the show’s reach.
“I practiced real estate for five years,” she said. “Most of the opportunities for real estate credits when I was practicing were online and a lot more expensive. I would have been excited to go learn some things that are interesting to the real estate agents who live in our area.”
