By Carolyn Badaracco

When it comes to agriculture in Georgia, the state’s largest industry, a significant and sustainable step forward may first be generated by looking back and listening.

University of Georgia’s Georgia Power Professor of Water Resources Mark Risse, a former College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Extension Specialist in Athens, has spent the past 12 years as director of the University’s Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant program, and he knows firsthand.

Risse is both a generations deep Athens-area cattle farmer and a researcher with a heart for public service who finds deep value in seeking out the wisdom of farmers and others he works with.

Early in his career Risse worked with farmers who were “inherently skeptical of climate change.”

“But I learned that if I don’t use climate change terminology and instead go in and ask them what sorts of changes they see in the weather, it’s amazing,” Risse said. “They list all the things experts are also projecting and seeing as a result of our changing climate.” For example, crop farmers often tell Risse they are experiencing worse droughts year over year, while also experiencing worsening floods at different times of the year—the same extremes climate change experts note.

Change in temperature is another factor near the top of farmers’ reports.

“Both crop producers and animal operators have noticed impacts. It’s not so much that we’re having 90-degree days, because we’ve always had that,” Risse said. “It’s that it’s only going down to 80 at night, and all of a sudden their animals start showing signs of longer term heat stress because of the higher nighttime temperatures.”

Much as the changing climate is attributed with yielding both too much water and too little, Risse finds that some of the solutions surrounding challenges in agriculture also involve a balancing act between adding and taking away.

“We worked with farmers on changing ventilation systems and trying to get more cooling technologies, everything from adding shade to more of their pastures and fields to modifying practices on their row crop side,” he said. “The main interventions we worked on were adding cover crops to the system so you get more organic matter in the soil and it holds more water, and adding irrigation so that you can supplement rainfall during droughts. Yet, at the same time, we’re trying to reduce water consumption using more efficient irrigation technologies.”

Water, as ever, is vital—in a magnificent duality it is both a challenge and a solution.

Leading into 2026, Risse and a growing number of Georgia-based agriculture advocates and researchers are embracing the element and focusing on aquaculture, agriculture’s underwater subset.

“Aquaculture in the state is a no-brainer,” Risse said. “We have the potential to lead the nation in the business of aquaculture since Georgia’s land and water resources and its pro-agriculture climate offer numerous possibilities. Georgia’s coastline is a largely untapped natural resource.”

Over the past 12 years as director of UGA’s Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, Risse has worked to find ways to help Georgia sustainably farm its coastlines. He noted that in the 1930s, Georgia led the nation in oyster production before market changes and mismanagement of the shell resource pushed the state back to being one of the smallest producers in the country.

“All the other states were moving to aquaculture, and we didn’t have the rules for that,” Risse said. That began to change in 2019, he reported, when Georgia created rules and methods for leasing water and putting gear into state-owned water.

“It took us two or three years before we had our first oyster farmers in the state, and right now we have nine farmers that have leases,” he said. “About four of them are in production so far, because there are a number of things you have to go through, such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Agriculture. It’s a lot of work to get one of these operations up and running.”

Through his aquaculture leadership, Risse has found new ways to advocate on behalf of farmers. “When I talk to people in the legislature or others, I talk about the economic development activities that aquaculture is bringing. There’s a huge market for oysters, and I think it helps the state to have people involved.”

Having oyster production in Georgia benefits the Peach State environmentally as well as economically, Risse asserted.

“The byproduct of having more oyster farms is cleaner water. I often call it our stealth environmental program, because oysters are filter feeders,” Risse said. “They clean everything out of the water and produce cleaner water in the process.”

Risse found in coastal areas where aquaculture activities are present, such as oyster farming and other clam production, people tend to become more environmentally aware.

”The communities become more concerned with wastewater treatment and with storm water management, and all the things that affect the quality of the water. I think that’s an incredible win-win,” he said.

Risse is joined by former Atlanta Mayor and UN Ambassador Andrew Young and the Andrew Young Foundation in his enthusiasm for aquaculture’s promise for the communities and economy of Georgia. Forever Young Aquaponics, an initiative of the foundation, is a 70,000-square-foot aquaponic facility under construction in Clayton County, Georgia, that will produce greens from one side of its operation and fish on the other.

“I’m excited that we’ve got this new facility that’s going to have an economic impact in Clayton County,” Risse said. He sees agriculture in general and its aquaculture offshoot as an integral part of Georgia’s sustainable business leadership moving forward.

“We can address the huge international trade deficit we have with seafood, produce a safer and more secure product, and satisfy one of the fastest growing protein market sectors in ways that reduce the environmental impacts of food production,” Risse said. “To me, it is just something that Georgia needs to promote.”