The Trigg County Cooperative Extension Service in conjunction with the Trigg County Ag Committee host events throughout the year to increase public knowledge of agriculture.   It is important to all involved in agriculture to inform the increasingly urban population about their farming practices so that they can understand and appreciate how important farming is to the local economy.  The tour is designed to give attendees a firsthand look at modern farming and conservation methods.

The 2021 Farm tour was held at Riverbend farms, a diversified row crop, and cattle operation in Trigg County.  The Farm is run by a young lady and her mother, they crop approx. 4000 acres of corn wheat and soybeans, run 300 head of brood cows and background their own calves/ develop their own heifers. The tour was last held at Riverbend farms about 32 years earlier. Needless to say thigs looked a lot different today than back then.  Tour guests got to view some rotational grazing demonstrations done by extension specialist Dr. Chris Teutsch, and the local ag agent.  Dr. Katie Vanvalin spoke to the group about cattle nutrition and meeting those needs on Pasture.  Another stop on the tour was with Drs. Brad Lee, John Grove, and Edwin Ritchey as well as NRCS staff Glynn Beck.  There are 5 water quality monitoring stations installed on Riverbend Farms through the Blur Water Farms project.  Showing these off goes a long way towards showing how much farmers are just as concerned about their practices and environmental impacts as their neighbors are.   These projects are very important in proving that our farming practices are very sustainable and environmentally safe, they also will help us learn how to improve our operations and keep more soil and nutrients were we applied them.  Our final stop was a trip “across the river” where we rode wagons forded little river and up to the highest hill on Riverbend where we got a Farm history from Alana the Daughter running the daily farm operations.  All told we had over 275 attendees and 6 extension specialists involved in the 2021 farm tour.  The event was covered extensively by 2 local papers and our local radio station.