North Georgia Technical College cut the ribbon on its new Aquaculture and Agricultural Mechanics Complex, unveiling a facility to teach and research innovation in food production.
The college opened the Tommy and Bernice Irvin Aquaculture and Agricultural Mechanics Complex, donated by the Irvin family’s foundation, Thursday afternoon.
“This project right here is a treasure,” Chris Irvin, grandson of the late Tommy and Bernice Irvin said. “The problem we face as a world, really, is water and food. You have 66 million people die every year, but you have 144 million babies come into this earth, and that’s 84 million more mouths to feed every year.”
The complex focuses on finding new ways to produce food for an ever-growing population, like indoor fish farming and vertical crop farming. One of the projects aquaculture students are currently working on separates fish waste from their tanks and turns it into agricultural fertilizer.
“You might not make more land, but you can always go up, that includes agriculture,” Irvin said. “When you look at the technology that goes on here, and the stability of it, what you can produce from it, it’s really a model that’s been around for a long time. But we have to start embracing this type of agriculture if you’re going to continue to feed an ever-growing population.”
The complex was donated to the technical college by the Irvin family to continue their grandparents’ legacy of investing in agriculture programs and resources for Georgia’s youth. The Irvin family continues to invest in the region in their memory.
“My grandparents have been gone a while, and we miss them,” Irvin said. “We continue to do many things in their memory, contributions to both Northeast Georgia and the state, and we will continue to do so.”
