Please click on the image above to view the PDF version of the 2012 Livingston Parish Profile.

Program Highlights

Family & Consumer Sciences
The leading causes of death in Louisiana can be prevented through lifestyle changes such as adopting healthier eating habits and increasing levels of physical activity. The Family Nutrition Program in Livingston Parish helps families learn to prepare healthy meals, within a limited budget, through hands on food preparation, tastings and education. Nutrition education efforts throughout the parish are provided to seniors, adults and children on the importance of incorporating healthy habits into their daily lives.

4-H Youth Development
In Livingston Parish, 1564 youth are enrolled in 40 school 4-H clubs. These youth acquire knowledge, develop life skills, and form attitudes that will enable them to become self-directing, productive and contributing members of society. They participate in competitions, project workshops, livestock clinics, overnight camping, shooting sports trainings, and service learning projects in their communities.

Agriculture & Natural Resources
Agricultural profitability is the key to agricultural producers staying in business. It is important that they make good business decisions to go along with good production practices. We put in 1 tomato demonstration to look for rootstocks that have bacterial wilt resistance because some of our farmers lose as much as 80% of their crop to bacterial wilt. We are putting in a second tomato demonstration to look at heirloom tomato varieties which are used in farmers markets and other direct sales tomato markets to evaluate their production and taste qualities. Also held field days for beef producers to look at economic factors influencing the cattle markets.. Conducted a forestry tour to show landowners different potential markets and investigated Chinese tallow markets at their Annual meeting.

Who we reach:

12,608 - Youth (includes 1564 4-H members in 40 school clubs and 11044 school enrichment)
17,898 - Adults 3,217 Ag & Natural Resources 14,681 Family Consumer Sciences

How we reach them:  

4-H clubs, Class series, School Enrichment, Demonstrations, Field days, Workshops, Newsletters, Web sites, Publications, and News Columns.

Expanding our efforts:  

235 Volunteers - 4-H, Master Gardeners, Family & Community, Master Cattle Producers

Parish Facts  

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

• Plant enterprises - $25,092,102.
• Aquaculture and wildlife - $7,261,017.
• Animal enterprises - $6,494,790.

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

Population - 128,026
Land area (square miles) - 648.02
Persons under 18 years old - 27.5%
Persons 65 years old and over - 9.9%
Median household income - $54,708
Persons below poverty - 11.4%

Local Issues & Plans for this year

1. Increase productivity and profitability of Louisiana Agriculture.  

• Conduct Forestry Tour and annual producer meeting
• Conduct Beef Producer Field Day
• Write weekly news columns, web page content, demonstrations and seminars on agriculture practices
• Conduct farm and home educational visits
• Help Farmer’s Market producers expand product lines through use of recommended varieties.
• Continue to improve beef cattle quality through offering replacement females at select heifer sale.
• Utilize Master Gardeners to expand the educational arm for agricultural, horticultural and community projects.
• Conduct Tomato heirloom variety demonstration
• Put in lime and ryegrass variety pasture demonstrations
• Conduct Herbicide demonstrations for pasture weed control

2. Build leaders and good citizens through 4-H youth development.

• Increase knowledge of the Environment through monthly club meetings.
• Work to enhance the Jr. Leader program by recruiting new members.
• Enhance the existing volunteer development program to include additional resources and incentives.

3. Strengthen families and communities  

• Clients will recognize the importance of incorporating healthy foods and physical activity into their daily lives to reduce risk of chronic disease.
• Low-income clients will increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lowfat dairy through education on selection and preparation of these healthy foods.