December 2025
By J. Scott Angle
[email protected]
@IFAS_VP
Many of us experience the UF/IFAS-Farm Bureau partnership through our personal relationships — leader to leader, farmer to county agent.
At October’s fantastic annual meeting in Daytona the relationship was codified – again. It’s the policy of the Florida Farm Bureau Federation to partner with UF/IFAS. FFBF voting delegates reaffirm that annually through approval of the policy book.
Nowhere is this affirmation more crucial than in your support for the UF/IFAS legislative agenda. Even if the policy language is pro forma by this point, we at UF/IFAS do not take it for granted. We are grateful to see once more in the 2026 policy book:
…We urge the Legislature to recognize that the UF/IFAS budget is a unique budget item of the state that provides for economic development and consumer benefits. As government is restructured, this budget area should be strengthened in relation to other university budget areas.
We urge the Florida Legislature and Congress to provide sufficient funding to the UF/IFAS to primarily meet the challenges of commercial agriculture in this state…
We work hard to demonstrate to legislators the ROI from public investment in agricultural science. But the most compelling case for our funding comes from those who benefit from our work – you.
Florida’s farmers, fishers, foresters and ranchers can best answer legislators’ central question: What’s in it for my constituents?
I know hundreds of you will fan out to do this on January 27 on legislative day to advocate for the Farm Bureau agenda, including support for UF/IFAS. That’s policy in action, not just words in a book.
But the book codifies a consensus that our work is essential to your success because resolutions don’t get published without serious multi-step consideration beforehand.
Policy resolutions originate from county Farm Bureaus, from a member with county Farm Bureau approval or through FFBF advisory committees made up of active producer-members.
The FFBF Oversight Committee reviews the policy on UF/IFAS before it goes to the floor for a vote by delegates at the annual meeting. The process is meaningful to us at UF/IFAS because it signals organization wide trust and confidence.
We’ll need you again this year to support our legislative agenda. We want to rebuild 4-H Camp Cherry Lake, resume state funding for the Crop Transformation Center that will provide you with cultivars specifically suited for Florida, renovate our meat sciences lab, and increase “workload” general funding to meet the increasing demands for service and the rising cost of those services. And we’re seeking funding to staff our planned Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture.
But your policy covers the 10 months after sine die as well.
…We strongly support the continuation of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) as an integrated research, teaching and extension program….
That’s an important endorsement of our mission, not just our legislative asks. To have your support and confidence tells us we’re being true to that mission.
I will be there with you in January. I go to the Champions of Agriculture breakfast and Capitol reception every year. That’s my policy.
Scott Angle is the University of Florida’s Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).