Tag Archives: Farm Bureau Day

Your Land Grant Partner

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March 2025 FloridAgriculture eNewsletter

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By J. Scott Angle
[email protected]
@IFAS_VP

How has UF/IFAS helped your business? I’m eager to hear it and hope you’ll let me know. But for the next three months I’m even more eager for you to tell your state representatives.

The Legislature starts its session in March, and it will be voting on funding for UF/IFAS science. I have been meeting with legislators for months already to get them to yes on these votes.

A constituent (you) can often get greater traction than a university administrator can. I hope I can count on you to help us help you.

Please join President Smith, your leadership team, and me in Tallahassee on March 18 at the Legislative Briefing Breakfast. President Smith has granted me the opportunity to personally thank you at the breakfast for the day you’ll spend meeting with legislators and staff.

Our legislative budget requests can help Florida agriculture in numerous ways:

  • Extension expansion, $5 million: For state or regional Extension agents devoted to farm profitability, workforce development and environmental resilience.
  • Workload, $6.5 million: Agriculture’s needs are increasing and more complex, so we need to invest more in the research and Extension personnel to meet those needs.
  • Florida 4-H Camp Cherry Lake, $5.6 million: Address current and future workforce needs by providing year-round science, agriculture, and technology workforce programs for 6,000 youth at camp with improvements, that will support this goal.
  • Artificial intelligence, $4.5 million: Fund faculty, staff, and administrative positions for the UF/IFAS Center for Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture focused on design, construction, evaluation and demonstration of AI-based technologies that we can bring to your farm faster.
  • Nutrient management, $6 million: We need to finish food crop projects so that the most up-to-date science informs fertilizer rate recommendations to keep you profitable.
  • Crop Transformation Center, $5 million: Invest in using biotech tools to rapidly develop new cultivars. While the center’s early work focuses on citrus, we will expand the expedited processes to many more crops.

Crops and politics are in season year-round, and not just in Tallahassee. The state is a checkerboard of regulations on irrigation, fertilization and land use made by local officials.

4H youth on the steps of the Florida State Capitol building. Photo taken 01-30-20.

We believe at UF/IFAS that these regulations should be evidence-based and rely on solid science. Just like there’s always a new challenge for science to solve in the greenhouse, so is there an endless array of public policy questions whose answers can be informed by science.

We need to marshal ever greater scientific forces to keep up with these challenges and questions.

If you have a story about how UF/IFAS has helped your farm, please email me about it so I can share it when I’m in Tallahassee. And while you’re at it, please email that story to your elected officials, too.

J. 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).

 

FFBF Prepares Legislative Priorities and 2024 Farm Bureau Day

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As the Legislative session is rapidly approaching, we are working hard in Tallahassee to prepare and, hopefully, see our Farm Bureau priorities cross the finish line. Our two main initiatives for this year are crafting health plans for our members and combatting labor issues by reducing housing regulations for H2-A workers. Please find a debrief of those below. 

HEALTH PLANS – One challenge we see our producers face as small business owners is increased costs – costs for inputs, cost of fuel, and other costs, such as affordable healthcare for their families.  Farm Bureau is uniquely positioned to address that challenge through a new member benefit that includes an emerging opportunity of health plans.  Too often health insurance is too expensive for small business owners and the Health Insurance Marketplace provides no alternative. Partnering with Tennessee Farm Bureau Health Plans, Florida Farm Bureau can provide a health plan option to our members.  It will take a tweak to State law, and we are preparing to address this in the 2024 Legislative Session. 

LABOR – We are seeing the impacts of the immigration bill from last session, increased costs for H2A workers, and potentially, new regulations at the local and federal level when it comes to heat illness and standards. HB 1343 almost crossed the finish line last session to prohibit local governments from regulating farm worker housing.  We want to reduce the obstacles to doing business in Florida and a patchwork of local ordinances will create additional undue burdens on our growers. This bill has been filed again for the 2024 Legislative Session, and we are anticipating success this year. 

FARM BUREAU DAY – It is also important to note that Florida Farm Bureau Day will take place on January 16. We look forward to having our members in Tallahassee to be the voice of agriculture on the Hill!  

We look forward to having you join us for the 2024 Farm Bureau Day and Taste of Agriculture Reception. If you plan to attend Farm Bureau Day in Tallahassee, please register here.