Tag Archives: Rob Gilbert

Your Land Grant Partner

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September 2024 FloridAgriculture eNewsletter

By Rob Gilbert and Scott Angle
[email protected]
[email protected]

 

You may not have noticed there’s a change of leaders at UF/IFAS. Nor should you have to.

We know that for you, UF/IFAS is the county agent who delivers you the science you need to stay profitable today. It’s the researcher running a field trial in your community to answer questions to help you profit in the next five years. It’s the professor who equips your children and future employees with knowledge and skills to keep your operation profitable a generation from now.

None of that changes when the UF senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources changes. For the past 14 months, Rob has led UF/IFAS as interim senior vice president while Scott served as UF’s provost. But Scott has returned from that assignment and resumed his role as leader of UF/IFAS on Sept. 6.

Our job is to work day and night to support the ag agents, researchers and teachers who meet you face to face.

Because we share a common priority to serve stakeholders such as Farm Bureau members, we expect you won’t notice any difference in service – unless you currently aren’t being served. Then we do intend to see what UF/IFAS can do to meet your needs.

It’s a commitment we’ve shared since Scott’s arrival in July 2020. Rob’s record of leadership of UF/IFAS over the past 14 months has demonstrated that this commitment from the senior vice president persists even as the incumbent changes.

Neither of us are corner-office administrators. We both like to get out to industry gatherings, and we want to meet as many of you as we can. We’ve both put thousands of miles on the road to meet producers from the Alabama border to south of Miami. Another big part of our job is to listen.

Scott plans to resume the barnstorming that brought him to all 67 counties in his first three years in Florida. Rob will remain in senior UF/IFAS leadership and continue to support our statewide programs, hear your suggestions, and thank you for feeding Florida, the nation and the world.

We work for you. We’ll both do all we can to keep the county agent, the researcher and the teacher working for you, too.

Rob Gilbert served as interim senior vice president of agriculture and natural resources until Sept. 6. Scott Angle returned to lead UF/IFAS on Sept. 6 after 14 months away.

Your Land Grant Partner

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August 2024 FloridAgriculture eNewsletter

By Rob Gilbert
[email protected]
@IFAS_VP

Mickey Diamond is a bridge between UF/IFAS and the Florida Farm Bureau Federation. He builds that bridge with service.

Part of that service is as your voice. He serves with straight talk. When I travel the state visiting our research centers, I always ask to meet with customers who know the center best. Invariably, those customers are local Farm Bureau leaders.

Diamond, a Santa Rosa County Farm Bureau board member, serves on the West Florida Research and Education Center (WFREC) Advisory Committee. It’s a group of committed volunteers who meet at the center to improve the science they deliver to producers.

For 10 years, he has served on the “Meet the Farmer” panel on the local chamber of commerce’s Agribusiness Day at WFREC.  And he makes his own formal visits to query the staff on new peanut varieties, farming practices, or cover crops. The conversations revolve around sustainability – that is, how can a farmer stay profitable while faced with hurricanes, freezes, pests, diseases, volatile markets and labor shortages?

“The thing you got to do is you have to figure out if it’s cost prohibitive,” Diamond says. “There’s not a spare penny in it today.”

That’s where knowledge comes in. Sometimes, it’s from our faculty who glean from data incremental ways to reduce costs or increase yields. Sometimes it’s wisdom from people like our farm manager Greg Kimmons, who brings 44 years of observations at WFREC to conversations with Diamond.

Attending meetings with scientists comes at a cost. As Diamond said, “A lot of times we can’t just drop and go. Ain’t nobody else to do it (work the farm) but us.”

That’s why I appreciated the opportunity to meet Diamond last month at WFREC.

Not only does he serve the center, but he inspires us to step on the gas as we seek the innovations that will keep you profitable. Frankly, Mickey is hard to keep up with.

He’s been using cover crops and strip tilling since the early 1990s. And his equipment is better than what we have at our underfunded center in Jay. He’s an example of what has inspired me to seek funding from the legislature in 2025 to buy state-of-the-art equipment for our centers across the state. Up-to-date equipment is critical for our ability to demonstrate what works on the farm with today’s tools, not those of 10 or 20 years ago.

Diamond exemplifies how advances in agricultural science come from a partnership between farmer and scientist. He runs real-world trials on his own land that parallel the carefully controlled experiments we do at WFREC. He gives us feedback on the cotton and peanut varieties he plants. And he serves as your voice, letting us know about what challenges you face every day as you plow, plant, irrigate, protect and harvest.

He has been doing this a long time. He was the 1996 Young Farmer & Rancher Achievement Award winner. He long ago won FFBF’s CARES award for environmental stewardship.

With his service, he’s helping create the conditions for his fellow farmers to keep producing food, feed, fiber and fuel for a long time to come.

Rob Gilbert is the University of Florida’s interim senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).

 

Your Land Grant Partner

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July 2024 FloridAgriculture eNewsletter

By Rob Gilbert
[email protected]
@IFAS_VP

Former Putnam/St. Johns County Farm Bureau board member Eric Hjort is a leader. That means he works on behalf of Florida agriculture, not just for Tater Farms. Part of how he does that is by working with UF/IFAS.

Our capacity to help Farm Bureau members make a living depends on active participation from people like Eric. The future of farming in Florida is better off for his support of the land-grant mission through his engagement in our teaching, research and Extension.

Eric doesn’t just embrace innovation. He helps us discover. Currently he’s given us (specifically, Dr. A.J. Lindsey) access to 30 acres (15 acres in Lake Placid and 15 acres in Hastings) to figure out the best way to fertilize St. Augustine and Bermuda grass.

This helps Tater Farms. They get a look at how different fertilizer applications work on their farm. Their sacrifice of 30 acres also helps you, though, because the data generated from Tater Farms’ acreage will help us update fertilizer recommendations that FDACS consults as it makes rules in its BMP manuals for the whole state.

But Tater Farms is going much farther. Eric’s son Gage is a highly trained agricultural engineer who is working with our faculty members Drs. Nathan Boyd and Arnold Schumann on targeted spraying technology. With the help of artificial intelligence, Boyd, Schumann, and Gage hope to refine the spraying of non-selective herbicide on turf grass. This represents a huge potential win-win-win for turf farmers. It could reduce input costs, reduce environmental impact and increase turf yield because presently certain herbicides kill good turf along with bad weeds.

We need science to create these win-win-wins, and we need future-thinking emerging leaders like Gage to help us pursue win-win-win science.

Here we at UF/IFAS would like to take a little credit for Gage’s pursuit of innovation. He is a recent alumnus of our Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department, where he majored in biological engineering. And maybe even a little for Eric’s. Eric is a graduate of our Wedgworth Leadership Institute for Agriculture and Natural Resources, where he went through a two-year leadership development program that included travel throughout Florida, the U.S. and even a trip abroad.

Dr. Lincoln Zottarelli and colleagues are working with Tater Farms to see if they can automate irrigation through tile drainage. If it works, it will reduce water use by irrigating fields at just the right rate to maintain ideal soil moisture based on readings from sub-surface moisture sensors.

Tater Farms, started in 1975 by Frank and Polly Johns, has a history of success and innovation. Originally a cabbage and potato farm, they planted their first crop of turfgrass in 2004. Eric, president of Tater Farms, has helped continue this tradition of innovation and leadership by getting out in front of the industry by a decade on things like irrigation and targeted spraying. And they’re doing it by working with UF/IFAS.

He’s making sure you get the benefits, too, as he serves as a leader. I recently visited with him in his volunteer capacities as board member of the Turfgrass Producers of Florida and of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association.

Whether it’s through FFBF, TPF or FFVA, Eric is helping Florida get to farming of the future. UF/IFAS is helping him and Gage get there faster and more profitably.

Rob Gilbert is the University of Florida’s interim senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).

Your Land Grant Partner

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June 2024 FloridAgriculture eNewsletter

By Rob Gilbert
[email protected]
@IFAS_VP

Florida agriculture has a recipe for profitable farming that protects water quality. The ingredients include science, financial incentives, and encouragement from peers.

We’re fortunate in Florida to have a great partnership to supply you with all of the above.

The University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) develops the science. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) makes water-friendly farming less costly. The Florida Farm Bureau Federation (FFBF) encourages you to adopt controlled release fertilizer, cover cropping and more – and highlights farmers who embrace these innovations.

There are many more partners, but these three represent the academia-government-industry partnership on which the land-grant mission is based.

At the recent Suwannee CARES event, we celebrated another dozen farmers who are doing it right. They got plaques, applause, and photos with FFBF President Jeb Smith.

They also cruised a midway that offered everything from pork sliders to roasted PBJs.

UF/IFAS hosted the party at its North Florida Research and Education Center—Suwannee Valley. FFBF identified the honorees and helped bring together 700 people to celebrate environmental stewardship. Kathy Mears, chief of staff to the commissioner of agriculture, and West Gregory, who leads the FDACS Office of Agricultural Water Policy, attended to show their support.

Even with state statute as his marching orders to implement BMPs, Gregory says the key to widespread adoption is not to force them on farmers but to help them figure out how to implement them effectively and profitably.

His office defrays costs for new equipment, supplies or techniques with direct funding or through the Farm Bureau, the water management districts, or UF/IFAS.

FDACS also supports some of the science. It funds the work of UF/IFAS researchers who validate the effectiveness of existing practices and discover new ways to grow more food with fewer inputs. I’m thankful to FDACS for supporting work on carrots, corn, and watermelon at the UF/IFAS research farm in Live Oak.

None of us could do this individually. In recent years we at UF/IFAS have deployed researchers across the state to update nutrient rate recommendations that in some cases are a generation old. FDACS, sometimes through the Suwannee River Water Management District, has invested more than $17 million in the past decade to help farmers buy soil moisture sensors and air seeders. Farm Bureau finds exemplary producers who inspire others to commit to BMPs.

So, while we celebrate the farmers who are getting it right, we also celebrate the academia-government-industry recipe we’ve relied upon to implement the land-grant mission for 150 years.

Rob Gilbert is the University of Florida’s interim senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).

Your Land Grant Partner

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April 2024 FloridAgriculture eNewsletter

By Rob Gilbert
[email protected]
@IFAS_VP

Vivek Sharma has grant money, soil moisture probes, a lab, brilliant graduate students, and the full backing of a UF/IFAS faculty appointment to figure out how to get maximum yield with minimal environmental impact.

Gilchrist County Farm Bureau board member BJ Wilkerson he’ll have about 40 harvests in his lifetime and a young daughter interested in farming to figure out the same thing.

Sharma develops the science that underpins best management practices. Wilkerson makes changes to his practices based on observation, and thanks, to UF/IFAS, increasingly based on consultation with his daughter.

Sharma and the Wilkersons’ combined expertise has developed a better understanding of what works for corn. Their partnership exemplifies UF/IFAS and Florida Farm Bureau’s decades-long cooperation.

We even jointly throw a party to highlight the farmers who demonstrate their environmental stewardship through best management practices, or BMPs. The Farm Bureau funds Suwannee CARES, and UF/IFAS hosts an awards night – this year on May 2 – at its North Florida Research and Education Center—Suwannee Valley (NFREC-SV) in Live Oak.

Improving water quality is one of Florida’s greatest challenges, but because of the partnership between UF/IFAS and the Florida Farm Bureau, it can also be one of our greatest scientific, environmental, and agricultural successes.

The Wilkerson family was recognized at Suwannee CARES in 2022 as one of those successes. And they’re looking to achieve even more with Sharma, NFREC-SV assistant center director Bob Hochmuth and Gilchrist County agriculture and natural resources Extension agent Tyler Pittman.

Hochmuth has run watermelon trials on Wilkerson’s farm in Trenton. Pitman is currently experimenting with controlled release fertilizers on Wilkerson’s land.

Two years ago, Sharma set up Florida Stakeholder Engagement Program (STEP) Corn Contest plots for 10 farmers at NFREC-SV, thanks to funding from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. He put out a call for participants. The idea was to do the farming for them as they directed and give them data and photos, and the farmers would respond with decisions on seeding rate, nitrogen management, irrigation, insurance selection and grain marketing.

Wilkerson was among those who heard from Sharma. At the time his daughter was telling Wilkerson she wanted to be a farmer just like her dad, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Wilkerson also wanted to do everything he could to protect the land and natural resources on which Kelsey would be depending 40 harvests from now.

They were one of winners of the competition and collected a $1,000 check as the top overall performers. You can guess who ultimately cashed it.

I’m excited to attend this year’s Suwannee CARES to hear more inspiring stories about how university-Farm Bureau-agency partnerships are using BMPs to protect water quality.

The scientist-grower partnership really hits home with me, because I came up through the ranks of UF/IFAS at the Everglades Research and Education Center. Scientists, growers, and agency officials working together there have used BMPs to reduce phosphorus runoff by 57 percent.

Farmers, of course, see themselves as environmental stewards. But they can’t build environmental stewardship into the price of their crop, and they can’t even convince some people that it’s part of their practices and ethic.

In that atmosphere, the daddy-daughter victory and the CARES award mean a lot to Wilkerson.

“We get put down a whole lot more than we get picked up,” Wilkerson says. “It’s nice to know at least somebody thinks we’re headed in the right direction.”

Rob Gilbert is the University of Florida’s interim senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).

Your Land Grant Partner

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March 2024 FloridAgriculture eNewsletter

UF/IFAS Senior Vice President Dr. Rob Gilbert. Photo taken 02-19-24.

By Rob Gilbert
[email protected]
@IFAS_VP

I see my job as the new leader of UF/IFAS as supporting the discovery and delivery of knowledge that helps you make a living.

I can’t do it all from the office. I’ll be making a lot of trips across town to Florida Farm Bureau Federation headquarters and across the state to hear from you.

My view of my new job is shaped by my old jobs. I spent years in the field as a researcher listening to growers. I was chair of the Department of Agronomy – the science of seeking maximum yield from an acre of soil.

I saw how much farmers’ field observations and partnership with our researchers contribute to discovery during my five years as dean of UF/IFAS research.

I take over as the University of Florida’s interim senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources with the conviction that there’s no better time for a strong UF/IFAS-Farm Bureau relationship than now.

Our partnership will be essential to taking advantage of favorable political conditions. For the next couple of years, people who actually understand agriculture will be in positions in Tallahassee to help craft policy and appropriate resources the industry needs to thrive.

I plan to work closely with President Smith to present a united front to policy makers on what we need to keep Florida growing food and fiber.

2023 Woman of the Year in Agriculture Luncheon honoring Dr. Saundra TenBroeck. Photo taken 02-12-24.

This coming era also holds the promise of technological advances, the likes of which we see only once in a generation. UF/IFAS is working hard to put artificial intelligence to work on your farms. I’ll be asking you what we should be putting it to work on and continuing to consult with President Smith about how to make it happen.

Yet another opportunity is a great partner in President Smith. He has already been a mentor to me with his knowledge of cropping systems in the Hastings area, his connections in and understanding of Florida politics, and his example of servant leadership.

You’ll be top of mind as I work hard to make the most of these favorable forces.

While I don’t make a living off my land, I am married to a Master Gardener, so I’ve enjoyed citrus, lettuce, nectarines and tomatoes grown right on my property. That increases my appreciation of how much work it takes and strengthens my resolve to help you feed Florida.

I’m looking forward to serving as UF/IFAS cheerleader-in-chief and working hard to secure and direct resources to support the science you need to make a living off the land.

Please invite me to your farms and your meetings. Let me know how I can serve. Let’s be partners in making the most of the tremendous opportunities that lie ahead.

Rob Gilbert is the University of Florida’s interim senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).