October 2024 FloridAgriculture eNewsletter

By J. Scott Angle
[email protected]
@IFAS_VP

Agricultural land disappearing. A new expressway cutting through pastures. A generation of youth who need to learn where their food comes from.

Sound familiar? It’s what UF/IFAS Clay County Extension Director Annie Wallau and Clay County Farm Bureau President Gayward Hendry are facing as they work together to promote local agriculture.

On the strength of Hendry’s nomination highlighting Wallau’s efforts to teach Clay County’s next generation about the role farms and farmers play in their community and economy, she will be honored at this month’s annual meeting as the Florida Farm Bureau Extension Professional of the Year.

Wallau has been a leader in educating youth about agriculture, food, health, and nutrition.

When the pandemic shut down the county fair, it stopped the popular AgVentures® station-to-station hands-on projects to teach students where their food comes from.

Wallau worked with Clay County Farm Bureau and Clay County Fair Association on the idea of bringing the lessons to the students. The field trip in a box was born.

UF/IFAS and Clay County Farm Bureau packed and delivered the boxes with lesson plans and hands-on activity supplies on forestry, beekeeping, gardening, and beef, including the game Beef-o Bingo that gives students a fun way to learn about the many by-products of the beef industry that we find in our everyday lives.

And Annie worked to create Story Walk, which engaged students in ag literacy and physical activity by posting pages from a book on Florida agriculture throughout schools grounds, giving teachers the opportunity to take their students outdoors to walk and read.

Wallau has partnered with Farm Bureau to organize the Farm-City week luncheon that brings together Clay County’s civic and agricultural communities. She even hosted it at the Extension office until the event was so successful that it outgrew the space.

In addition to making Clay County a place to grow food, she is working to grow leaders. When Wallau met 4-Her Cross Middleton five years ago, she saw in him a future agriculturalist. She talked to him about careers in Extension, and she met with him frequently at her office to counsel him on selecting a college major at UF compatible with his learning style, background and career goals.

Cross graduated from the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences in May, and Wallau has continued to advise him on how to engage with Farm Bureau. Cross now leads the county’s Young Farmers & Ranchers chapter and serves on the county board. Cross and Wallau are now working together to try to bring a new farmers market to Clay County.

My thanks go to President Hendry and Administrative Assistant Terri Davis of the Clay County Farm Bureau for nominating Annie. Thank you, too, to President Jeb Smith for personally informing Annie with a call that she said absolutely blindsided her in the best way.

Extension professional of the year is one of the highest honors an agent can earn because of who it comes from. Our decades-old partnership has great value to us, and when Farm Bureau elevates an agent, it is meaningful to our entire organization.

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).