Home › Business News › Business news
Southwest Florida growers push for vegetable specialist
More Business news 
Share and Enjoy 
Southwest Florida is known as the winter vegetable capital of the world.
Yet it is without a vegetable specialist to do research. The job has been frozen because of state budget cuts.
Growers are frustrated. So they’re taking matters into their own hands. They’re raising money to help pay for the position at the University of Florida/IFAS Southwest Florida Research and Education Center just north of Immokalee.
Cecil Howell, co-owner of H&R Farms, about 20 miles east of Immokalee, is one of the growers kicking in money. He said a helping hand is needed as growers face so many challenges, including more threats of diseases.
“There is always something out there,” said Howell, who grows tomatoes and peppers. “There are so many obstacles that we are running into anymore.”
A group of Southwest Florida growers have agreed to tax themselves $1 an acre to help pay for the researcher. Administrators with IFAS have said they’ll fill the position if growers can kick in $50,000 a year for the first two years, and $25,000 a year for the next two years, said Gene McAvoy, a multi-county vegetable agent in Hendry County.
“We have about $50,000 in hand. So we pretty much have the first year covered, and we are hoping to get all the growers in the area to contribute,” he said.
The base salary for a vegetable specialist is about $80,000 to $100,000, and with benefits the annual cost could be $150,000 or more, McAvoy said.
The money just isn’t there anymore with cuts to the University of Florida’s budget.
“They would like to fund it right away,” McAvoy said. “They just can’t do it.”
Southwest Florida has been without a vegetable specialist for more than a year. The job became vacant when Kent Cushman, who joined the center in 2005, died unexpectedly.
“It’s really a critical position,” McAvoy said. “That position served over 200,000 acres of vegetables across Southwest Florida.”
The value of those acres is about $1.5 billion annually, he said.
The research center has an entomologist and a pathologist looking at vegetables. What it’s missing is a horticulturist to study fertilizer rates, plant spacing and growth habits, and who can help determine best management practices and help with the introduction of new technologies.
In a recent letter to the area’s vegetable growers and industry representatives, McAvoy encouraged more of them to get involved in the fund-raising effort.
“As the saying goes — he who pays the piper — calls the tune,” he wrote.
Without a researcher, the region could also lose out on research money set aside in the 2008 Farm Bill.
“If that position stays vacant it will be hard to get that money to Southwest Florida and help our growers,” McAvoy said. “That would be the person that would apply for and use those dollars.”
Demons next door? Your neighbor’s Great Dane took a nap in your flower bed and mistook the front lawn for a loo — and this was on a good day. The music next door may as well be under your bed. You’re wondering why the fruit is disappearing off your trees near someone else’s kitchen window. You have — or have had — neighbors from hell? Tell us about them. We’d like to know what neighbors drove you to the limits, and what — if it was possible with neighbors like that — solved the problem. You don’t need to give us your neighbor’s names, but we do want to hear your experiences for a story on the demons next door, and how to deal with them. Email 
Comments
This site does not necessarily agree with comments posted below. Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. Break our rules, and we will ban you. No exceptions, no second chances. Read our privacy policy & user agreement.
End welfare for the growers!
Also known as "socialism".
#1 Posted by dooley on July 17, 2008 at 8:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The job of a vegetable specialist has been frozen? Frozen vegetable specialist? Sorry, NDN has me on a tear looking for ways to be censored. Would you say the state has frozen the assets? OMDG, I wasn't censored with this word (assets)!
#2 Posted by BlueTonguedVole on July 17, 2008 at 11:48 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Post your comment
(Requires free registration.)