In Immokalee in Collier County there is a 320-acre facility where a team of researchers work to provide farmers with the best information possible for them to be successful. The University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Southwest Florida Research and Education Center was first established in 1958 as a UF support facility, and then was dedicated in 1986 as a UF/IFAS station.
It supports active research programs in things like citrus and vegetable horticulture, irrigation and water resource management, precision agricultural engineering, pest management, agricultural and natural resource economics, soil microbiology, weed and soil science, and agricultural economics.
They work directly with growers in southwest Florida who face a variety of environmental challenges including water supply and quality, and ever-increasing land values which can make it a difficult decision to remain in farming.
Today we meet the Center’s new director, Dr. Michael Burton. He grew up on his family’s farm in Indiana before receiving a bachelor’s degree in political science from DePauw University in Indiana, then he received two master’s degrees from The Ohio State University: one in public policy and the other in crop nutrition and seed physiology. Dr. Burton then received his doctorate in agronomy studying weed ecology at the University of Nebraska.
Dr. Burton then began a career in academia, first as an assistant professor of weed ecology at North Carolina State University where he spent seven years before moving on to Missouri State University, where he spent 14 years before moving with his family to southwest Florida to take on his new role as director of the UF/IFAS Southwest Florida Research and Education Center.
We spoke with him on Thursday, July 7.
