By Jayne Johnson
With the expanded faculty and staff ranks, several more projects were awarded to the PIE Center:
Specialty Crop Block Grant — Local food message testing focus groups, survey
PIE Center researchers will be able follow up on their research that showed Floridians annually spend $8.3 billion on local food.
The $151,000 grant, awarded by the USDA and Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, will test specific messages and strategies farmers can use to market their local food.
Focus groups will gauge consumers’ responses to various messages, according to PIE Center researcher Joy Rumble, and a follow-up survey will help determine what messages are most effective with particular target audiences.
“The goal is to create good communication strategies to promote Florida specialty crops,” said Rumble, an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication.
UF/IFAS Extension and Florida Farm Bureau Federation — Environmental stewardship survey
The PIE Center is collaborating with UF/IFAS Extension and the Florida Farm Bureau Federation to gain an understanding of consumers’ awareness of environmental stewardship programs.
UF/IFAS Extension and the Florida Farm Bureau share common concerns regarding environmental stewardship, according to Alexa Lamm, associate director of the PIE Center. She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication.
Mosaic, a fertilizer company, awarded separate grants to UF/IFAS Extension and Florida Farm Bureau to investigate the effectiveness of the each organization’s environmental programs. Extension and Farm Bureau both sub-contracted with the PIE Center, which will develop and administer an online survey.
Florida Farm Bureau’s environmental stewardship program, called County Alliance for Responsible Environmental Stewardship, or CARES, was developed to promote environmental stewardship among Florida farmers. When farmers use best management practices in support of the CARES program, they receive a sign to display on their property that shows, ‘This Farm CARES.’
CARES has been successful in many areas, according to PIE Center researcher Joy Rumble, but the survey will focus in southwest Florida, where Mosaic hopes to expand its operations.
“Farm Bureau wants to know if the general public and farmers know about CARES, along with their perceptions of environmental stewardship in the agricultural industry,” said Rumble, an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication.
Farm Bureau contributed $5,000 of its funding from Mosaic to the PIE Center research, while UF/IFAS Extension gave $23,772 to examine the 4R Nutrient Stewardship program.
The 4R program encourages using the right fertilizer source at the right rate at the right time and right place. Researchers will start working on the project in January and expect to release results in June.
U.S. Department of Agriculture — Water usage mobile app evaluation
PIE Center researchers will gather farmers’ input to develop and improve a mobile app focused on crop irrigation scheduling and reduced water usage.
The app will help farmers with best management water practices, Lamm said. The four-year project started in September, and PIE Center researchers will start their work next fall.
The crop irrigation scheduling app works with meteorological stations to coordinate irrigation with rainfall patterns, Lamm said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture granted Soil and Water Science faculty at the Southwest Florida Research and Education Center about $440,000 to develop and test the app. About $30,000 will go toward the PIE Center evaluation.
PIE Center researchers will collect farmers’ opinions so the developers can adapt and improve the app, increasing the chances it will be used. Researchers are curious about why farmers would or would not use the app and which practices work well with the application.
UF/IFAS Research — Public opinion surveys
UF/IFAS Research awarded the PIE Center $5,000 from the Florida Nursery Growers and Landscape Association Endowed Research Fund to supplement the ongoing public opinion surveys on water quality and quantity, immigration reform, endangered species and food production practices.
FNGLA awards seven or eight grants each year to ongoing UF/IFAS projects. PIE Center researchers will add questions relevant to Florida’s landscape and nursery industries to the various surveys, according to Post-Doctoral Associate Quisto Settle. FNGLA will be included in each survey’s review panel to make sure the industry’s needs are being met.
“We want to make sure we’re providing something of value to the Florida agricultural and natural resources industry,” he said.
