Citrus growers can get continuing education units (CEUs) from the 2020 Florida Citrus Growers’ Institute, even though the in-person version of the annual event was cancelled due to COVID-19. Multi-county citrus Extension agent Chris Oswalt discusses how growers and others can get their restricted-use pesticide license or Certified Crop Advisor CEUs.
“We have started to receive those presentations from those researchers that were scheduled to do presentations at the institute this year. As we receive those, we are looking at them and packaging them together so that we can offer continuing education units,” Oswalt says. The available presentations can be found here.
Presentation topics currently available include alternatives to glyphosate, trunk injection, making sense of spraying, and lebbeck mealybug. Also available is a presentation on juice imports, fruit prices and cost of production. “There will be a link that you click if you want to get CEUs,” Oswalt adds. One CEU can be earned for watching a set of two presentations.
Oswalt also announces that some growers will be receiving a single newsletter from several citrus Extension agents rather than multiple newsletters from those agents. He says that he, Ajia Paolillo and Laurie Hurner “basically decided that we would publish one commercial citrus Extension newsletter for our clients in the county areas that we represent, which would be Polk, Hillsborough, Highlands, Manatee, Hardee and DeSoto.” (Since this interview, Hurner has resigned from Extension to become assistant county administrator in Highlands County; learn about her move here.)
The agents provide similar documents with timely production information, Oswalt explains. “We thought it would be good if we could provide that to all of our growers at one time in one single document rather than send multiple emails to growers,” he says.
This interview with Oswalt is featured in July’s All In For Citrus podcast, a joint project of the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and AgNet Media. Listen to the full podcast.
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