The Citrus Research and Development Foundation’s (CRDF) governing board on May 25 suggested ways the agency and its chief operating officer (COO) could improve. The board also discussed operations it is happy with.
“Overall, it (the board’s review) was complimentary,” said the COO, Rick Dantzler.
On the room for improvement side, the board suggested “that we needed to have a greater strategic approach to the research we’re funding,” Dantzler said. “I share that frustration. Sometimes what we fund seems a little haphazard and not connected to an overall strategy.”
On the positive side, “Everybody felt as though the communication with the industry was good, and that the CRDF was letting the industry know what we are doing in a good way,” Dantzler reported. “This (the board’s review) was all about being a positive exercise in getting better.”
The board also amended its contract with the Citrus Research and Field Trial (CRAFT) program to let CRDF cover a CRAFT budgetary shortfall of between $300,000 and $400,000, Dantzler reported. CRAFT offers growers financial incentives to plant new trees that will be produced using specific HLB mitigation strategies. CRAFT’s funding comes from the Florida Legislature via CRDF, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
Under the original contract, CRDF agreed to pay CRAFT a flat rate of $1,000 per CRAFT program acre. While CRAFT received the flat rate for funding, it paid growers at two different rates: $1,050 per reset acre and $3,400 per solid-set acre.
Dantzler said CRAFT had a budgetary shortfall “because they have had more solid-set plantings than they had resets” and also because CRAFT “had a number of growers fall out of the program” for various reasons. So CRAFT wound up paying out more money than originally expected because of the high number of solid-set acres, and received less state and federal funding when growers dropped out.
Under the contract as amended May 25, CRDF increased the flat rate it paid CRAFT from $1,000 to $1,150 per program acre. Dantzler said the Florida Legislature had given CRDF $3 million to spend on large-scale field trials “which CRDF spent entirely on CRAFT.” Even with the increased per-acre rate to CRAFT, CRDF is not paying more than the $3 million it received from the Legislature. “So CRDF is paying the exact amount that it set out to pay at the beginning of the project,” he concluded.
Share this Post
About the Author
Sponsored Content