The Florida Citrus Industry Annual Conference was held in Bonita Springs in mid-June. The event, hosted by Florida Citrus Mutual, was well attended, and the crowd was buoyed by the recent news that growers and industry would be receiving nearly $200 million in funding from the Florida Legislature.
Most of those dollars will be directed to the Citrus Research and Field Trial (CRAFT) Foundation. Steven Hall, CRAFT executive director, spoke during an educational seminar at the conference about the influx of funding and how the money would impact the program.
“There is $196 million total in the budget for Florida citrus and $160 million will be coming to the CRAFT program,” Hall said. “And $4.5 million is going toward the traditional Citrus Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) basic discovery level research. As part of the merger between CRAFT and CRDF, CRAFT will begin to administer that funding.”
As of mid-June, the Florida citrus industry funding was still subject to Gov. Ron DeSantis signing off on the state budget.
“Once that goes through, and we don’t expect any issues with that, then we will get to work with the board and get a proposal out,” said Hall. “I think you can expect to see some program parameters coming out from CRAFT sometime in August. We’ll have the application window this fall, like we traditionally have, and we’ll be off to the races.”
The merger of CRAFT and CRDF was signed into law by the Florida Legislature earlier this year. Hall said the combination of the two organizations will provide some efficiencies without compromising the service and mission of either organization.
“CRAFT will be taking over responsibilities of CRDF,” Hall said. “This is an expansion of what we are doing, it is not a discontinuation of anything. We are looking forward to taking on this challenge.”
Hall also noted a change in the timeline of the merger. The effective date of the merger is now Oct. 1. The original date of the merger was July 1.
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