By Andra Johnson, UF/IFAS Extension
From Apalachicola to Key West, and from the Indian River Lagoon to the Nature Coast, Florida’s Extension Service quietly delivers one of the best returns on investment in all our 67 counties. For an average of 3 cents a day per Florida taxpayer, Extension strengthens families, protects natural resources, supports agriculture, develops youth, and builds healthier, more resilient communities — not duplicating but complementing and supporting the work of counties, cities and state agencies.
Most Floridians know the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Extension for its century-long partnership with agriculture. What you might not know is Extension also reaches into neighborhoods, classrooms, senior centers, coastal communities and suburban backyards, helping solve real-world problems with practical, local solutions. We meet community challenges locally, whether on the farm, in the city or the suburbs.
Our broad range of workshops and programs include our Florida Master Gardener Volunteer and Florida-Friendly Landscaping programs, better fishing through Return ’Em Right and Florida-Friendly Fishing, and preparing tomorrow’s leaders through our 4-H programs that develop youth into productive and responsible citizens.
Our work has impact:
In Orange County, a single parent who attended a First-Time Homebuyer Workshop learned to budget and manage money and, building on her new skills, reduced her debt by 30% and boosted her credit score. As a result, she is now a proud homeowner, as are hundreds who have attended these workshops. She learned how at Extension.
We help our senior citizens age independently and gracefully through programs available from UF/IFAS and FAMU Extension services. These programs focus on heart health, sleep, stress and chronic disease management, and healthy lifestyle practices.
Similarly, the “Let’s Walk Florida” program is both virtual and local, allowing all Floridians to level up their physical activity and manage chronic conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In Broward County last year, 18 participants got big results: 90% lost weight and 100% reported feeling stronger. They learned how at Extension.
In the “Forgotten Coast” of Franklin County, one of the least-populated counties in Florida, we partnered with Florida Sea Grant and others to offer an intensive course to train marine contractors, including how to acquire all necessary permits, and create living shorelines to help protect our vulnerable coasts. They learned how at Extension, and recent hurricanes show why that matters.
Nearly half of residential water usage in Florida is for outdoor irrigation, which strains resources and contributes to nutrient runoff and groundwater contamination – and greatly raises homeowners’ water bills. Extension programs across Florida teach homeowners how to use less. In 2024, residents and landscapers saved more than 300 million gallons of water through the use of Florida-Friendly Landscaping principles.
To feed us, farms need to use water, too. We helped watermelon growers in North Florida move toward automated watering. Rather than painstakingly twisting water valves, an ever-growing number of farms rely on automated irrigation, and the collective impact is profound.
A UF/IFAS assessment of nine Suwannee Valley watermelon growers shows that they saved a combined 164 million gallons of water in 2024 thanks to automation. Sometimes, the simplest things have the greatest impact – and they all learned how at Extension.
Our services complement what counties, cities and other agencies do. We don’t duplicate their work, nor they ours. Through it all, we work as a team, always with the goal of making what we do stronger and more efficient than any of us could manage alone. Together, we offer stronger programs, combined expertise and create a network of experts and volunteers who do exemplary work at a bargain price. Not bad for 3 cents a day.
While return on the dollar is important, what matters even more are the people who have better lives because of Extension, the single mother who was able to buy a house, the senior who is living better, the student who is learning self-confidence and leadership, Floridians who are safer because we’ve created living shorelines to help protect our vulnerable coasts and, of course, the farmer and the gardener who are both getting advice to help their crops and their gardens grow.
In all of the things Extension does in each of our 67 counties, we have a simple goal: to invest in the present to help create a better future for our clients – the residents of Florida.
Andra Johnson is dean of Extension at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) and director of the Florida Cooperative Extension Service. Banner photo: Extension agent Tyler Pittman, left, talks with watermelon farmer Garret Beach about using smart apps to monitor irrigation (UF/IFAS photo).
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