The Florida Cattle Enhancement Board offers targeted research for the Florida cattle industry. We caught up with Dr. João Vendramini to learn about his experiences researching under the Florida Cattle Enhancement Board.
Vendramini said, “I think we need to give a big shout out for the Florida Cattle Enhancement Board and for the members that put a tremendous effort to make it happen.”
When discussing the uniqueness of the Florida Cattle Enhancement Board, Vendramini said, “It became something that I haven’t seen, I have never seen, I think, in other states to the point that there was mainly beef cattle producers getting funding, right, state funding, for research that really matters to them, right? We are in a scenario where we have a lot of federal calls for proposals, but then it goes more national and global, right? It doesn’t address the local issue. And what happened is a lot of the researchers in some states, they got tied up, right? They don’t have the funds, or if they get funds, it’s not specifically for what they need. When the Florida Cattle Enhancement Board gives an opportunity for all the researchers that work in the state of Florida with beef and forages and everything else, meat quality or all the different areas that will affect the beef cattle production, to do work that will be really instrumental for the producers and was a great impact on my program because I think I always had a pretty good connection on my applied research with the needs.”
“I was located in South Florida in a region that is heavily populated by beef cattle. Probably we have 80% of the beef cattle production in Florida around the research center that I was. But we have very unique things, such as linseed grass that just grew in South Florida, right? Or now it grows a little in North Florida, but it was something very unique when we started. No one in the federal grants would fund the research on linseed grass when we used the money from the Florida Cattle Enhancement Board to increase our knowledge in that specific pieces and several others, right? Areas that I think they fund on supplementation and management. It was, I think, an excellent thing that happened for the producers in Florida and for the researchers from the University of Florida,” said Vendramini.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.