Thanks

Your Florida Blueberry Growers Association held its’ fall meeting October 22. It was held at the Sumter county extension offices located at the fairgrounds. There were 349 in attendance as well as 44 vendors. The facility is an excellent central location for accommodating such a large gathering.

Special thanks to the following sponsors:
S & S Packing
Elixson Wood Products
Farm Credit
BudPro
U.A.S. United Agricultural Services
Without our sponsors the cost of these meetings would come from our association dues.

Along with the educational presentations a business meeting was held to elect new officers and board members.
Jerry Mixon a long time board member and Florida blueberry pioneer is leaving the board and was recognized for his service.
He will be replaced Dan Ebbecke. Dan is also the alternate southern region representative on the US Highbush Blueberry Council.
Donna Miller the current president was recognized for her many contributions. Under her leadership the association has established an internet presence as well as improved the look and marketability of the quarterly newsletter. Prior to Donna, the association had never been in a financial position to fund large scale research projects. In the last two years we have funded over $300,000 of research on mechanical harvesting and disease control. In the very near future we will disburse additional funding for integrated pest management research. Thank you Donna.
The president and vice president positions will be filled by Bill Braswell and Alto Straughn respectively.

We have tentatively scheduled our next meeting in late Feb 2010. This time frame was chosen to avoid conflict with the beginning of our harvest.

The next newsletter will be out in December. If you have any specific topics please email me or leave your comments on this post. We want to keep our newsletters fresh with informative articles.

The new website will be up and running in the next few weeks. It will complement the newsletter in appearance and content. Once up and running I will let you know via this blog.

I am asking all active members to send me your name and email address. Starting next week we are going to begin a series of webinar presentations for our membership. I will need an email address to send an invitation to link to the webinar. If you are not familiar with webinars they are basically a power point presentation over the internet. You will view the power point on your computer screen and listen on the phone via teleconference. This allows for questions from the participants. Our first webinar is scheduled Oct 30, 2009 at 10am. It will be presented by Fred Simons of Carden and Associates. The topic will be crop insurance and the new AGR Lite program. This is an alternative to traditional crop insurance. Fred can answer all of your crop insurance questions. If you are interested in the subject please email me at wcbraswell@hotmail.com to get your invitation. Don’t forget the deadline for this coming seasons’ crop insurance is November 20th. You must have a signed contract prior to that date.

In November we will present our second webinar. It will cover the subject of labor. Grower requirements, paperwork, liability issues etc.

Again thanks to all of you who attended the meeting and stay tuned for more updates.