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Gene McAvoy Retires After 22 Years as an Agricultural Extension Agent

Gene McAvoy discusses the importance of agriculture in Florida with participants on the Hendry County City Farm Tour.
Gene McAvoy discusses the importance of agriculture in Florida with participants on the Hendry County City Farm Tour.

The Hendry County Cooperative Extension is a partnership between the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences or IFAS, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Hendry County Government.

The concept of Agricultural Extension has been around for more than a century, after Congress established the service in 1914 as a means of disseminating research coming out of land-grant universities like the University of Florida.

The transfer, or extension, of research knowledge is facilitated by faculty in each of Florida's 67 counties and education centers. Our guest today as worked as an extension agent in Hendry County for more than two decades. Gene McAvoy’s exact title is County Extension Director, Regional Vegetable/Horticulture Extension Agent IV.

But, that’s soon to change because he is retiring at the end of this month. So, we decided to bring him into the studio to pick his brain about his life in the agriculture industry, and what lies ahead for him.

Copyright 2019 WGCU

Julie Glenn is the host of Gulf Coast Live. She has been working in southwest Florida as a freelance writer since 2007, most recently as a regular columnist for the Naples Daily News. She began her broadcasting career in 1993 as a reporter/anchor/producer for a local CBS affiliate in Quincy, Illinois. After also working for the NBC affiliate, she decided to move to Parma, Italy where she earned her Master’s degree in communication from the University of Gastronomic Sciences. Her undergraduate degree in Mass Communication is from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
Mike Kiniry is producer of Gulf Coast Live, and co-creator and host of the WGCU podcast Three Song Stories: Biography Through Music. He first joined the WGCU team in the summer of 2003 as an intern while studying Communication at Florida Gulf Coast University.