NFREC Suwannee Valley (Live Oak)
Contact Information:
Main Phone: 386-362-1725
Fax: 352-846-6617
Business Hours: Monday through Friday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Address: 7580 Co Rd 136
Live Oak, FL 32060
All Vistors/Guest please check in at Main Building.
(FKA Suwannee Valley Agricultural Extension Center (SVAEC)) is a unit of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS). The center was created by the Florida Legislature in 1947 and began operation on November 1, 1950 as the Suwannee Valley Agriculture Experiment Station. As of February 2019, the center was reassigned under North Florida Research and Education Center (NFREC), becoming one of three centers under the NFREC umbrella. In the early days, the primary objective of the Experiment Station was to serve the producers of flue-cured tobacco, cotton, soybeans, peanuts, corn, and pasture forages in Columbia, Dixie, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Lafayette, Levy, Madison, Suwannee, Taylor, and Union counties. In 1953 the Experiment Station acquired land of its own and a 300-acre farm was purchased near Live Oak. NFREC Suwannee Valley is unique among UF/IFAS Centers, along with the Center at Hastings, in that there is currently no academic/research department faculty assigned to the unit. There are four Regional Specialized Extension Agent positions located at NFREC Suwannee Valley. Therefore, NFREC Suwannee Valley has been designated as an extension demonstration unit focusing on demonstration and applied research projects supporting county Extension programs in Florida. Research projects are carried out at SVAEC under direction of research faculty largely from Gainesville, but also NFREC-Quincy.
