Extension From Day One

Madelyn Greathouse is the UF/IFAS Extension Commercial Horticulture and Integrated Pest Management Agent serving Sumter and Pasco counties. She works with a wide range of growers, from blueberry and ornamental producers to tree farms, organic row crops, peaches, and agronomic crops like stevia.

But unlike many people who discover Extension during their studies, Greathouse says she’s known this was her path since she was a child.

“I think I’m unique among extension agents, because I kind of knew that this is what I wanted to do from the time that I was like eight years old.”

Her family’s history is deeply rooted in UF/IFAS and Florida agriculture. Her grandfather, Brady B. Greathouse, was a longtime Head Trainer for the University of Florida, earning both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at UF and building a career rooted in science and service. He was a key member of the research team led by Dr. Robert Cade that invented Gatorade in 1965. These values continue to influence Madelyn’s work in Extension.

“He got to do what he was actually passionate about, which, aside from sports training, was farming. [After working at UF, he went on to have] an orange grove and a pecan orchard.”

Her grandparents later ran a butterfly farm on the same property — and that’s where her first “Extension job” began.

She grew up in Jacksonville but spent many weekends at her grandparents’ butterfly farm, where school field trips regularly visited, and she helped set up butterfly exhibits alongside her family.

“My job was to give people instructions before they walked into the tent, so that they wouldn’t step on the butterflies or accidentally harass them. I handed people Q-tips that were soaked in Gatorade, because butterflies love Gatorade. It’s really salty. It’s a great sweat replacement for us, and it’s a great sweat replacement for them.”

She still remembers the moment her grandfather planted the seed of a future career.

“He said, ‘You know, you could do that for a living when you grow up.’ And I was like, no, I can’t, this is just for fun. But he showed me what extension was, and he was like, you could do this when you grow up.”

 

A Path Through Plant Science

Greathouse chose the University of Florida with intention.

“I knew I wanted to go to UF. It wasn’t necessarily an expectation, but it was always kind of the seed planted.”

She graduated from high school in 2019, just before COVID reshaped her college experience. Most of her early coursework took place online, and she didn’t step into an in-person classroom until well into her junior year — by that point, she had already accumulated nearly 100 credits.

She chose Plant Science for its breadth, drawn to a program that offered a well-rounded foundation across many areas of agriculture. She initially explored the breeding and genetics track, but quickly realized it wasn’t the right fit and that she didn’t want to spend her career in a lab.

Instead, she worked full-time at a landscape nursery while completing her degree, commuting from Jacksonville to Gainesville during her final year of college. The hour-and-a-half drive each way, five days a week, was demanding — but one she says was worth it, especially because of the professors and courses that made every trip feel worthwhile.

“It would have been super easy to say I’m not going. But I knew it was going to be a good day anytime I went because of the people and professors.”

 

A Start in Blueberries

Everything shifted when she took Dr. Gerardo Nunez’s horticultural nutrition class. Shortly after submitting her final exam, he reached out and invited her to join his blueberry lab — an opportunity she accepted immediately, driven by a mindset of saying yes to every chance to learn.

Working in the lab gave her what she felt she had been missing throughout much of her undergraduate experience: a sense of community, mentorship, and a clearer picture of what her future could look like. There, she worked closely with graduate students Lauren Goldsby, Cecilia Heller, and Valentina Goles – graduate students who were already doing the kind of work she hoped to pursue herself. That experience, more than any single course, helped shape her path forward and solidified her interests.

“They went out of their way to explain what we were doing and why we were doing it, and how it supported the research and what the implications were for growers. It made me feel like I was part of something.”

For someone whose college experience had largely been remote, it was transformative.

“That was the biggest piece of the college experience I was missing. Those girls made my college experience. They put a bow on top of it and wrapped it in really pretty paper.”

 

Connecting Communities Back to Agriculture

Greathouse covers two counties as a single agent,  and often supports a third as needed. The scope of her role requires constant prioritization, as she balances an ever-changing mix of site visits, phone calls, field diagnostics, program planning, and outreach across a highly diverse agricultural landscape. Her workload spans a wide range of commodities, and no two growers face the same challenges.

Rather than needing to be an expert in every crop, much of her work depends on rapid problem-solving and resourcefulness. She relies on her ability to identify the right questions, connect with specialists across UF/IFAS, and persist until she finds the information her growers need.

Much of Greathouse’s work takes place in a region shaped by rapid urban growth. In Sumter County, the northern half is dominated by large residential developments like The Villages, while the southern half remains largely agricultural and rural. This is a contrast she sees play out daily in her work with growers. Farmers who have operated on the same land for decades, only to find themselves suddenly surrounded by new housing developments and facing increasing complaints about their routine agricultural practices.

To help bridge that divide, Greathouse supports outreach efforts such as Farm City and educational field trips that bring students and community members directly onto farms. She has seen growers creatively adapt by opening their operations to school groups during the week, using agritourism not only as an additional source of income but also as a way to educate the public about where food comes from. Through these programs, she helps connect students to agriculture in tangible ways. Programs aim at showing them how crops are grown, who grows them, and how food systems function beyond the grocery store.

“We would take collard greens from the veggie patch, show them how they were grown, go feed the cows, and explain that your hamburger didn’t come from the Publix freezer. It comes from a gentleman who’s out here at 4 a.m. every day making sure his cows have food and water.”

Thinking back on some of her favorite field trips, Greathouse remembers picking strawberries ahead of time to help students understand how a small flower becomes fruit. “Especially if you pick it straight from the plant and it’s warmed by the sun, it’s kind of a magical experience.”

 

 

Meaning Behind the Work

For Greathouse, Extension is ultimately about reconnecting people with something fundamental. She finds the greatest reward in helping children experience food production firsthand.

She believes many people have become disconnected from agriculture, often interacting with food only at the grocery store, without thinking about how it was grown or who produced it. That disconnect is what centers much of her programming and drives her passion.

What continues to inspire her, she says, is the simplicity and power of the process itself: that a single seed placed in the ground can, in a matter of weeks, grow into enough food to feed an entire family. For Greathouse, that transformation never stops feeling remarkable.

Her husband once attended one of her workshops and said, ‘You’re the only person I know who could make it exciting to learn about something as boring as pesticides.’”

She laughed- but she also took it as a compliment.

“If you make it fun, it will be fun. If you make it engaging, it will be engaging.”

And that, in many ways, captures her approach to Extension.

“Just engaging people and getting them connected back to something that was once so prevalent in our society; it’s really magical. And I enjoy it very much. It’s very rewarding.”