Highlights:
- UF’s Food and Resource Economics Department is launching the Wayne T. Davis Agricultural and Rural Entrepreneurship program in Fall 2026 to help students build agriculture-focused businesses.
- The new course sequence teaches agricultural business fundamentals in the fall and culminates in a spring “Shark Tank”-style pitch process where students present full business plans to industry mentors.
- Funded by alumnus Wayne T. Davis, the program will equip students to innovate in areas ranging from automation, water use, food preparation, precision agriculture and more.
Growing a business is difficult. Growing an agriculture business can have its own unique challenges that can be daunting for a budding businessperson.
That’s why the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Department of Food and Resource Economics (FRE) is launching a new entrepreneurship program, specifically targeted for students who want to create agricultural businesses.
The Wayne T. Davis Agricultural and Rural Entrepreneurship program will kick off in the fall of 2026 with the course Principals of Agricultural Entrepreneurship, with a follow-up course in the spring of 2027. The class series will focus on the basics of entrepreneurship and business-planning, with a focus on agricultural issues, said Tori Rumenik, an FRE alumna and the program’s creative coordinator. The courses are open to both undergraduate and graduate students as joint classes. All majors across UF can enroll.
“Agriculture is facing huge challenges, from automation demand to responsible water use, and UF really has the brightest minds in the nation where it comes to agriculture innovation,” she said. “We want to make it possible for them to take those big ideas and transform them into businesses after graduation, but we need to provide the toolkit to do so.”
The course series will focus on agricultural business basics in the fall, such as business fundamentals, regulation, food safety, safe lending practices and market research. Students will hear from successful business leaders in the agriculture industry about best practices, lessons learned and success stories.
In the spring, students will create business plans and present them in a “Shark Tank”-style pitching process to mentors who run successful agricultural businesses. By the end of the course, students should feel prepared to launch their own businesses.
The goal of the program is to empower students to take the concepts they’re learning in their degree and springboard them into businesses or consumer innovations after graduation, said Rumenik, who is also the executive director of the North Carolina Ag Partnership.
The course isn’t just for students who want to start farms, although future farmers are welcome, she said. Rumenik hopes businesses from irrigation to food service to precision agriculture come out of this program.
“If someone is going to figure out how to make automated harvesting better, they’re going to come from UF,” she said. “We want to give them the space to do it.”
The program will be part of the Agricultural and Rural Entrepreneurship undergraduate minor, as well as an Agricultural and Rural Entrepreneurship track for students pursuing their Master of Agribusiness.
The program has been initially funded by a donation from Wayne T. Davis, an FRE alumnus and successful agricultural entrepreneur.
“Mr. Davis’s generous gift to start this program will help prepare our students not only for the future agricultural workforce, but it will give students the capacity to grow the workforce by becoming their own bosses,” said Lisa House, FRE chair and professor. “The next generation of problem-solvers are already in our lecture halls, and we want to equip them to go into the world with their ideas prepped and ready for the marketplace.”
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ABOUT UF/IFAS
The mission of the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) is to develop knowledge relevant to agricultural, human and natural resources and to make that knowledge available to sustain and enhance the quality of human life. With more than a dozen research facilities, 67 county Extension offices, and award-winning students and faculty in the UF College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, UF/IFAS brings science-based solutions to the state’s agricultural and natural resources industries, and all Florida residents.
UF/IFAS DEPARTMENT OF FOOD AND RESOURCE ECONOMICS
The UF/IFAS Department of Food and Resource Economics Department (FRE) provides research, extension and teaching to address Florida, national and global economic challenges and opportunities across agricultural, food and natural resource industries.
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