Kevin Folta, a horticulture professor at the University of Florida, has spent his career defending agricultural biotechnology to the public despite a 2015 campaign that called him a corporate-paid liar. He continues speaking as a private citizen and mentors the next generation of science communicators, driven by gratitude from parents and farmers whose fears about food have eased.
At 3 years old, Dr. Kevin Folta was asking his dad about atoms and the scientific makeup of the universe. Today, he is a horticulture professor at the University of Florida with a litany of scientific accomplishments.
In my house growing up, all we spoke about was science, and my father taught me about everything from atoms to planets, and I couldn't wait to go to school. For one reason, science fair. And I was a kindergartner, and science fair turns out was only for 5th graders to 8th graders, and I cried till they let me in. Well, throughout my life I've been really concerned about people who don't have enough to eat, and I've been really concerned about farmers and farmers being able to sustainably farm with little environmental impact. That's, it's always been so exciting to me, and I've used an opportunity to study biology To try to find ways to help with those important missions. Well, the most important part of my work wasn't necessarily in the laboratory. It was talking about the good things that biology and biotechnology can do to help us, whether it's fighting disease or solving problems in agriculture. And I've faced enormous pushback over the last 2 decades. At the worst was probably in 2015 where I was described as someone who's paid to lie about science on behalf of corporations. And that kind of story, it stays online and is there forever. One of the worst parts is having a reputation that you earned as doing the right thing and working for students, working for farmers, working for the environment, and to be crushed by a nationally visible article or by constant online chatter as somebody who couldn't be trusted. They take away the trust that you earn, and it's devastating because you get satisfaction from helping others, and it directly affected my ability to help others. These topics can be really troublesome for universities, and a number of universities have told their scientists, back out of contentious conversations. I won't do it. Eventually they asked me to. They told me, you're not going to communicate on these issues anymore. It's too important to me, and I still do it anyway, but I do it as a private citizen rather than as a university professor, and it gives me more latitude to make One of the things we can do when we feel that we're being silenced is to train others. And I have students that they are now becoming the next generation of communicators. They're writing, they're producing podcasts and video, and I'm happy to edit them. This way I still get to communicate without actually being the communicator. The thing that keeps you going day to day are the emails you get from concerned moms, from farmers, from others who say thank you. But some of the most touching ones are the moms who Change their fear about food and farming. And they let their— one in particular said, my kids can go to a birthday party and have a hot dog and birthday cake, and I don't freak out anymore. That's the kind of change that we can create just by stepping into the conversation. A lot of people ask, why do I keep going forward after all the personal attacks, the reputation damage, even my own institution telling me to be quiet? And it's because it's the right thing to do. There's still problems that we need to solve, and the problems that I wanted to solve early in life still exist to some degree. And we're making progress, and I can't quit halfway through. We're seeing better solutions for farmers. We're seeing technology reach the developing world. We're seeing the environment benefit from good strategies in agriculture. It's not the time to quit. It's time to dial it up.
With all that, Folta practices what he preaches. Even in his spare time, he's advocating and educating. On his family mini farm, which his wife runs, they are regularly at farmers markets and hosting children farm tours. For him, it's a story that never gets old. Kevin Folta, 2021 AAEA Agricultural Communicators Network Distinguished Service Award recipient.
