What is UFarm?
UFarm is a University of Florida approved Fee-for-Service Educational Activity (FSEA) intended to recover costs related to crop, tree, and other plant growth and maintenance at UF/IFAS Research and Education Centers and Sites in addition to centralized controlled growth environments on campus (click here). UFarm provides a break-even, cost-based pricing mechanism for faculty to budget and charge UF/IFAS incurred costs related to crop, plant, or tree growth and maintenance to grants and other funding sources. UFarm is managed through an online web-based system – built and maintained in Hyland’s OnBase platform by the University of Florida’s Information Technology group (UFIT).
Objectives of UFarm:
- Provide cost-based pricing for faculty, RECs, and sites – UFarm pricing on a commodity basis has been established using cost information derived from myUFL with the goal of providing faculty and unit leaders with data-supported rates. Such approved rates can then be used by faculty for proposal budget development.
- Provide administrative relief – Creating a uniform study request form using local workflow approval gives RECs, Sites, and faculty across the Institute a consistent and unambiguous process for initiating, servicing, and completing field-level or controlled growth research studies.
- Ensure compliance with federal regulations (2 CFR 200 §200.468) – Approved rates are needed to appropriately charge plant, crop, grove, and other commodity-specific research costs to federal awards.
- Generate usage and research impact information – The UFarm system collects data on the usage and type of commodities being grown across the RECs and Sites and centralized controlled environments. Such information can assist IFAS leadership to better understand the collective impact for the Institute’s field, grove, and controlled growth environment research.
