FEATURE | p e o p l e
The Woman Behind Central Florida Youth in Agriculture Laura Taylor Recognized a Need That She and Her Husband Knew They Could Fill by TERESA SCHIFFER
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FOR DECADES, KIDS IN POLK COUNTY interested in agriculture had just one venue for showing their livestock and other products, and that was the Polk County Youth Fair. A group of local agriculturalists, led by Laura Taylor, decided to do something about this. Polk County native Laura Taylor grew up in North Lakeland. Her family has a long history of involvement with agriculture. In the early 1980s, they raised Beefmaster cattle in the Kathleen area of North Lakeland, then moved on to the Brangus breed in the 1990s. Taylor got involved with the International Junior Brangus Breeders Asso-
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ciation, and in 1998 was elected president of the organization. In 2015, they began working with the Ultrablack® Brangus breed. After graduating from Kathleen High School, Taylor attended the University of Florida in Gainesville where she studied public relations and marketing, with a minor in business and an
outside concentration in animal science. In time, like many others, Taylor became frustrated with the slow movement on updating the Bartow Agriculture Center where the Polk County Youth Fair has been held since 1947. Though Polk County is one of the state’s top cattle producers, the Agriculture Center is significantly smaller than those of neighboring counties. In February of 2020, Taylor and her husband called together a group of friends to discuss the prospect of establishing a new opportunity for young agriculturalists in Polk County to participate in the process of showing and marketing FloridaAgNews.com
