Departments - Central Florida Ag News

Commissioner’s AgriCorner: A race against time

Citrus makes up roughly $9 billion of Florida agriculture’s $100 billion yearly contribution to the economy and provides more than 75,000 jobs to Floridians. For decades, citrus has been synonymous with Florida and served as our state’s most recognized agricultural product. Now, Florida citrus is facing an existential crisis: citrus greening.[emember_protected custom_msg=”Click here and register […]

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Commissioner’s AgriCorner: Planting the seeds for growth in the Florida ag industry

Florida agriculture has played an important role in Florida’s 500-year history, providing food and fiber for the people of Florida, the United States and around the world. Today, Florida agriculture has a $100 billion impact on our state’s economy and employs nearly 1 million Floridians – and it continues to grow. As Florida’s Commissioner of

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Harvest time: Organic blueberry growers battle odds in niche market

Seventy-one-year-old Benny McLean Jr.’s family used to grow citrus organically before anybody cared about organics. Before herbicides and chemical fertilizers were introduced in the mid-1960s, they sprayed with sulphur and lime. [emember_protected custom_msg=”Click here and register now to read the rest of the article!”] So when McLean’s son, Matt, came home from college 13 years

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Recipe Spotlight: Patriotic desserts made with Florida ingredients

July 4: Dad’s done. The ribs are bare and the corn cobs look like modern art. Though belts are bursting, there’s always room for a little holiday dessert. Now’s the time for Florida fruit … just to make us all feel healthy and take the edge off the guilt from such a rich meal.

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@griTech: Getting down to the bottom of the problem at the bay

Man-made disasters can create enormous problems for our natural environment, and the BP oil spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico in June 2010 was no exception. It has been estimated that 60,000 barrels of oil came gushing from the spill, leaving an oil slick that was 130 miles long and 70 miles wide.

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Recipe Spotlight: How a good hunt turns into a great meal

The hunt is over. The kill is cleaned. … Now, what do you do with it? Hunting has always been part of Florida but more so since the Spaniards let the first hog go wild and proliferate. It actually took two, unless the first one was already expecting a raft of piglets. [emember_protected custom_msg=”Click here

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At the helm of Warner’s ag program

| Lauren Lewis laying the foundation for tomorrow’s industry | After earning her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Alabama and Texas, Lauren Lewis, a graduate of Haines City High School’s class of 2006, has returned to Polk County to head Lake Wales-based Warner University’s new agricultural studies program. The program is expected to help train

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Life after farming: Bill and Maxi Adams

| Couple is feeling at home at Lake Howard Heights | Bill Adams grew his citrus nursery business into one of the largest in the state — until canker decimated the industry and agriculture officials ordered his trees burned. “When the canker problem struck the industry (in the mid 1980s), I was doing very well

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Home on the ranch: Cow camp house offers rustic lifestyle

Ranch-style houses proliferate in suburbia across the United States. But the true Florida ranch house is distinctive and reminiscent of a lifestyle that some southerners still practice today. Ask Earlow Cospine. He and his now-deceased brother, Elwin, built one in the early 1960s. [emember_protected custom_msg=”Click here and register now to read the rest of the

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Observing a major pest for cattle producers — the gallinipper

In the photo: Entomologist Phil Kaufman shows the size difference between the invasive Asian tiger mosquito, right, and the native species Psorophora ciliata, sometimes called the gallinipper. It hasn’t really been a particularly rainy winter, Phil Kaufman notes, but there’s been enough to leave standing water in the fields out in rural areas to be

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