Florida

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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New leadership, same educational goal: Rising to the challenge as the new Polk FFA District Advisor

The baton has been passed to the new Polk FFA District Advisor, William Paul Webb, who will start his new position on July 1 to replace the retiring David Byrd, the FFA District Advisor since 2001. [emember_protected custom_msg=”Click here and register now to read the rest of the article!”] “Paul has been genuinely involved in

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A welcome development for growers

| Coca-Cola company invests in Florida’s citrus-growing future | It might sound contradictory that the manufacturer of a popular soft drink would expand into Polk County’s traditional citrus industry, but Andrew Meadows doesn’t see it that way. [emember_protected custom_msg=”Click here and register now to read the rest of the article!”] He notes, for example, Minute

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To farm or not to farm

To farm or not to farm?  It’s a question of costs versus profits. Florida’s Green Belt Law allows agriculture to use land whose property tax is a fraction of real market value. The removal of the benefit could be the difference between profit and loss. Some net profit margins per acre are as low as

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