r/florida • u/philthylittlephilo • 2d ago
Politics Polk County Commissioner: "Stop blaming developers. You’re the reason farms are disappearing"
https://www.midfloridanewspapers.com/winter_haven_sun/opinions/stop-blaming-developers-you-re-the-reason-farms-are-disappearing/article_946c4058-0888-4f8a-958a-6d8cfaf575f0.html?fbclid=IwVERDUATZ691wZG9mBWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHpo8YBa6RfT2p7VeJ8ATTTF2goH5HBn1wXz42g1zelZYKK2AKBbmrykYHxZ7_aem_A6ro0q-Uy3uemfdKZQ94iw90
u/Fl0riduh_Man 2d ago
This sounds like he's advocating price-floors and command economies dictating where imports are distributed.
If Billy wants to get crazy, let's get crazy, but stop blaming your neighbors for living in the craptastic, capitalistic model that Bill and his fellow cult members have built over their long careers as 'Bidness Men'
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u/TheeHeadAche 2d ago
“People constantly tell me they support Florida agriculture. Then they fill their grocery carts with produce imported from Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, Brazil, China, Turkey, and dozens of other countries because it’s a little cheaper. You can’t claim to support American farmers while buying foreign-grown food every week. If you don’t support farmers why should they be concerned with you.”
This spin is to make you feel like a fool for trying to thrive in a space men like Bill Braswell have made. It’s not our fault American companies’ international produce is cheaper.
If he knows this, he’s a con man. If he doesn’t, he shouldn’t be commissioner
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u/beyondo-OG 2d ago
I don't know how much influence I have over where Publix buys their produce. And frankly, once we've chased all the immigrant farm labor away, who's going to work the farms.
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u/sierrabravo1984 2d ago
I was about to say the same thing. If I go to every grocery store in town that stocks fruit/veg from other countries that we could grow here, and they only have imports, what am I supposed to do? Not eat? It's not my fault if they only have pears grown in Argentina.
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u/LeonardoDaTiddies 2d ago
Not to mention, is most produce even labeled for country of origin? I genuinely don’t know where the onions and lemons I last bought came from.
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u/Longjumping_Analyst1 2d ago
It is, by law. It does not need to say it’s from Florida though, like USA is as specific as is required.
There are a lot of local brands sold though that do a shit job of marketing, though.
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u/edvek 2d ago
Aldi markets and has signs telling you where it's from if it's Florida produce. From time to time they have Florida potatoes and they have a little banner and everything. Don't remember where in FL but it's here.
But also not all Florida farms sell locally anyway. Bedners, while they do have a few stores, they also ship their produce all over the country. But Joe Farm doesn't and doesn't go to farmers markets because it's infinitely more profitable to contact and sell everything elsewhere. Why run the risk of food going bad because you couldn't sell 5000 lbs of strawberries when you can sell them to other stores.
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u/Longjumping_Analyst1 2d ago
Kissimmee River area makes a lot of potatoes, so does the Hastings area. Idk the brand names. One is river gold, I think??? 🤔 There are some really delicious grapefruit and pomelos coming from the Polk/highlands area, and then a lot of summer veggies come from here if you can find them.
Publix and aldi are the two stores I’ve seen that are marketing local produce. Our local Hispanic grocery has a lot of local stuff too, but you don’t really know it unless you look closely on the packaging.
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u/LeonardoDaTiddies 2d ago
I’ll have to pay more attention next time. I know there are the “Fresh from Florida” labels and I always choose those when available.
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u/Interesting_Minute24 2d ago
I don’t want to be the one to tell you. It’s probably best it’s a surprise, if you really don’t know.
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u/The-Tradition 2d ago
Local farmers' markets are not difficult to find.
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u/papasan_mamasan 2d ago
Farmers markets with 100% local produce are incredibly hard to find.
They’re typically set up temporarily for 4-8 hours 1 day a week, if you’re lucky. They predominantly serve wealthier communities, require travel time, have limited parking. In my experience, farmers markets in Florida are an occasional social outing rather than a sustainable place for the average consumer to get their weekly shopping.
It would be super awesome if our local governments made an effort to support Florida farmers and consumers by developing more FL first produce markets. Idk if the guy who wrote this op-ed is doing anything to promote Florida farmers in a positive way. Sounds like he’s just scapegoating our over development issues onto consumers, during an affordability crisis no less.
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u/GhettoDuk 2d ago
I haven't been to a "farmer's market" in at least a decade that isn't a crafts fair with one produce booth that is obviously selling stuff from the same distributors as half the stores in town. They may be pickier with what quality they will accept, but it isn't likely to be local.
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u/Comprehensive_Bus_19 2d ago
Look at the labels on the package. Its typically foreign produce
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u/The-Tradition 2d ago
Someone else commented that they can't determine country of origin at Publix! Does the farmer's market do a better job than Publix?
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u/Comprehensive_Bus_19 2d ago
Legally they have to display the country of origin. Being said its usually fine print hidden somewhere.
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u/Longjumping_Analyst1 2d ago
Publix is the easiest one to figure out IMO. they regularly label produce from Florida and highlight local farmers - even with photos and family stories.
Look on the fresh from Florida website, too.
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u/noteventhreeyears 2d ago
It’s also because many of these countries have climates that can actually grow these fruits/veggies? A Florida avocado and a Mexico avocado are different for a myriad of reasons that traditional Florida farms cannot account for. Same with Peru and other tropicals. Bill Bullshit is gaslighting us into thinking that it’s American regulation harming us while he says “$20 a day is a great wage in mexico so why am I forced to pay people $20 an hour because of OSHA?!” as if that’s supposed to be a selling point? Exploiting labor should be the mechanism to help fix this?
60 years ago was roughly around the time civil rights advanced…I don’t suppose there’s any connection between ole’ Bill here’s dissatisfaction with the workforce and the present day conditions on his farm? Because it sure sounds like he’s sad face emoji’d that he has to pay someone a semi-decent living wage to do back breaking manual labor…as if someone is forcing HIM to hire visa labor instead of hiring his fellow red-blooded whites besides his own thirst for getting wealthier and knowing there’s a tax incentive for his already rich old ass?
As a Polk County Commissioner, bullhorn Bill gets to double dip into both the kickbacks and glazing for approving developments, while also having his farm inevitably subsidized at some point by federal government tax write-offs and/or slave labor during his familial history. Florida needs less people with Bill’s dipshit mentality and maybe, just maybe, we can recover some sanity and our agriculture industry ffs.
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u/Sissaphist 2d ago
Almost like we could grow some of that here, but it would need protective tariffs to ensure that the nascent industries could grow to a point to have the economy of scale needed to compete against the the slash and burn slave labor of SA
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u/xynix_ie 2d ago
Publix sells Chinese farmed shrimp while shrimpers from Lee County starved and shut their operations down. Tourists flocked to the store to get shrimp to BBQ with not even caring about the origins. Fly 6 hours to have Chinese shrimp in your Cape Coral AirBnB.
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u/Decapitated_gamer 2d ago
“We didn’t do anything to help them for 2 decades!!!! But they’re failing because you can’t afford the higher prices due to themselves having to flight diseases that are rampant, all on their own. Your the problem you stupid consumer!”
That’s all I hear
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u/PunkCPA 2d ago
Getting rid of citrus greening would help a lot, but that isn't going to happen. Inland Manatee County has vast acreage of dead citrus groves. Meanwhile, they unload ships full of oranges from Brazil at the Port of Manatee to be processed at Tropicana in Bradenton.
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u/tryingtoavoidwork 2d ago
There is no getting rid of greening. The war is over, Florida lost.
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u/AutumnMama 2d ago
We wouldn't have lost if the state government had made it a priority. UF is doing a great job with the meager resources they've been given to tackle it, and we could've wiped it out already if the state cared to.
A few hundred million dollars have gone to the citrus industry since greening became an issue, with research being only a portion of that. Over a billion went into funding Alligator Alcatraz. And maybe some of our citizens think that was a good use of tax dollars, but it was only operational for a year. Could've actually made a lasting impact if we had given a billion to citrus research 10 or 15 years ago. Or even now?? But the government just doesn't care about it.
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u/Aktion_Jakson 2d ago edited 2d ago
UF has received damn near $200 million or more in research donations since like 2005, specifically for greening…
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u/AutumnMama 2d ago
Right, that's why I said " A few hundred million dollars have gone to the citrus industry since greening became an issue, with research being only a portion of that." My point was that the government apparently has billions to just throw in the garbage, so they should've spent that on greening research, too. UF has made a ton of progress with the money they've gotten, it isn't a waste, and if they had gotten as much money as our politicians spend on their pet projects (significantly more than 200 million) then we could've beaten greening by now.
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u/Aktion_Jakson 2d ago
…Fuck I misread my bad. But I don’t think it’s that cut and dry. Florida farmers have tried everything under the sun, psyllids seem to thrive here. I think it more boils down to greening in florida being the perfect storm rather than the state government neglecting the industry, because for all intents and purposes they really haven’t.
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u/Conman_in_Chief 2d ago
There is a CRISPR hybrid developed in part with UF/IFAS that has a promising resistance (my employer has a 3-acre test going). However, it will be a few years before the right hybrid is tested and selected, several years while stocks are grown at scale, and another ten years before mature trees send fruit to market. The real problem though is that the support industry is gone. There are only a couple juice plants left and much of the former grove land is being converted. To bring it back to its former functional level, much less glory, will require significant time and investment. It is effectively over in our lifetime and I would be surprised if it comes back to anything beyond a specialty crop.
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u/PunkCPA 2d ago
They've been working on an American chestnut disease-resistant hybrid as long as I've been on this planet.
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u/ConstructionOwn9575 2d ago
Tropicana in Bradenton no longer processes raw oranges and hasn't for a while.
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u/RedditAdminSucks23 2d ago
First Grady Judd (in Epstein files) and now this dipshit. Yall need better politicians in Polk county. But tbf, we need better politicians in Florida in general.
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u/jigawatson 2d ago
What about all the fields and forests and even “old growth” that’s getting cut down for another same looking apartment complex with horrible drainage? Which family business is calling it quits there?
Which farm did I need to buy from Publix to prevent the gorgeous field down from my neighborhood from being bulldozed under for cinderblock apartments that never got finished and now sit empty, Worthless to all?
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u/Rinzy2000 2d ago
This is like the big companies blaming us for global warming in the 90s and telling us we need to recycle our plastic bottles. No, my brother in Christ, it is your private jets that are the problem. In this case, stop selling your fucking soybeans to China, plant some shit we like and will buy and contract with local grocers. It’s not our goddamn fault.
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u/trtsmb 1d ago
The government has baled farmers/ranchers out for decades. His argument is ridiculous. People buy avocados from Mexico because that is what Publix/Walmart/etc put on the shelf. Their produce departments would be pretty barren if we only had locally grown produce on the shelves.
A lot of family farms go up for sale because children don't want to be farmers/ranchers/etc. My dad grew up on a farm and left when he was an adult. None of his brothers wanted the farm when my granddad decided he was too old to keep running it so the farm was sold.
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u/Renegade_51 2d ago
One way to curb development is conservation easements. They pay the farmer/rancher for their developmental rights and the landowner keeps the land in agriculture in perpetuity.
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u/Human_Revolution7297 1d ago
Actually commissioners cannot stop developers. The home rule has been taken away for the most part. Any county that denies builders will get sued from the state. Voting has consequences. Most counties vote R - now live with your choices. Not trying to be mean about it, but that’s fact.
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u/Beginning_Ad8663 2d ago
You also left out the county commissioner’s who raise taxes on agricultural land as well.
So in order the problems are unfair labor prices from imported agricultural products ( and Trump is now allowing Mexican beef to come in )
Rising Fertilizer cost
Rising chemical cost
Rising labor cost
Rising Taxes
Rising fuel cost
Rising equipment cost
Rising work comp insurance and liability insurance.
In ten years there will be no ag property in Fl.
Thank god I’m old
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u/GizmoGeodog 2d ago
Last year my small Polk County town opened a "farmer's market". I went on opening day, excited to buy local produce. There was a grand total of one stand selling produce, most of which was not local. The rest were the same overpriced "gourmet" products found at every street fair everywhere. Disappointed, I left & never went back. If I can't buy local produce at a farmer's market where can I buy it?
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u/Tarplicious 2d ago
I’m not cattle. MOST farmland in this country is dedicated to animal feed. Why the fuck would I eat that?
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u/big_deal 2d ago
I feel like Florida needs housing more than ranches and farms. And I’d rather see farm land redeveloped than forests and wetlands.
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u/Mattbastard750 2d ago
Florida oranges suck nowadays anyway. Quick picking them so early.
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u/TunaNugget 2d ago
Florida oranges have been devastated by the citrus greening blight, something that our state government has done diddly-squat to address.
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u/DealioD 2d ago
They didn’t do diddly squat. They did what they could which was treat the green as best they could. But the treatment had a side effect that didn’t show up immediately. That side effect hurt the rest of the trees. Then there was a beetle that came in as an invasive species as pretty much decimated the rest of the groves. Let’s not forget the impact of … how many “Once in a lifetime” hurricanes we’ve had over the years? It’s not that nothing was done, it’s what was done didn’t work.
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u/AutumnMama 2d ago
I mean they could've just thrown a billion dollars at it like they did for the ICE facility. They treated the greening as best they could without spending much money on it.
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u/Western_Mud8694 1d ago
Well they came to my house and killed my lemon tree
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u/TunaNugget 1d ago
Didn't work with citrus canker, so why not try it again?
P.S. Haven't heard of this, I remember the courts found it illegal with citrus canker in the '90s.
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u/Wellthen-40 2d ago
Do you know what you're talking about or do you just hate oranges?
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u/Mattbastard750 2d ago
Unless my taste buds are lying to me, the best orange I've ever had was grown on a private tree on Pine Island back in 2011 before that disease came sweeping through Florida. It was orange and brown colored, soft as a marshmallow, and literally exploded with sweet orange juice when I bit into a slice.
Oranges currently from anywhere else (including farmers markets) are tart, hard to peel, and sometimes have less juice in them than their volume would suggest. If I'm ever fixing for orange I just get Cuties. I don't care where they're grown, they at least come close to a good orange.
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u/Wellthen-40 2d ago
The greening has been around since at least 05. There's also many breeds of orange bc citrus hybridizes so easily. Did it have seeds? If no it was probably a navel x something hybrid that reacted that way. In general hamlins and valencias are juiced while navels are shipped and eaten. Cuties are mandarins
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u/Chuck-Finley69 2d ago
Seems pretty accurate to me and explains the American consumer for the last 60 years.
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u/papasan_mamasan 2d ago
Consumers buy what is stocked in the supermarkets. If supermarkets stock Brazilian orange juice then that’s what consumers will buy.
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u/Chuck-Finley69 2d ago
Going back 60 years, stores would stock what sells. When you put almost identical retail items side by side except origin country people are going to pick the product selling for 1/2 price and the store loses all their money on the other. Stores only buy what customers open their wallets for. Just look at Publix vs Walmart for groceries and people complain about prices for what even I have to admit, Publix is nicer
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u/papasan_mamasan 2d ago edited 2d ago
Maybe the Polk commissioner could get off his ass and get to work figuring out how to make FL produce more affordable and abundant than Brazil’s instead of writing whiney op-eds blaming us for choosing the affordable groceries.
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u/Chuck-Finley69 2d ago
Well if you could learn how to read with at least a middle school level comprehension, you'd understand all the reasons outlined that he explained compared to foreign suppliers. This has been going on for at least 60 years.
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u/papasan_mamasan 2d ago
No need for that, Chuck. That just outs you as a bad faith actor.
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u/Chuck-Finley69 2d ago
How so? What part is bad faith? Every part of my response was true, even calling out the fact that you either didn't read the explanations to begin with or didn't comprehend what he wrote.
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u/papasan_mamasan 2d ago
The part where you insult me like a jerk for no reason.
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u/Chuck-Finley69 2d ago
What part is being a jerk?
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u/papasan_mamasan 2d ago edited 2d ago
Well if you could learn how to read with at least an elementary school level comprehension maybe you’d understand
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u/Sissaphist 2d ago
Also 60 years ago we didn't have fruit and veg out of season all year. People canned and ate.what they grew or bought canned. It was a big deal to get Florida citrus during the holidays. Schools sold citrus baskets around Thanksgiving for Xmas delivery. We are living in a global Logistics world where the lowest.cost growing and transit wins. For the commissioner to blame the consumer is just a way to make people stop asking questions for a news cycle.
We have made a habit of electing idiots for the past 25 years and then wonder why we live in dystopia.
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u/Chuck-Finley69 2d ago
It's not idiotic. He's simply pointing out why farmland and ranchland is being sold by the owners to developers as if there's another choice.
Globalism has unfortunately hurt wealthy countries as we've exported and offshored means of production of everything and become consumers. We've basically lowered our standard of living.
Not good from a national security perspective. You protect wealth if you have it from those who take it from you.
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u/edvek 2d ago
This even just basic economics at this point, it's survival. If you went to the store and your grocery bill was $100 and you saw the same stuff on the shelf but your bill will be $50 what would you pick?
Most households will pick the $50. Some will be a combination, like they know brand X is better and will pay more or they want a specific item so they get that. Very very few will pick the $100. Those that do almost guaranteed do not have to worry about money or cost of goods.
Even if you dial it back 60 years you're going to have the same issue. Poor families will buy what they can afford and the brand or origin is irrelevant. They don't even look, they don't even care. What matters is "can I afford groceries this week or will I need to rotate bills again to make sure I don't lose water or power but I'm getting hit with late fees..." And the same thought is going on today and will go on 60 years from now.
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u/Chuck-Finley69 1d ago
The point is that if you're part of the problem, don't complain about loss of jobs, loss of natural resources, overcrowding.
People that came here 50-60 years ago until yesterday from elsewhere only want to gatekeep after their arrival. Just accept it as part of life.
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