The Weblog

*From Pelican Press:

Sustaining Sarasota’s local producers

By Rick Barry
It’s way too easy to imagine the entire county paved over, gated subdivisions from Sarasota Bay to the DeSoto County line, with little room left for things green and growing beyond lawns and parkland.

But at least among small and large farm, ranch and grove owners — and many longtime residents – there is still solid support for agriculture in Sarasota County, and not just for its value as an icon of our historical roots. The green space and the availability of fresh, locally grown produce have undeniable appeal, and there are sustainability and ethical issues to consider, too.

Newcomers, especially affluent refugees from big cities, may be totally unaware of the county’s still-expansive farms and ranches in eastern Sarasota County, or sniff at such groups as 4-H, Future Farmers of America and the Sarasota County Fair as irrelevant or unsophisticated relics of another time. But to those who support local agriculture’s sustainability, they are the incubators of agriculture’s next generation of farmers and ranchers.

And judging from 26 years of support for the downtown Sarasota Farmers Market, their numbers are substantial and growing.

Translating that support into sustaining that largely unseen pillar of the local economy is the challenge for those who care, in and out of government. Sarasota County has adopted an unequivocal policy of supporting agriculture. (See box)

County government’s efforts on a broad front on behalf of “sustainability” – a buzzword that suggests Sarasota should do what it can to produce as much as it can locally to provide for its own residents – will help. So will programs like the Sarasota County Extension Service’s work toward getting fresh, local produce into the public schools – the “Farm to Schools Program” – championed by its local food coordinator, John Matthews.

But the single most challenging goal is ensuring agricultural lands survive the region’s seemingly inexorable eastward press of development.

The latest and most ambitious effort in decades to protect rural, agricultural land has become known as the Myakka Ranchlands effort, which would protect some 19,000 acres of agricultural land in three different ranches from development.

Led By Albert Joerger, president of the Sarasota Conservation Foundation, conservation easements would allow current owners to continue agricultural operations, but through the public purchase of their development rights, would ensure those tracts surrounding Myakka State Park – in the Myakka River watershed – would be protected from the threat of suburban sprawl in perpetuity.

The cost of that effort, however, could reach $100 million. The project – in a large part because it protects an important regional drinking water source – is on the state’s short list for purchase in its “Florida Forever” land preservation program. But that program, which receives $300 million a year and expires in 2010, has allocated all but about $20 million to date.

Additional funds for the purchase are expected from the Southwest Florida Management District and Sarasota County.

The proposed purchase goes before the governor and cabinet next month for review, and Joerger said the key to making Myakka Ranchlands’ preservation a reality now is extending the Florida Forever Program beyond 2010 – and refunding it.

In the tightest budget environment in many years, and in the face of a possible national recession, freeing funds for rural land preservation could be a tough sell, even supporters concede.

“But we spend $8 billion a year for roads,” Joerger said, “and nobody comes to Florida for roads. They come here because Florida is a beautiful state.”

So he remains hopeful and undeterred, he said. “But we need people to call their representatives and express their support.”

Protecting our farm and ranch lands is an ethical issue as well, says Bill Zoller, president of Citizens for Sensible Growth and the descendent of farming families who owned huge tracts of land including much of Myakka State Park.

“Every region has a responsibility to produce a certain percentage of the food it consumes,” he said. "If we get our tomatoes from Ohio part of the year, it’s only right we supply Ohio with local tomatoes during our growing season.

“If we become 100 percent consumers, we’re not doing our part,” and the success of several fairly large local organic farms may portend an era in the not-to-distant future where we consume more and more locally produced food.

“But of course the real key to protecting agriculture is ensuring that farmers are really growing things as a business that’s financially sustainable, and not just maintaining token operations while waiting to grow houses.”

Jono Miller, director of the New College Environmental Studies Program, member of the Environmentally Sensitive Lands Oversight Committee – and a candidate for county commission – has asked the question: “Do we value agriculture enough to do more to ensure it’s part of our future?” realizing “there is no body of law that protects the capacity of our land to grow food.”

Just the word “protect” raises the hackles of Sarasota ranchers and farmers. What they fear most are schemes involving the taking of development rights through policies, growth plans or zoning, without fair compensation

Rory Martin, president of the Sarasota Farm Bureau and the county fair association, a longtime farmer himself, said the "development of rural land near the county’s urban services boundary is inevitable.

“But beyond that, the preservation of development rights is essential to sustain [agricultural businesses] because there may be a time when a portion [of a ranch or farm] has to be sold off to keep the rest of the operation going, because of inheritance taxes or other reasons – or the owner may one day have to borrow against it, and land is worth a lot more with its development rights [intact].

“Agriculture just needs a level playing field, and we can compete.”

Buster Longino, 81, has worked a lifetime to adopt sustainable agricultural practices on his family’s eastern Sarasota lands: restoring wetlands, using underground irrigation for its citrus groves and employing advanced land management techniques for its timbering and cattle operations. He was elected last year to the Florida’s Agricultural Hall of Fame.

In 2002 he negotiated a conservation easement for nearly half of his ranch’s more than 8,000 acres, ensuring that land would remain in agricultural use. He, too, said the very words “protecting agriculture,” make him shudder, with their suggestion of government intervention.

“But we are concerned about the future or our land, too. The ranchers and farmers I know don’t want it paved over.”

Boutique and organic farms can be part of the solution, he said, “if they get more local products into local consumption. We need more of that,” although Florida beef cattle operations must ship its calves out west for fattening, and citrus operations need international markets to absorb the volume of their production.

“I may be a Pollyanna,” he said, “but I really believe agriculture will be around for a very long time here. We’re producing much more on smaller tracts. And the more ranchland that is developed, the more valuable really good [agricultural] land will become, until one day it will be equal in value to developable land.”