With just one week to go in the legislative session, the Department of Agriculture is hard at work

Wilton Simpson, Florida Commissioner of Agriculture, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday morning to talk about what’s been going on in the state.

With one more week in the legislative sessions in Tallahassee, what are some of the priorities for the Department of Agriculture?

Simpson said, “The package that we have going through the legislature now includes several things are important to us. One of the things that is in this ban is cultured meat. So there are very wealthy folks in this country that believe that they can grow meat in a petri dish and then using a 3D printer, make it look like the steak that you want using a biomass. Their goal, of course, is to eliminate your cattle industry. Not just cattle, but chicken and everything else. So they would just culture this meat. From a state’s perspective and Department of Agriculture, first of all, we have a very robust supply chain with our current cattle industry and other meat production in the state that we would not want to put in jeopardy. Number two, we do not believe that there’s clearly been enough testing on this cultured meat to make sure that it’s even safe. So if we’re going to disrupt our supply chain in such a large way, we want to make sure that there’s been enough testing to even understand where this is coming from. We know the federal government has said many times, oh, yeah, these items are safe and how many times have we found out, a year later or 10 years later, that some of the things that the FDA or the USDA said was safe is not safe for you. In Florida, we’re going to protect our food supply chain. We’re going to protect our local industry, and we’re going to make sure that these things are safe before we buy into that.”

With all the talk about the dangers of processed food, certainly cultured meat would fall into that category.

Simpson said, “There are questions, people say, well, we can order it online and buy it. Certainly Americans are free to do as they wish. But again, this is the liberal’s attempt to eliminate your ag industry, as they say, has to be eliminated to be at zero. I’m just thinking how much of our supply chain and our agriculture industry are we going to sacrifice, knowing there’s going to be a billion more people living on this planet, 30 years from now? We have food insecurity today. Can you imagine if we wipe out large swaths of our agriculture industry, only to discover that there are some fatal flaws within a biomass grown in a petri dish to form you a piece of meat, a protein that you’re going to eat? So there’s a lot a lot further to go in this studies and the state of Florida is going to take a stand and outlaw that here. We’re hopeful that other states and I know they are, after they’ve seen us put it in our ag packet, other states are following suit. I think you’re going to have states like California that will do it and embrace it. Of course, those are Americans, and I wish them well, but it just seems that they’re going in the wrong direction to protect their supply chain in the ag industry.”

There are also FFA and 4H kids in the ag packet in Tallahassee.

Simpson said, “A lot of times they do not get excused absences to be able to participate in their outside the classroom activities. So in the bill this year, we’re also saying, hey, these kids that are in 4H and FFA are going to get excused absences as they miss to be able to go work in agriculture and learn things about the agriculture industry. I think that’s very important. I always use me as the example, about 47 years ago, when I was in middle school, we learned a lot about humanities and things of that nature back then and we questioned it back then. Why do we need to learn this, right? Because we were from the farms, we were working, we were connected the farms back then. Everyone knew where your food supply comes from, because of those connections. They were saying, well, you need to know these things it gives you a more worldly view. It makes you a more cultured person, if you will. So now what we have is we have most of our children in this country and certainly in this state, do not know where their food comes from. So the more that we can do to really put agriculture in the forefront of their education part of it just as we did humanities 50 years ago, if we can put agriculture in front of our kids and let them understand where their food comes from, it would certainly make for the long term best interests of agriculture as a state of Florida. So we’re going to keep working on some of those things over the next few years with the legislature to inject more of that in there because again, very few of our students today know where their food supply comes from. We’d have a much better and I think a stronger state if more of our citizens were connected to agriculture.”

Protecting and preserving the wildlife corridor has been a priority.

Simpson said, “This is something so important to us. As you know, as Senate president a few years ago, I defined in state statute, what the wildlife corridor was. It was something I was very proud of, it was one of my main priorities. Within that wildlife corridor, it’s more than just the wildlife corridor. That’s where animals traverse the state from the Keys to Pensacola. But it’s also where our aquifer in the state gets recharged and it’s also where we grow your food. So Rural and Family Lands protection, we buy the development rights from farmers within that space. Last year, we opened the program up for the first time in five years, and we had over a billion and a half dollars of opportunities, which probably equate to around 400,000 acres. We’ve slowly been buying those projects. It’s something that’s very important because we’re going to have our way of life in Florida 50 years from now where we’re growing our food, where we’re having a wildlife corridor, where we have ample water and water recharge area, we’re going to have to make sure that we keep funding the purchases of those development rights within those systems. Yesterday, the legislature agreed to $100 million of recurring revenue. So the department would get $100 million every year. So that’s a big start. When I was Senate president I put $300 million dollars in the budget. So we’re hoping they’ll supplement it with other dollars this year. If we go as a state and buy those lands, we’re looking at two and a half to three times the cost of buying the development rights, and then the state of Florida would own the lands, so it would come off of your local tax rolls. Then we would have to spend more your taxpayer dollars to take care of those lands. When we buy the development right through our program, the private owners own the land, it stays on the tax rolls. They have agreed using best management practices to take care of that land. So we’d be very fortunate to own less land than we already do in the state of Florida as a state and local governments and have this land in private hands, but being managed for best management practices, because in a lot of cases, we just don’t do an adequate job across all of our different various kinds of lands, of managing and taking care of them. In certain areas, we do good jobs in certain areas we don’t. Having private ownership, leaving it on the local tax rolls, makes the tax dollar go three times as far as us trying to go out and buy these properties. Again, I’m not a person that wants to see the government own two thirds of the state. So we’re very proud of the Rural and Family Lands and we’re working closely with the legislature to get that funding done.”

What are Florida Team Cards?

Simpson said, “This is something that is very important for agriculture. So each year, agriculture generally receives in the tax package a certain tax break. I’ll give you an example, when I was Senate President, we said the fencing materials that fence off your agricultural lands, you do not have to pay sales tax on, or the gates or trailers and equipment of those types. So if I were to go to do that, as a farmer, if I went to go purchase my fencing for my property, which by the way, can be very expensive, I would have to fill out several pieces of paperwork, to receive my sales tax break. The retailer would then have to fill out an additional piece of paperwork. Then they would send that into the DOR and it would be a process, but it would take several minutes, maybe 10 or 15 minutes to be able to perform that. Well, what we put into law last year working with the legislature is what we call a team card. And then that team card it fits in your wallet, just like a driver’s license and when you go there to make your purchase, you display your card, and they run it through the machine and then you get your sales tax break on the spot without filling out any paperwork. The retailer has to fill out no paperwork, and you get your tax break. So we’ve made it much more simple. Again, another hurdle to get out of the way of your farmers. So the team card we’re very proud of. We’ve sent out, I think we’re well over 3,000 now. If you have greenbelt property if you’re bonafide agriculture, then please sign up for your team card. You should get it in less than a week. If you’ve signed up and qualify for it. By the way, if you sign up and you’re not qualified for it, and there are penalties obviously, we do not want fraud in the system. But if you’re qualified for it, we’d encourage you to get your cards and make it a lot easier for you to get your sales tax breaks if you’re a farmer.”

Fresh from Florida has another very solid program in effect now.

Simpson said, “If you go to our website, it’ll show you what all is being grown in Florida now. Not only bell peppers, but strawberries. Most of the strawberries being sold in the country now are being produced here in Florida or from the United States, of course. We’re very proud of those apps. If you go on our website, it’ll show you what’s being grown in Florida. Right now in Florida 70% of all of the vegetables that are being sold on the eastern seaboard are coming from the state of Florida today. We’re very proud of that too. When you think about agriculture and our economy, agriculture is the number two leading driver of the economy. We have over 2 million people today working in agriculture, over $180 billion of economic output. During a recession, or the pandemic, agriculture is the number one driver of the economy. What Fresh from Florida focuses on is making sure that our residents and people that are shopping in the state of Florida or around the country can identify Fresh from Florida products, because we have a lot of folks that come from the north during the wintertime to Florida, and then they go back, they buy a lot of Fresh from Florida products in the northeast, or wherever they’re from, but we advertise there to make sure they know they’re getting Florida grown fruits and vegetables, and we have over 300 commodities in the state. We want to make sure that people know that they’re supporting Florida farmers. If you go into a store and you see Florida produce, there are restaurants and people that are willing to normally pay a little more for homegrown food than they are either from other states or other countries. We’re very proud of that program. We’ve really ramped it up in the last 12 months, we’ve gotten great response. Every time you’re buying Fresh from Florida products, you’re helping your local agriculture and your local farmers.”

More than 2,200 acres of production agricultural land was purchased under the Rural and Family Lands protection program just about a week and a half ago, adding to the more than 36,000 acres permanently preserved in the past year under the program.

Simpson said, “As Senate President, I was able to put $300 million in the budget for that program and we went over 100,000 acres preserved. That program was put in place in 2001. It really wasn’t, I don’t think clearly it was not getting the due from legislature. From 2001 to 2021, there was $100 million spent. Then of course, I put $300 million in in the one year. So we’re well over 100,000 acres now and the department has the ability to close on projects that are less than $5 million, without having to go through the cabinet. So we’ve closed on a lot of the smaller projects. It’s very important again, if we’re going to save our wildlife corridor, and if you want to know what the wildlife corridor is essentially, Google a map of the state of Florida at nighttime, and you’ll see all the beautiful lights in the state of Florida, you’ll see all the beautiful lights around where you live. Everything that’s dark on that map essentially is a wildlife corridor. Everywhere it’s dark on that map is where our animals traverse the state. It’s where our aquifer gets recharged, and it’s where we grow your food. That’s the area that we’re trying to substantially protect with the Rural and Family Lands Act. Farmers are signing up all over the state. We need additional dollars to keep administering this process and it’s going very well. So we are making some inroads. But we have many, many opportunities, billions of dollars, it’s going to take to make sure that we can preserve our way of life and have ample food and water to be able to live on the next 50 or 100 years.”

How is the department handling wildfires in Florida?

Simpson said, “We have been doing controlled burns here in the state of Florida in the last three months. This is controlled burn season. Our target every year is about 200,000 acres. We will do more or less than that, based on conditions. If we have the right conditions, we may get up to 250,000. If we do not have the right conditions, we may only do as little as 150,000 acres. But the ideal of these control burns is not only to make our forests systems more healthy and restore those forests, but it’s also to not have a major catastrophe, if you have a major wildfire. To give you an example, we’ve all seen the news stories, what happened in Canada, what happens in Colorado, what happens in California, they do not have the robust process that we do and program. We’re very proud of our foresters here in the state of Florida. They’re the best in the country. The training that we give them, the equipment that we’ve been able to acquire. We’ve got a great system, but what we’ve acquired in the last year, is making things much better and safer for foresters. Our biggest challenge in the state of Florida today is because what will happen is that people will start doing the backyard grilling and things of that nature, fires will get out of hand and it’ll start a fire. Then later in the year as summer starts, obviously lightning strikes. Our biggest challenge today is the Hurricane Michael fuel on the ground from five years ago, about half of that material is still there. We did not get the resources that was necessary from the federal government to take care of those issues. We did not have a Commissioner of Agriculture that prioritized that the last four years. So we did not get that cleaned up. A very untimely placed lightning strike within that system could be a pretty serious threat to our state. But we have professionals. We’ve handled Idalia much different. Hurricane Idalia took down lot of forests in the Big Bend area. We came through with 37 and a half million dollars of money from the legislature last year so that we could clean that area up, I hope within two or three years to have substantially all of Hurricane Idalia cleaned up. So when you think about the differences in our priorities, I think that’s what happens when you see control burns going on in Florida, they can be nuisances. There’s smoke, there’s ashe, there’s things like that, but know that everything we’re doing there is not only to protect that health of that environment, but also to protect us from serious wildfires that could go out of control. We’re very proud of our team. They’re doing a great job and we’re gearing up now and getting ready for now what will be our seasonally high fire season. Most of that it could be anywhere from arson to back yard fires for the next few months and then we’ll go into lightning season.”