The Florida Senate Agriculture Committee met Wednesday for the first time leading into the 2023 regular session, and Chairman Jay Collins acknowledged that the challenges for the industry in the Sunshine State are formidable.
Collins said: “If we don’t keep our food product coming from the state of Florida, and revitalize and grow, we’re missing the mark. My approach to all this is to stabilize our … ag culture, revitalize it and then ultimately grow it, working with [Agriculture Commissioner] Wilton Simpson and his office, and everybody else across the state.
“If we don’t have food, we don’t have people, right? Ag is an intricate, detailed and important part of our community.” He referred to Hurricane Ian, that affected more than 60% of the state’s grazing land in late September. “We have to stabilize those farmers who lost so much, whether it was a cattleman, dairy farmer, citrus, strawberries — whoever else was affected.”
Wednesday’s meeting came less than a month after the U.S. Agriculture Department showed in a report that orange production in Florida was down 29 percent from an October forecast, with non-Valencia production down 36 percent. Other citrus crops were also forecast to be lower than expected, with grapefruit production down 10 percent and tangerine and tangelo production down 14 percent.
Source: floridapolitics.com
