Guest columnist: Make it priority to protect strategic agricultural reserves

By LINDA BOLTON - Guest Columnist
Scripps Newspapers
Stuart News/Port St. Lucie News/The Tribune
January 30, 2006

The Treasure Coast is at a crossroads. Taxes are rising to pay for schools, public safety, roads and infrastructure, but we can't find a way to make impact fees high enough, keep densities low enough, build roads wide enough or hold the line on the Urban Service Area.

It's obvious that current practices need to be challenged.

I believe we need to be thinking more strategically about land use in this county, this state and in this country. Because once it's all built out, it's gone.

As a nation, we should recognize the value of Florida's rare 12-month growing season. And, instead of taking land out of production with more housing, new towns and new villages, here are some reasons to reserve acreage for strategic agricultural use:

• "Researchers have a hunch that grapefruit reduces insulin levels and so, may encourage weight loss" — Health Magazine, December 2005. With an epidemic of obesity, the Food and Drug Administration has shifted the emphasis of the recommended Food Pyramid from carbohydrates and protein to fruits and vegetables.

• We're seeing a boost in sugar prices — 50 percent increase in sugar futures since last January, according to the Wall Street Journal — because sugar is a raw material in ethanol used in flexible-fuel cars.

• "I don't know why terrorists haven't attacked our food supply, because it would be so easy" — Tommy Thompson, former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary. In this age of terrorism, we can secure our local production fields, monitor pesticide application and cut the trade deficit by growing more in this country.

• After eight hurricanes, insurance companies are either pulling out altogether or dramatically raising rates on remaining homeowners.

• Trying to adjust to the burgeoning school population, school boards are paying premium prices for land because acreage wasn't set aside with vision and forethought.

• "Let the food be your medicine and medicine your food" — Dr. Barry Sears, November 2005. Sixty percent of new chemotherapies are based on plants. "The future of medicine, including the way we fight cancer, is in natural products such as your daily glass of orange juice," according to Ed Harris, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Texas A&M.

Almost daily, we read science reports about the newly discovered medicinal qualities of plants or how tomatoes produce lycopene, the substance that protects against some cancers, and disease-resistant seeds developed from biotech crops.

• Headlines such as "Water worries gain attention: the oil of the 21st century" (Wall Street Journal, March 2005) and "How can a well-managed utility run out of water?" (Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers, February 2005) tell the story.

Amid reports that the Indian River Lagoon is dying, the St. John's Water Management District also reports there's a "limited supply of water in the aquifers running through the state" and says "lawn and landscape irrigation can account for more than 50 percent of total water use."

Lakeland-based Publix announced its next big marketing thrust will be in organic foods, launching new GreenWise products and all-organic grocery stores. We're on the cusp of understanding the healing power of nature, and need to look at land use for purposes other than merely more rooftops and driveways.

Large landowners need viable alternatives to selling out to developers — and a real financial proposition that lets them realize the value of their land while providing a way for them to continue growing if the want to.

I don't know how to do this, but it must include a grand consortium that permits:

• The option to sell land and lease it back for agricultural use — in perpetuity.

• Sale of development rights to a county land bank that buys them and sunsets them — in perpetuity.

• An arrangement similar to the Adams Ranch Rural Land Stewardship that provides incentives in exchange for protecting vast acreage from development — in perpetuity.

The challenge is enormous. With 1,100 new residents a day coming into the state and a projection to overtake New York's population by 2010, such proposals look like mission impossible. But such growth is also unsustainable.

Now that we're learning how important a secure food supply is, how to eat healthier, grow medicines and grow alternative fuels through plants, we can begin to understand just how valuable the land and the Florida growing climate is. Let's preserve its life-giving potential as a strategic resource for research and food.

Bolton, a former vice mayor of Wellington, lives in Vero Beach.

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