Chris King takes on Big Agriculture at his own peril

Politics is a game of calculation, and many Florida gubernatorial candidacies have made calculations against powerful lobbies, for better or for worse.

Jeb Bush took on the teacher’s union.

Charlie Crist famously took on Republicans in his own party on his way to being Governor in 2006.

And most recently, Rick Scott took on the NRA.

One of the most successful lobbies and the third rail of Florida politics has always been agriculture. Whether it’s Big citrus, cattle or sugar, Florida politicians have always felt right at home supporting Florida farmers, whose issues tend to be bipartisan and span county, regional, and partisan boundaries.

There is farming in every corner of the state, so naturally, agriculture enjoys built-in constituencies in the halls of Florida’s Capitol. Think citrus farming near Orlando, sugarcane farming in the Democrat-laden Palm Beach County, and commercial houseplant farming near Miami-Dade County.

While the contours of the 2018 election are still forming, the candidates receiving support from agriculture are becoming known. Adam Putnam, a farmer himself, is chief among them.

So if you are opponent of agriculture, and you are going to come after them, you better bring your A-game. That’s why a recent sloppy release by Democratic candidate Chris King was so baffling. Sugarcane farmersnhave been accused of many things, including pollution, but the facts simply do not bear these accusations out.

In a recent press release, King chided sugarcane farmers for their “abuses of Florida’s environment.” The industry’s recent efforts suggest he’s wrong. Let me count the ways.

Even the most ardent detractors have conceded that sugarcane farmers have come a long way in the past two decades. Carl Hiaasen, no friend of sugarcane farmers, acknowledged in a 2016 column that “sugar growers… have reduced the nutrients in their runoff…”

The facts support this statement, with the South Florida Water Management District reporting that all of Everglades National Park is complying with and exceeding federal water quality standards, which requires water flowing into the park to meet 10 parts per billion of phosphorus. That’s cleaner than a bottle of water you can buy from the store.

A landmark 2015 study by the University of Florida Water Institute of Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades also corroborates this, showing that, “Since WY1996, modeling estimates indicate that agricultural BMPs have resulted in a total cumulative reduction in total P(hosphorus) load of approximately 2,853 metric tons, which represents a long-term reduction of 55 percent.” This was the same study used by Senate President Joe Negron to justify moving forward with a storage reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee in 2016.

Then there’s the fact that the sugar industry has spent a ton on cleaning up the environment – to the tune of more than $400 million dollars. According to U.S. Sugar spokeswoman Judy Sanchez, this tax has “raised $200 million for Everglades restoration in addition to the more than $200 million that has been invested in research and on-farm efforts. This $400+ is more than any other private group – environmentalists included – has committed to Everglades restoration.”

I have warned against taking on the sugar industry before in 2014, when nearly all of the candidates who ran on platforms calling for buying sugarcane farmland lost. This piece caught the ire of the TC Palm, which has established itself as the most anti-agriculture newspaper in the state. But I believe now what I believe then. Candidates who fail to heed this advice and choose to run on a single-issue, anti-agriculture platform are doomed to fail in 2018 as they were four years ago.

If the “abuses of Florida’s environment” King was referring to were to the north in Lake Okeechobee instead of the south in the Everglades, he would be wrong on that account, as well. Latest estimates put the amount of water that came into Lake Okeechobee in 2017 at 99 percent coming from the north. As for the pollutants, 98 percent of the phosphorus and the nitrogen came from the north as well.

It’s been said that “all is fair in love and war.” But if candidates in the war like Chris King want to beat lobbies like the sugar industry, they are going to have to do better than accusing them of problems they are not only not causing, but are clearly trying to fix.