Mike Joyner, Jack Payne: Keeping our food supply ‘Fresh From Florida’

An amazing thing happened last month. A South Florida vegetable farmer had nowhere to sell his squash, beans, and cukes, so he used social media to invite shoppers to his farm — and they showed up by the hundreds.

The convoy converging on the farm looked like the stream of cars headed for an Iowa farm in “Field of Dreams.” It was a powerful moment of connection between the people who produce food and the people who eat it.

For some time, that connection has been too tenuous. We’re now seeing the impact of that as Florida’s farmers suffer the double blow of markets that vanished instantly in the COVID-19 pandemic and markets that have disappeared gradually over the past decade due to what farmers insist is unfair competition from outside the U.S.

The collision of these two forces has created the sad spectacle of fruits and vegetables left to rot in Florida fields while food banks project a spike in need. We are seeing frustration over an unabated flow of imported food at the expense of American farmers during the crisis.

Florida farmers are still on the job. Like the other heroes on the front lines in this pandemic, Florida farmers and farmworkers are risking their health to produce affordable, safe, nutritious, and abundant food, and they are doing so with little certainty over how to sell it.

We see the frustration in a Florida blueberry farmer’s Facebook post that includes a snapshot of berries with the words “Product of Mexico” in fine print on the package. The farmer took the photo in a supermarket three miles from his blueberry fields during peak season, and he laments that his local grocer is instead selling fruit from 1,000 miles away.

An economist with the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences has documented massive Mexican government subsidies to that nation’s growers. This allows them to export food to Florida and still sell it in supermarkets for less than it costs the farmer down the street to produce it.

In addition to supermarkets, Florida farmers have long sold to hotels, restaurants, cruise ships, and theme parks. That all collapsed, of course, when people were ordered to stay at home.

We share the blueberry farmer’s frustration. We hope one legacy of the COVID-19 crisis will be an enhanced public awareness of how important a homegrown food supply is.

Florida farmers are a resilient bunch. They’ve stayed in business in part through know-how and technology from UF/IFAS. Its scientists breed new varieties of fruits and veggies that grow well here, and they discover ways to cut farmers’ water bills and reduce the environmental impact of producing food.

There are a number of things you can do to help farmers. Most immediately, please consider buying directly from a farmer in your community if you can do so while keeping social distance and perhaps without even leaving your car.

The Maitland-based Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association and UF/IFAS are compiling a list of where you can find your local field of dreams so you can go right to the source for your food. You can find the list here.

Look for the Fresh From Florida branding in your produce aisle. Read labels to see where your food comes from. If it’s not from Florida, ask your grocer why — and ask him or her to offer Florida-grown produce.

We need to think long and hard about whether to hand over control of our food supply to other nations. Hospitals looking for ventilators are seeing the consequences of relying on an international supply chain for the parts necessary to ramp up production. Simply put, being able to produce our own crops and other agricultural products domestically is a matter of national food security.

Please use the power of your wallet and buy local. Then influence others. Take a picture of Florida-grown fruit or veggies where you shop and post on social media with thanks for stocking local foods.

Tell your elected representatives that Florida farmers need a level playing field in the global marketplace. Without it, we’ll see Florida’s farms continue to disappear.

___

Mike Joyner is president of the Maitland-based Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, which represents the majority of fresh fruit and vegetable producers in the state. Jack Payne is the University of Florida’s senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and leader of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.