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Posts Tagged ‘Katie Edwards’

Run Katie run – part two

Posted in development, farm, interview, people, politics, tagged , on October 29, 2010|

Katie Edwards

MW: How to keep the land in agriculture? The farmer thinks that the land was your bank, that’s your retirement fund.

KE: I’d rather see us focus, before we start looking out, start looking in and focus more on reinvestment. Even in the city of Homestead there are things that we can be doing for energized growth. I think, you take the lazy approach and say Ok you know what, I don’t like what I drew on that piece of paper, scratch, give me a new one. That’s the mentality. It’s so much easier.

MW: So you’re saying the urban sprawl is not economically viable any more?

KE: I don’t think it ever was. I don’t think it ever was. I don’t think it makes sense to build up out of there. I don’t think we should vilify farmers for the predicament that they’re in. I don’t think that they created it That’s the plot in life God gave them, is they’ve got land that has to be planted, and they’ve got to be able to take out money to sell their crops, to buy their seed, their inputs, their fuel at the beginning of the season, and what do they do, they go to the bank. Pre-NAFTA they were making money and they didn’t have these issues. And all of sudden, it’s like everything happened. We convert row crop land to nurseries, and we end up that there are 1200 nurseries in Miami-Dade County, that’s too many. And then what happens? We’ve got water restrictions and people aren’t buying plants. And then we have a recession and housing market, there’s nothing to landscape. People would rather pay off bills rather than landscape or re-sod their homes. Most of the nurseries are on small parcels. They can’t put a subdivision in there. So what do the growers do? They are abandoning, they’re walking away from their properties saying I can’t make it, sorry. That’s the problem. Drive around Redland and see how many nurseries there are with for sale signs up, vacant ground covering those lands there. They can’t afford to maintain them. That’s the problem I’ve encountered.

MW: How does Farm Bureau speak for the small guy? Or is Farm Bureau only for the big guys?

KE: I’ve got quite a lot of small growers [as members]. A lot of these guys are new farmers, some are generational growers, but some are completely new to the business. We’re just trying to find ways trying to make everyone happy, because in my industry the people that I represent are so diverse, ethnically, gender-wise, age, income and what they grow. You’re going to have some issues that collectively we all agree on, but everyone needs a different type of help and assistance. What my big farmers need help with are immigration issues, so most of their issues are federal. With the smaller farmers need mostly are county, they want help with their certificate of occupancy at farmers markets, they want help with ag assessment, they want help marketing, they want help making inroads talking with chefs.

MW: In other communities you have farmers communicating with chefs. Food writers are writing about eating local food. Would be great if more restaurants sourced locally.

KE: Absolutely! You help promote, you do incentives, you provide more awareness and recognition like for programs like Redland Raised. And the farmers have the chance to be entrepreneurs, to adapt and to be creative. Because if we’re going to be adaptive in the industry and keep looking for new and emerging markets, we can’t have the state, or most oftentimes the county saying, no you can’t do this. With the winery for example, I helped Peter Schnebly with the winery ordinance. Originally, that was illegal. And all the residents in the Redland were fighting against it saying it will be disruptive, it’s not going to do anything for us, and now they all love it. And that was the whole thing, trying to find a way to get creative. You have to have common sense. You have to give growers enough flexibility to be able to be entrepreneurs, to be creative and to stay in business.

MW: What issues come up at fundraisers?

KE: Each population has its issues. The issues in Sweetwater aren’t the same as the issues in Homestead or the Redland. And you talk and you learn. Part of what I do is try to bring people together, find commonalities, and then figure, where we can compromise and where can we get stuff done.

One of the biggest issues in West Kendall is dealing with the homeowners associations. With the huge rate of foreclosures and trying to strike a balance between the rights of the condo association, the rights of the homeowner, the rights of the bank that actually has title when someone has to walk away from the mortgage. How do you look at it as a human being, but what does the law say? You can’t keep asking private citizens to bear more of the brunt of the economic crisis when it comes to the HOAs and the foreclosures.

The other issue that’s important to me is property tax reform. It’s very expensive to be a homeowner in Miami-Dade County. When I began doing comparisons online, looking at the Miami-Dade Property Appraisers website, I saw the complete inequities in what we’re paying but we’re all sharing the same services. Let’s say I pay 2 thousand dollars a year in property taxes, my neighbor next door pays less because they bought their home in 1998, that to me is not fair. We’ve got to figure out something holistically that provides people an opportunity to share in government services that’s not based on some fictitious value, which is to me all these fair market values are, it’s just whatever the market is. I’m willing to put it out there and tell people we’ve got to have a serious conversation on how to fix this and make it at least equitable and fair for all of Floridians.

When I come back from Tallahassee I’m still going to go in to the Royal Palm Diner, and I’m still gonna have to face these people who are going to grill me and say, why did you sell out, why did you do this? I want to be able to still be Katie and still be a member of this community and have my name in good standing. I don’t understand how anybody could ever lose sight of the fact that they are going up there not for themselves but for other people. And these people, they’re giving you their vote, which is the most powerful thing they could ever give you. If someone says, I can’t give you a donation, I say that’s fine, what I really need is your vote. The money is great but it can only go so far, though. When people come to you and they say, when you get elected I want you to help me work on these projects, I’m like, absolutely. You have to give them an open door, you have to be accessible.

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Run Katie run – part one

Posted in development, farmer/grower, interview, people, politics, tagged , on October 28, 2010| 1 Comment »

Several months ago, I had the chance to interview Katie Edwards. She is running for State Representative, District 119, and is currently the executive director of Farm Bureau. Katie is quite familiar with issues that affect growers in South Dade; and since I blog about growers, our interview focused on agricultural issues.

I have not contacted or interviewed her opponents Frank Artiles, Nestor A. Iglesias, and Graziella Renee Denny. I did  look at their web sites to see where they stand on the issues. Iglesias doesn’t have one. Denny’s web site is completely blank. And Artiles is concerned about the economy, jobs, property tax issues, education, healthcare — everything under the sun except local ag! Do any of these candidates know where their food comes from? Do they care about who grows their food? It appears that only Katie does.

Don’t forget to vote on Tuesday November 2nd!

MW: What does Farm Bureau do?

KE: Farm Bureau is a membership organization. We have about 4 thousand members,  about 2100 who are actively engaged in farm production. All of the vegetable farmers are FB members. About 80 percent of the nursery growers are Farm Bureau members. Most of the tropical fruit growers I represent, apiaries or beekeepers, and aquaculture. That would be everything from koi and Everglades ciclid to the Everglades alligator farms. So what we do represent in terms of membership is incredibly diverse. Most of our membership lives here in South Miami-Dade County.

MW: Tell me about your job with Farm Bureau.

KE: I’ve worked with Farm Bureau  for about seven years now, and I reach out to politicians and like to get them down here so that they can fully appreciate the impact of their decisions. I want them to remember the nursery growers and farmers down in Homestead, and to think about those family farmers when they vote on a bill.

One thing very important to Farm Bureau and to me is helping educate policy makers so that there is an appreciation for agriculture, the state’s leading industry, and also for them to recognize that within their own county we’re the ones producing the food. So you have to look at it very holistically and reach out to the people outside of our borders.

MW: There’s been a lot in the local media about the freeze. How have you been putting a face to the farmer, and what kind of feedback have you gotten?

Katie Edwards

KE: When people think about a freeze and agriculture, people think, how is this going to impact the price of orange juice? Consumers don’t realize the amount of capital that the grower already has in the ground from the very moment that seed is sown. You’ve got your land rent, you’ve got your labor expenses, so when a freeze comes and wipes out and devastates your crop, you still have expenses that you can’t recover and pass along.

Sometimes it’s a race against time because every season you’re getting essentially a four-month window to make make enough money to cover your expenses, and then maybe offset money that you lost last year. And the last couple of seasons we’ve had a very difficult time trying to keep up with fertilizer and fuel expenses.

The other thing is going forward, this freeze helps us remember how important American agriculture is. If we don’t have a safe domestic food supply that can produce for all of us during the winter months, then we’re dependent on foreign countries.

MW: Are there any subsidies for growers here in Florida?

KE: The subsidies are for primarily commodities. Just so you understand, the stuff we grow here is not subsidized. So 97 percent of what Florida produces is not subsidized, maybe some peanuts and a little bit of tobacco and some cotton in the Panhandle, which accounts for 3 percent. But everything that we grow down here are not commodities. Like the old saying, we’re price takers not price makers.

MW: What’s your position on the UDB?

KE: When I go downtown and speak [before the county commission], I choose my battles carefully and I choose them wisely, because if I’m always going downtown against something, you lose credibility very quickly. I’ve seen that happen to people in this area. But with the UDB, we’re not one of the organizations that’s out there in bed with the developers saying we want to have more projects. I mean the Parkland project scares us, because if I lose 900 acres of agricultural land, that’s the chink in the chain. It’s like, you can get one, it can go right after that. And what about the property rights of the guy — we all have property rights — what about the property rights of the guy next to him? Doesn’t he have the right to keep farming without being a nuisance to homeowners and all the ancillary issues that goes along with that? He made an investment, he wants to continue farming. I have to protect his rights too.

I think we can all agree that we want to have agriculture in Southwest Miami-Dade County. I don’t think there’s anybody that says, I don’t want agriculture here. And if they do, I’d be very surprised. But I think a common goal — and I like to look at the commonalities — we all want to have agriculture here in Miami-Dade. So I look at it and say ok, take the UDB issue off the table, and let’s spend our time, our resources, our capital, talking about what we can all do to help make sure that farmers aren’t forced to make the difficult decision to then have to sell to the developer. That’s the whole crux of the problem.

Tell me what you’re doing to help the local farmers. I want to do my own reality TV show and call it Do You Want To Be A Farmer, and invite all these people to come down here. I’m going to say to them, you go to the bank, you go to farm credit, take out a loan for 10 million dollars, I want to see you make a buck. They wouldn’t know what end was up and even how to turn a damn tractor! I’ve said that for years, that’s what I’m up against. I’m losing farmers to foreign competition and you guys aren’t helping the farmers out.

(To be continued)

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Fan mail

Posted in location, politics, tagged on January 25, 2010| 3 Comments »

It’s not every day that I get a thank you note from those in the higher echelons. Back in December, this note appeared in my inbox.

Dear Ms. Wertalka:

I wanted to compliment you on your blog, Redland Rambles. It’s a great vehicle for promoting local agriculture as well as putting a face and story behind those who grow our food and plants.

Keep up the great work!

Warm regards,
Katie Edwards

Katie A. Edwards
Candidate, State Representative, District 119
P.O. Box 900398
Homestead, FL 33090
Phone: (786) 266-8010
E-Mail: Katie@Elect-Edwards.com
www.Elect-Edwards.com

Paid political advertisement paid for and approved by Katie A. Edwards, Democrat, for State Representative, District 119.

I met Katie briefly this summer at the laurel wilt workshop, held at the UF/IFAS Extension offices. She’s currently the Executive Director of the Dade County Farm Bureau. Now she has set her sights on a higher goal, State Representative for District 119, which includes Redland, sprawls east to Pinecrest, and winds north through West Kendall and into Sweetwater.

On her campaign web site, Katie says that South Dade needs a strong voice in state government. “Protection of South Dade’s unique ecological resources is a priority if we are going to achieve a quality of life that is environmentally sustainable and socially responsible.” She’s the only candidate in that district who speaks for the growers in Redland. I may be wrong, but at first glance, her opposition doesn’t seem aware that they even have the county’s prime agricultural land in their district. As much as I didn’t want to get political when I first started this blog, maybe now it’s time to start having conversations with the people who want to make decisions for my farmer friends in Redland. Stay tuned…

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Freeze’s toll

Posted in farmer/grower, market, media, weather, tagged , on January 16, 2010|

The Miami Herald
Posted on Sat, Jan. 16, 2010

Freeze takes huge toll on Florida agriculture

http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/1428216.html

BY ELAINE WALKER
ewalker@MiamiHerald.com

Although the freezing weather is finally gone, consumers in South Florida and across the country will soon feel the impact at the grocery store.From green beans and yellow corn in Homestead to tomatoes in Immokalee, the freeze had a devastating effect on the vegetable industry. In some cases, entire fields were destroyed, with statewide losses expected to stretch into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

While some farmers have managed to salvage part of their crops and others are already replanting, supply is going to be a problem for at least a month or two, depending on the crop. That in turn translates into higher prices for consumers.

“Tomatoes that were trading for $14 for a 25-pound box, now they are up at $24 a box,” said Gene McAvoy, a vegetable expert with the University of Florida. “Consumers can probably expect to see prices go up about $1 a pound. But at a certain point, the consumer is going to balk and people will start to back away from certain items.”

The timing of the freeze couldn’t have been worse for Florida’s vegetable farmers, who were in the midst of the peak growing season. During the winter months, Florida growers are the largest U.S. supplier of vegetables.

Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles Bronson told state legislators earlier this week he believes that about 30 percent of the state’s agricultural crops were damaged or destroyed. With losses expected to reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, that’s another blow to the state’s already fragile economy.

Florida growers typically generate about $8 billion a year in annual agricultural revenue, said Florida Agriculture spokesman Terence McElroy.

“The industry is going to be hit hard,” McElroy said, “but farmers are a pretty resilient group.”

In Miami-Dade County alone, the losses are estimated at just over $250 million, which is about 40 percent of the more than $600 million in revenue agriculture generates each year, said Charles LaPradd, agriculture manager for Miami-Dade County.

Hardest hit in Miami-Dade were the row crops like green beans, squash and corn, said Katie Edwards, executive director of the Dade County Farm Bureau. About 30 percent of the county’s tomato crop took a hit, Edwards said, but growers are still trying to assess the damage.

“We got some stuff that got hurt and some stuff that made it,” said Freddy Strano, a Homestead tomato grower, who estimates his losses could range between 20 percent and 50 percent of his 250 acres. “It’s hard to tell. Anything on the outside of the plant got exposed and is no good. We’re trying to salvage what we can.”

In the Immokalee area, which is one of the major areas for tomato production, produce losses are estimated at over $100 million, McAvoy said. Tomatoes in Immokalee were nearly wiped out for the winter season.

Bob Spencer of West Coast Tomato says about 95 percent of the tomatoes that he would be picking over the next 45 days in Immokalee are gone. He estimates he lost close to 250 acres of crops, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“We haven’t experienced a freeze like this in 20 years,” Spencer said. “It reminds the ego what can happen. Farming is a tough sport. It’s not flag football. It’s tackle football.”

The last freeze of this magnitude Florida experienced was in 1989. But this recent cold spell potentially was more devastating for farmers because the freezing temperatures lingered for a week — 10 days in some places. Many crops can withstand one or two days of freezing temperatures, but with prolonged exposure there is no escape.

“Typically if you water the crops ahead of the cold period, it will help,” said John Alger of Alger Farms in South Miami-Dade. “A bulletproof vest works only to a certain size gun. If you keep getting shot in the same place, eventually it’s going to get through.”

Alger, who grows sweet corn and landscape trees, estimates he lost “way over a million” dollars from the freeze, which destroyed about 75 percent of his 1,250 acres of sweet corn.

“It’s not only the farmer, but everyone in related businesses from the truck drivers to the crop dusters, the harvesting crew and the packing houses are going to be impacted,” he said. “The multiplier effect on the economy is devastating.”

Florida tomato growers are already worrying about how to avoid panic over the tomato shortages and make the current supply last as long as possible until the spring crop is ready for harvest in late March.

“The tomatoes we have are going to be metered out to try to meet our customer demand,” said Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange.

“It’s going to be an opportunity for Mexico to make inroads, and that’s never a good thing.”

© 2010 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com

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