Florida Grower: The Tradition Continues

On the eve of our 100th anniversary issue coming in December, we are pouring through thousands of pages of past issues in a fascinating study of Florida Grower’s history and the history of the state’s agricultural industry. Though what happened in 1908 is a lot different than today, it is amazing the parallels that can be found in the challenges and opportunities growers have faced across the times. We fretted over canker back in the early 1900s and we are still fighting and writing about the battle to this day.

Embracing Innovation

While we’ve taken on challenges over the century in the pages of Florida Grower, so too have we embraced innovation and new technologies. In the early days, our pages were full of funny looking contraptions and equipment that have come and gone, starting with buggies and wagons to more and more mechanized tools as our collective knowledge grew. That tradition continues in this issue as we focus on the amazing technology that our cover story growers, J&J Produce, are employing on a pepper farm in Devils Garden. They are using GPS and auto-steer to greatly streamline their production and find savings in the efficiencies enabled by new technology.

In this issue, we continue focusing on the serious issues facing the industry, namely food safety. We have a number of stories on food safety (see pages 16, 34, and 44), which we all can agree is extremely important to Florida agriculture’s future success given recent outbreaks and scares. While this is no doubt a challenge, we ought to consider ways to make food safety an opportunity, as the industry takes steps to address concerns over food-borne illness.

Good Get-Togethers

Another tradition in Florida agriculture is folks getting together to share information about what works and what doesn’t in farming. We’ve got a great get-together coming in December at the Florida Ag Expo, hosted in Balm at the Gulf Coast Research And Education Center. Check out the show guide tipped in between pages 18 and 19, and the other stories and sidebars that provide sneak peeks to the coming event.

Also, we have another gathering in January at the Indian River Citrus Seminar at the St. Lucie Fairgrounds, which will be jammedpacked with educational programs and top-line exhibitors. Florida Grower is proud to be associated with both of these events, and I personally look forward to seeing many of you there.

We’ve covered a lot of ground and history in the past 100 years and in this issue. We’ll keep it up as we head into our next century covering Florida agriculture.