Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam on Wednesday outlined what he called the "hard economic truths facing Florida agriculture" including the need for a "smart" immigration policy, dealing with invasive animals and plant diseases, improving Florida seaports to gain new overseas markets and ensuring future water supplies.
"These (issues) aren't separate silos," Putnam said during a speech to the Economic Club of Florida. "The future of agriculture and the future of Florida are entwined."
"Agriculture is present on two-thirds of the acreage of our state," he continued. "If that goes away, what replaces it that's better than what we have --Citrus groves along highway 27, the magnificent pine forests up and down I-10.
"What replaces that -- that gives you the same economic value, the same tax base stability and the same quality of life issues? Chances are it's not better than what you have right now in terms of a vibrant agriculture industry."
Florida's agriculture industry produces $100 billion in sales annually and provides 1 million jobs, according to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
The agriculture commissioner said he views child nutrition as an economic issue because the state every year spends $1 billion on school nutrition programs with four million meals served each day. Taxpayers are helping pay for many free and reduced cost meals as well as the health care costs resulting from poor diets.
"If we are content to serve Tater Tots and ketchup and call it a starch and a vegetable, we will pay the economic consequences of doing that," he said.
Putnam said he has about 50 people now in Hialeah, Kendall and West Miami looking for the giant African land snails that can eat almost anything including the stucco off homes. Agriculture must factor for the increased threat from foreign species and agricultural diseases.
"When there is a breakdown at the federal government level at an airport or seaport it is frequently the state taxpayers who are asked to pick up the tab and clean up the mess," he said.
The planned widening of the Panama Canal, he said, could be a boost for Florida agriculture. He said the port could bring consumer products that now are unloaded from ships in California to Florida if the state is ready. And those ships could return with Florida agricultural products.
He also said a smart immigration policy is needed the "best human capital" from around the world to fill employment gaps.
"The simple fact is if we want to be a free nation that can feed itself and not be as dependent on others as we are for our fuel, we need that stable legal workforce," he said.
The biggest long-term economic challenge facing agriculture and the state, he said, is water. He said the lack of water flowing from federal reservoirs in Georgia into the Apalachicola River is having "devastating" consequences for oystermen and the seafood industry at Apalachicola Bay.
Water supply, he said, must be a substantial component of state programs in the future the way land acquisition has been in recent decades.
"It is that connection to the water," he said, "that not only gives us an identity but gives us the economic foundation for everything that flows from it."