- April 19, 2024
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Local farmers are concerned about increasing costs of operation, environmental issues and the regulation that often comes with them, and public perception of farming, Flagler County Agricultural Extension Agent Mark Warren said in a presentation at Monday’s Flagler County Board of County Commissioners meeting.
The county’s agricultural extension service has been surveying farmers to determine their needs and implement strategic planning to help keep the county’s agricultural industry competitive.
Farming has a $303 million impact in Flagler County, Warren said, and local farmers’ needs vary depending on the type of farming they do. “In Flagler, it’s very diverse. We have timber, we have vegetable production, forage production beef cattle, ornamental horticulture,” he said. “Vegetable producers are concerned about the availability of skilled labor. Beef cattle producers may be concerned about trucking issues.”
To inventory those concerns, the county and 23 volunteers contacted 48 of the 82 Flagler County farms listed on a 2007 USDA census — some of the smaller ones couldn’t be reached, Warren said — to ask them about their needs. Of the 48 contacted, 30 replied.
“Thirty people doesn’t sound like a lot, but it represents over 20,000 acres of our agricultural land in our county,” Warren said. “A lot of times they see opportunities that we may be missing, and they can bring those to our attention.”
Once the information I compiled, the extension office will create a strategic plan.
“Our focus is to address those needs that they identify,” Warren said. “This tool is probably the best way that I’ve ever seen to gather that type of information.”
Some farmers are interested in marketing their product abroad, Warren said, and others are looking at branching into eco-tourism and other recreational activities like mud bogging — initiatives the extension office could advise them on.
“A lot of the needs that we see may be things that we address through education,” he said.
But keeping the county’s farms — all of them family-operated — viable, Warren said, will help preserve the county’s rural appeal.
“It’s just a part of what makes Flagler County unique, part of what draws people to our county,” he said. “It’s the aesthetic appearance of our county; it’s the rural setting. It’s the slowed-down pace.”
