We need to encourage AgriTourism in Miami-Dade

If you ask children who have grown up in an urban or suburban environment “Where does food come from?” at least some of them will probably answer, “The store.”

There was a time when even the smallest patch of a backyard would host a garden and, come harvest season, neighbors would swap tomatoes for zucchini, squash and carrots.

Not so much anymore. There are still neighborhoods that were once avocado and mango groves where a handful of those trees have survived and still flourish, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.

Miami-Dade County is still home to a large belt of farms and groves in the south part of the County. And Miami-Dade District 9 Commissioner Kionne L. McGhee is trying to help those farms not just merely survive, but to thrive.

There is an intersection where commerce meets education and AgriTourism sits at the center of it. I’m not talking about “The Land” Pavilion at Disney’s EPCOT where animatronic fruits and vegetables sing, dance and drop guests off at the gift shop.

The University of Florida’s IFAS Institute estimates that Miami-Dade County had about 90,000 acres allocated to agriculture, distributed among 2,244 growers. Of the total farms, 63 percent were less than 10 acres and 89 percent were less than 50 acres. In 2002 the market value of agricultural products sold in Miami-Dade County was about $578 million.

Not all that money is profit, and farming is cyclical. A bumper crop can be followed by years that are a bust.

AgriTourism is introducing real people to the real goings-on of raising our food. And there is a great interest in it. A recent report by Fortune Business Insight pegs the current global market for AgriTourism at $69.24 billion, with the expectation that it will exceed $117 billion by the end of the decade.

Commissioner McGhee has proposed an ordinance aimed at giving farmers leeway as they tap into this global market. Agricultural users – farmers – would have the ability to establish wineries, distilleries, fruit and vegetable markets on their properties without having to seek a rezoning of the property for these ancillary uses. Likewise, buildings that house areas containing agricultural exhibits would now be permitted, as well.

Farming is a tough business. Everything rides on the success or failure of the current crop, be it fruits, vegetables, nuts and even fish grown in aquaculture ponds.

Allowing farmers to host tourists who would pay for the pleasure of seeing how food is grown, how fruits are turned into wine or distilled into alcoholic beverages, how we all are connected to the good earth, will allow them to hedge the annual bet they make on their crops.

Just as importantly, it might allow some of them to resist the temptation to sell their land for the expansion of our urban frontier.

We applaud Commissioner Kionne McGhee’s efforts.

 

 

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