Highlands County Citrus Growers Association (HCCGA) Executive Director Ray Royce recently discussed grower concerns about Florida’s Best Management Practices (BMP) program. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) runs the program.
According to Royce, growers are concerned about the BMP implementation, verification audits, some of the information they’ve been asked for by the FDACS staff and what may be in the next version of a statewide citrus BMP.
Royce said FDACS is charged with reviewing and perhaps updating all BMPs, including citrus. “And those of us that are on the working group … are a little concerned about some of the proposed language changes … Obviously a big concern across the water-quality spectrum is the impact that phosphorus can potentially have” on Lake Okeechobee and estuaries into which it discharges.
“When the original BMPs were done in the mid-1990s and 2002, the word ‘phosphorus’ didn’t even appear in there,” Royce said. “And so this is kind of a relatively newfound concern, and I know that we’ve expressed to FDACS that we think they’re perhaps going a tad too far already in asking growers for information about their phosphorus use.”
“We understand that citrus and all of agriculture are going to have to be a partner in trying to mitigate nonpoint source nutrient pollution,” Royce added. “Certainly agriculture, and citrus in particular, understands they have a role to play in those mitigation efforts.”
Royce believes the next step needs to be significant investment in nutrient research by the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) and others on phosphorus.
Royce points out that BMPs were intended to balance economic and environmental considerations. “The statute very clearly says that the BMPs need to be implemented with economic considerations equal to environmental considerations, meaning growers have the right to be in business and be able to viably produce a crop and be profitable,” he said. “The BMP program was never intended to force people out of business or make it impossible for them to produce a crop. It was to provide guidelines as to how to best do that in the most equitably balanced way possible with water quality in mind.”
“I believe that FDACS and FDEP (Florida Department of Environmental Protection) want to make this all work out as equitably as possible, and we all understand what everyone’s roles are and everyone’s responsibilities are,” Royce concluded. “We all understand what the law is. We probably need to remind some folks as to what the definition of a BMP was … and remind them that there has to be an economic balance for the grower when we’re creating these rules that growers have to live by.”
UF/IFAS’ Kelly Morgan, a researcher long involved in citrus BMPs and director of the Southwest Florida Research and Education Center, discussed the BMP situation in June with HCCGA’s directors.
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