Voices of Florida Farmers: Building a Circular Bioeconomy

Florida agriculture quietly underpins everyday life in the Sunshine State, shaping everything from grocery prices and water quality to how communities bounce back after a hurricane. In this episode of the Climate Correction Podcast, host Shannon Maganiezin sits down with the team behind the newly released report, Voices of Florida Farmers: Building a Circular Bioeconomy, to explore how the state's farmers, ranchers, foresters, and aquaculturists are producing more with less land, water, and resources, while keeping food affordable and local economies strong. 

Leading the conversation is Courtney Girgis, the report's lead author, who grew up on a beef cattle, corn, and soybean farm in northern Missouri and now writes about agriculture from her family's small-acreage farm in Oklahoma. Courtney unpacks what a "circular bioeconomy" means in practice: an approach to agriculture that moves away from the linear "make, use, waste" model and instead keeps nutrients, water, and materials cycling, starting with healthy soil and extending outward into partnerships across the food system. 

Joining her are three of the Florida producers featured in the report. Beaver Yoder, a Florida Panhandle cattle rancher, partners with neighboring crop farmers to graze his herd on cover crops between cash crop seasons, a practice that builds soil health, fertilizes fields, and creates a new revenue stream for everyone involved. Lanette Sobel, founder of Fertile Earth Worm Farm (now the largest commercial composting operation in South Florida), works across a wide network of distributors, food pantries, and farms to make sure food scraps go to their "highest and best use," feeding people first, then animals, then soil. Timothy Solano, a second-generation clam farmer and operations manager at Cedar Key Aquaculture Farms, raises clams that filter pollutants like nitrogen and carbon from Florida's coastal waters before being harvested for sale at Costco and Whole Foods. The clams' crushed shells go on to repair roads and surface local school parking lots. 

Together, the conversation moves from real-world examples of circularity on the farm and on the water, to the regulatory and economic obstacles that keep these practices from being more widespread, and to what listeners can do to support a more circular Florida. Along the way, the guests speak candidly about the realities of thin margins, volatile markets, red tide, local ordinances, and the long arc of agriculture's shift from generalist to specialist, and back again. 

Voices of Florida Farmers: Building a Circular Bioeconomy was made possible through a grant from VoLo Foundation. The full report is a substantive look at the 44,400 farms and ranches that make up Florida agriculture, the pressures they face from rapid development and a changing climate, and the policy, research, and market support that would allow them to go further in cycling nutrients, rebuilding soil, sequestering carbon, and strengthening local economies. The link is in the show notes. Florida agriculture deserves your attention, and this report is a great place to start. 

Links:

Read the Report: bit.ly/Florida-Voices-Circular-Bioeconomy   

Florida Smart Agriculture’s work:  www.solutionsfromtheland.org/flcsa  

Connect with Beaver Yoder: https://www.thisfarmcares.org/steveyoder

Connect with Lanette Sobel: https://fertileearth.net/

Connect with Timothy Solano: https://www.instagram.com/clamcaptain/

Learn more about "Fresh from Florida": https://followfreshfromflorida.com/