- November 28, 2024
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College graduate Igor Pertile sought the resources to establish a farm of his own, but he didn’t know where to look.
However, when he met Rod Greder of UF/IFAS Extension Sarasota County, who was starting a new agricultural class, he was intrigued.
Although Greder emphasizes the Beginning Farmer Education Program, hosted at Mote Aquaculture Research Park and incorporating Mote's staff, is still in its early stages and in need of funding, it nonetheless is a valuable opportunity for those like Pertile.
Giving up-and-coming farmers the hands-on experience and resources to establish themselves in a career, it is the only program of its type in Florida, Greder says, drawing people from “probably eight other counties” as far away as Miami-Dade and Jacksonville.
“It's just a really unique program, and I think it's a program that should be replicated throughout other parts of Florida and throughout the U.S., so we can really feed that pipeline of the aging farmers with new beginner farmers,” Pertile said.
When Greder started the program around 16 months ago, he didn’t have final approval and decided to draw on funds from his own programs.
“You’ve just got to get out there and do something,” he said. “You can't talk about it forever. You'll never do it.”
After convincing his manager, he was also able to use about $10,000 in leftover funds for the extension office.
Then, he came upon Mote Aquaculture Research Park, which he calls a fortuitous find.
Not only did the 200-acre park, a former cattle ranch, have available property and soil that worked with the right fertilization, but through its aquaculture practices, staff also work with entrepreneurs trying to enter the fisheries business.
With its recirculating aquaculture system, or RAS, the park is one of the world’s few aquaculture facilities to produce no waste, fully recycling all of its water and incorporating the natural filtration of the saltwater plants grown there.
“It's already part of their DNA to want to help with business development and do technology transfer, and get more entrepreneurs out in aquaculture and aquaponics, and that just matched up perfectly with what we want to do from a land-based standpoint,” Greder said.
Nonetheless, agriculture is also an important need in the community, he said, noting the number of farms is decreasing and the age of farmers rising.
“It’s clear we need to refill that pipeline. And people get that. They see that,” he said.
Greder said while people who go through the program tend to open farms in other counties, the program is working with larger ranches through Sarasota County’s conservation easement program.
He also said contrary to what people expect, Sarasota County still has available agricultural land.
“We've got 71,000 acres still designated as agricultural lands in Sarasota County, so it's not like everybody wants to believe, that it's all got a house on it now; it doesn't,” he said.
Sarasota County has also lent the use of about 30 acres of Albritton Fruit Farms, which it purchased in October to provide soil for its landfill site, for use as a livestock incubator and "Phase 2" of the project.
Meanwhile, Greder looks to expand the site at Mote, which is a little over half an acre, though it is a fit for the handful of students that currently farm there.
Greder calls the incubator a “low-risk, low-cost, high-learning environment” for students, but before students can land a spot there, they must complete the Small Farm Startup School, a hybrid online and in-person eight-week course that requires them to set a business plan.
A total of 49 students, and about nine this fall, have completed the course, while about three this fall plan to enter the incubator.
Once they begin to grow their plants, they must learn to market and sell their products, which gives the opportunity to form relationships they can use later or where they can use as they transition into a business.
“You’re forced to get involved," Pertile said. "You're forced to work during June and July when you have 100-degree heat."
Students are encouraged to experiment, with a current student focusing on Asian plants.
“We had someone out here that grew 15 different varieties of garlic last year, and she was able to plant a few that worked really well, and some that didn't yield anything,” Pertile said.
After finishing the incubator, or sometimes simultaneously, students will work with successful farms and ranches in Sarasota County to learn about farming at a full scale.
Yet Greder doesn’t want anyone to get too romantic an idea of what farming offers.
“This isn’t about indulging someone's fantasy. It's about turning it into a business,” he said.
“It's a lot better to face that reality now, but yet also have the resources, if you're crazy enough like myself, and willing to be like, ‘Yeah, we're still actually really enjoying this. We want to keep going forward,” Pertile said.
Greder said very little funding for the farming efforts comes from students, with the program providing most funds.
To reach the current point with the program, he said, has cost about $100,000.
Donors to the project include Red Cross, Green Gene Foundation, Florida Farm Bureau and even $40,000 from a private donor, while the county has expressed interest in providing funding if a public and private partnership can be produced.
However, the program’s benefits are community-wide and do not end with students, as the surplus produce goes toward fighting the food insecurity prevalent in Sarasota.
The program provided 300 pounds of food to underserved families during the Back to School Bash event at CenterPlace Health and supplemented offerings at Mote’s annual Farm to Fillet event.
It is now in talks with Sarasota County Schools for purposes including supplying food to its Title I schools, the Newtown Farmer’s Market and The Market on Dearborn in Englewood.
Greder said farmers are always looking to diversify their assets and that aquaculture, or the farming of marine life and aquatic plants, offers a major way of doing so.
Pertile said the United States is currently seeing a large push for more aquaponics and aquaculture farms.
“The footprint that you need to grow fish as opposed to cattle is way smaller,” he said.
A 300-foot by about 20-foot facility, Pertile said, can grow several thousand pounds of fish, while these facilities might also better withstand hurricanes and droughts.
Currently, evidence is already available of the head start Mote’s facility can provide, with Megan Sorby, a former intern at the park, and her husband, Tom Sorby, operating their business Pine Island Redfish there.
Already, they are a recipient of the Acme's Seafood Industry Climate Award in 2023.
The land-based recirculating aquaculture company, which farms red drum, is based on the concept of using the salty waste it produces to fertilize mangroves for coastal restoration. Once their facility in Pine Island is completed, it will fertilize about 25 acres of mangroves that can be transported to other sites.
“We are culturing redfish for the seafood market, but more than that, we are tackling one of the biggest stakeholder concerns in aquaculture, which is waste, and really that applies across all types of farming,” Megan Sorby said.
She said so far, the aquaculture park has been an ideal environment for pursuing the project.
“What it means for us, is that both for my partner and I get to work a farm that we are really a part of from the ground up, and being here at Mote, amongst such a supportive environment for regenerative aquaculture and regenerative agriculture like the UF program, you just are around people that are all working toward the same goal.”
