Agriculture & Sustainability Day: The City Girl and The Farm Life
On Wednesday, March 5, 2025, the Leadership Tampa Class of 2025, participated in their Agriculture and Sustainability Day. Somehow, me, the one born and raised in New York City is the one writing this blog. How does a city girl get the task of writing about agriculture and sustainability? Nevertheless, it was one of the most interesting days I’ve had as I learned so much about agriculture and sustainability around Tampa. It also was a cool experience to connect with an area so important to my own niece (another city girl raised in the heart of Chicago) who is all about her cows as she is currently in a Ph. D. program in Animal Science. It also made me remember the moments my father used to talk about farming in the mountains in Puerto Rico around his childhood home in Aibonito. Actually, maybe it makes the most perfect sense for me to be writing this blog.
Our class is truly grateful for our sponsor for the day, Wharton-Smith, Inc. Construction Group and our day chairs, Mike Augustine, LT’24, Vice President of Operational Risk for Citi, and Todd O’Donnell, LT’16, Director of Business Development, Water/Wastewater, Wharton-Smith, who planned a really great day. My bus buddy for the day, Aaron J., and I enjoyed our time catching up and learning more about each other throughout the day. Getting to know more about our classmates through our different bus buddies has been one of my favorite parts of our program days.
Did you know agriculture has a $380 million economic impact? Yeah, me neither. Although I learned this at our first stop, Fancy Farms. Carl Grooms started Fancy Farms with his wife Dee Dee, in 1974 (a great year 😉) with 15 acres of strawberries. Carl was also the founder of the Florida Strawberry Growers Association. Over the last 51 years Carl and Dee Dee have grown Fancy Farms to 140 acres with 4 types of strawberries as well as bell peppers and jalapeños intercropped, among other items. They grow almost anything except watermelon and tomatoes. His son, Dustin, began working with him in 2007 and now his daughter, Kristi, runs the product market and bakery they have added to their business. Many of us appreciated the opportunity to make some purchases from there while we were on the farm as their strawberry shakes were delicious! It is important to note, at Fancy Farms there are no machines picking the crops, and their strawberries are still picked by hand daily with great love, care, and expertise – likely adding to why their shakes were so delicious! The growth of Agri-Tourism and farms finding ways to create additional streams of revenue has helped and Fancy Farms donates about 20 acres to 4H annually for a U-Pick experience.
LT’25 also learned about $1 million dollars in product will be distributed before the farm begins to see the fruits of their labor (pun intended), as it relates to profit and monies coming back to the farm itself. It takes about $30,000 per acre to produce a crop. This year was particularly hard with the hurricanes. Fancy Farms spent over $100,000 in labor just to clean the farm after the storms passed.
Our next farm visit was to Wish Farms. Harris Wishnatzki arrived to Ellis Island in NYC from Kyiv, Ukraine and soon began selling fruits and vegetables from a pushcart on the streets of New York. By 1922 his single pushcart became a fleet of them and now, 100 years later, with 4th generation owners involved, Wish Farms is now an international grower, shipper, and marketer in Plant City, Florida. We had the opportunity to tour their new headquarters built in 2021 and enjoyed our slide down to the lobby and our time in their gorgeous company tree house featured on the show Treehouse Masters. Their focus on staff productivity and aesthetically pleasing and comfortable work environment reflects their commitment to their staff and the multigenerational familial nature of their company. Wish Farms has approximately 50 employees in their main offices, with about 150 in the warehouse. During this visit we watched them package blue berries and learned there are approximately 100,000-170,000lbs of blue berries packed daily. Wish Farms also owns the largest strawberry farm in the world with 2000 acres.
Our next stop was the Strawberry Festival already buzzing with activity, even though it was a bit of a rainy day. We had a wonderful opportunity to visit the livestock arena and hear from Danny Coton, Chairman of the Strawberry Festival Board, Kyle Robinson, President of the Strawberry Festival, and 3 students from the Future Farmers of America (FFA) organization. The Strawberry Festival was founded in 1930 as a 4-day festival and has grown to an 11-day festival since then. They pride themselves on the fact that it is an alcohol-free, “down home family fair”, and safe festival. They are also proud to be a safe haven for over 1000 electrical workers during hurricanes. With a brand-new stage and their brand new midway (the rides they provide during the festival) the Strawberry Festival is ranked #35 in the country. In their livestock arena, FFA students work hard all year to prepare to show 112 steer, which will also be sold the next day. Last year, the sales of swine and steer raised $1,985,000 for youth related programs. There are 41 schools within the Hillsborough County School District with agriculture programs that are engaged with the Strawberry Festival programs.
I was most impressed by the 3 students who shared their experiences in the FFA program. One student, Cooper, has shown steer for 6 years, expanding his business significantly, as he aspires to be a large animal veterinarian. These students are some of the students who benefit from the $50,000 distributed at the annual scholarship gala hosted by The Strawberry Festival annually.
Shortly afterwards we had a delicious lunch of fried chicken, pulled pork, mac and cheese, and a sweet strawberry shortcake treat for dessert. During that lunch we heard from The Cattlemen’s Association. Raising and selling cattle is a 500-year-old industry that brings in about $900M+ in cattle and seed sales annually. Cattle farming offers a focus on providing future green space in Florida and water holding capacity. We also learned the use of technology has improved and increased in cattle farming as all animals 18 months or older must be tagged. The Cattleman’s Association goal is to keep the land owned here and products sold here as well, particularly as 15,000 farmlands were lost because of international foreign entities purchasing them. 100% of agricultural land that leaves production in FL never returns and yet, to be sustainable, a cattle farm needs 6 acres of land per cow. When sharing what contributions cattlemen make to the community Ryan Gill shared, “There’s no better conservationist than a rancher or farmer”. This was a great lead into our next and last stop of the day that rounded out our focus on sustainability.
Lastly, we visited the City of Tampa Water Treatment Center where we learned about the process of reclaiming water, and the pumping and screening processes. The City of Tampa goes through 82 million gallons a day, to supply water to its residents. We also heard from the now former Sustainability Resiliency Officer, for the City of Tampa, Whit Remer. Whit shared with us how “sustainability is how we should treat the earth, resiliency is how we prepare for the earth to treat us back”. This quote resonated with me so much in recognizing the responsibility we have to assist in strengthening our earth’s resiliency in the way in which we choose to be sustainable.
Overall, this city girl, along with her classmates, really appreciated our day at the farms and the fair and we are eternally grateful to the Chamber of Commerce for hosting the Leadership Tampa program annually. If you want to learn more about the next Leadership Tampa class, click here.