Welcome everybody. This is Lecture 2 of Week 2. As I told you before, I wanted to dig down a little bit deeper in studying sort of the general issues with regard to agriculture and water quality. And I want to spend a little time talking about agriculture in this state, because I think it's very interesting to look at the kinds of enterprises, the diversity of enterprises that we have in the state. And sort of sit back and think about the kinds of water quality issues that might be associated with those practices if those farmers are not following good, best management practices. Florida, as I mentioned before located in the southeastern part of, of the United States, is not a large state as it goes, but it's and it's, and it's not a small state either. One of the important attributes that Florida has is a long coast line and this is good for our tourist industry. But also, it, it, it can on the other hand be a challenge for managing water quality. Because what we're doing on the land of this state can eventually end up and impact the water quality of our coastal areas, and those are the areas that people like to come as tourists. Florida agriculture, as I mentioned before, is a very large economic force in this state. For example, all of our commodities agriculture commodities in 2008, the recent, most recent data amounted to about a 7 billion dollar amount of cash receipts to the farm. And if you look down the list you'll quickly realize that it's the horticulture crops. Citrus, vegetables, foliage, and floriculture all added together are the driving force of our agriculture industry. And sure, we have other enterprises that are important parts of our agriculture industry as well, and those are the animal agriculture. So, many people probably recognize when you say, citrus and maybe tomatoes as being associated with Florida. But maybe not many people recognize that Florida has a major poultry industry and a major dairy industry. Most people think of dairy and as in the northern part, Pennsylvania, New York, and Wisconsin. But Florida has a major dairy Industry. For agriculture, it is important for two reasons. One is at certain times of the year, in the winter time, this state produces a lot of food that this country and others enjoy. So, it's very important to our country. And the Florida agriculture is important to the state. It's the economic driver. And I'll mention in a second, the food we produce in the state also stays in this state, to a large degree, because we have a lot of people in the state that enjoy that same orange juice as someone in Pennsylvania may. But what is it about Florida that makes this all possible? I think it's encapsulated in a graph like this. These are the minimum temperature isotherms for January in this state. And the thing that jumps out to you are the numbers, particularly if you're from Minnesota, how warm it is in January in the state of Florida, particularly along the coast. And if you remember, we showed some pictures of the coastal area and the urbanization in the coastal area and how urbanization and agriculture compete for that same warm land. And around the coastal area where you have those narrow bands of warm weather, that's exactly where agriculture has flourished in this state, because those are the areas that you can produce crops in the winter time, with the minimum chance of having frosts or freezes. But there also the areas that people like to live in this state. And so, that's where a lot of our large metropolitan areas are as well. So, Florida is known primarily for a producer of horticulture crops, in the, what I will call out of season, the winter production cycle. Tropical and ornamental plants are very important in this state. Most any one that has purchased a fern or some other potted tropical plant for their home, likely that plant was produced in a greenhouse somewhere in Florida. Florida also is very important to the animal industry, particularly the cattle industry, because we can graze grass in certain parts, the warmer parts of this state, year-round. So, that's very economical for a farmer not to have to invest a large amount of resources to produce and, and purchase hay for feeding the cattle. And I mentioned also that Florida agriculture is strong partly because we have good markets available to our farmers. And if you think about the metropolitan areas up and down the East Coast of this country you come to the conclusion that there are lots and lots of people that enjoy Florida agriculture. If you look at the energy situation and ask the question, how much does it cost to ship vegetables from California, another vegetable, major vegetable producing area in this country, to the East Coast markets versus getting those same vegetables from Florida and you can see the economies favor agriculture production in Florida. So, agriculture is probably here for a long, long time. What are some of these agriculture commodities in the state? I like to start with vegetables because that's what I've worked with most of my career. This is a small collection collage of various vegetable crops that are important in this crop in this state. Here's tomatoes produced on plastic mulch, raised beds with plastic covered mulch. We'll talk about that later on in the course, about how plastic mulch has become a very important part of a nutrient and water management best management practice. Also, our crops are irrigated. Here's sweet corn with center pivot irrigations in the state of Florida. Pretty soon, we're going to talk a little bit about soils and how they relate to environmental impact and water quality. Most of our soils in Florida are very sandy in nature. We produce a lot of crops on these sandy soils and we do it for lots of reasons. But most notably, the sandy soils drain very well, unlike those soils that we mentioned for the upper Midwest and the Mississippi watershed. Florida soils are very sandy so water and nutrients can move through these soils very easily and that's the, that's the challenge. They're good, but also they're challenging because nutrients can move through them and end up in our groundwater. So, these soils have to be managed very, very carefully. Sandy soils warm up very fast in the spring and they're very good for producing high quality crops. Think about growing potatoes, for example, on sandy soils versus growing potatoes on clay soils. Here's some more photos of vegetable production. This particular one in the middle is a small farmer that's using some best management practices that we will talk about. Plastic mulch, for example, you might notice the drip irrigation tubing in the center of this bed. The cover crop and the rye wind breaks, that we'll talk about for preventing wind erosion. The picture in the lower right is planting celery on the organic soils in Lake Okeechobee. These are the muck soils or the histosols, these are the soils that were drained so that we could grow vegetables in that area of the state. Now, Florida is urban, and along with that is the need for turf or lawns in, in your landscape. And so as homes are built Florida has a major sod industry growing the turf grasses that will soon end up in people's front and backyards. Here's an example of a, of a sod farm in Florida, large acreages of a particular variety of sod. This sod will be cut in strips and taken to a home that is under construction and laid on the ground to be the lawn for that for that home. Maybe some of you know and realize that Florida is a major sugar cane state, the leading sugar cane state. I've shown you some pictures here of sugar cane growing in the field. During the harvesting process, prior to harvesting, sugar cane is burned to get rid of the extra leaf material and make it easier for the machines to go through and cut the cane. The cane is then taken off to the sugar mill to be squeezed and the juices refined to sugar. Sugar cane in the state has been largely grown on the muck soils or the organic soils around Lake Okeechobee. But those soils, because they are organic and we now have drained them and exposed them to air are oxidizing, and the depth of the soil is declining, such that in some areas, the muck soil is too shallow to successfully grow crops and sugar cane is now starting to be grown on the sandy areas at the periphery of the Everglades area. Livestock and hay crops are important. We've already mentioned the poultry industry in the lower right-hand corner. This is a manure storage facility at a poultry farm in north Florida, to put the, the poultry manure out of the weather so that it's not, so the nutrients aren't leached before the farmer has a chance to move that poultry manure onto a field for use as fertilizer, for example. Example. The other pictures show you cattle grazing in, in the state, the hay production that goes along with our industry particularly in the northern part of the state. And along with our animal industry comes this other sort of parallel challenge and that's what to do with the animal wastes. And so, I've shown you some pictures here of beef cattle. And also spreading manure on a farm in preparation for planting the crop. And I also want to bring to your attention that a role that agriculture plays even for the urban areas. This is a waste-water treatment facility that produces biosolids and reclaimed water, which can be used if treated properly on agriculture lands. So, agriculture can provide a setting to help urban areas deal with the waste, the increasing amounts of waste that are produced in these areas. Here's one of our major crops growing on sandy soils in central Florida. These are very deep, sandy soils. This is citrus. These are orange trees. Most of the citrus crop in this state goes to orange juice. And this is one of the groves in the central part of the, of the state. But we also produced a lot of specialty citrus. This particular video shows navel oranges. We also grow a lot of grapefruit, tangerines, and specialty citrus that are favored by everyone around the country. Florida is also one of the largest producers of peanuts in the country. Our peanuts in Florida go for peanut butter and for candies. And the University of Florida is a major contributor to the variety development of these peanuts, because we need to grow peanuts in our tropical, warm climate. Once the peanuts have been taken out of the hull or the shell these shells can be used for cattle bedding. Here's a picture of one of the challenges that we have in the state of Florida for producing crops. You'll notice here that we have tomato crops growing on plastic mulch. We'll talk about this later, but you might notice the drip irrigation tubing to supply water and nutrients under the plastic mulch to this crop. What you may also notice, here's a row not doing quite as well as these. This row has not received any nitrogen fertilizer. Our sandy soils are basically devoid of large amounts of organic matter, and thus, nitrogen. So, farmers have to add fertilizer, particularly nitrogen to these crops to get them to perform properly and adequately to give the kinds of yield, and the quality of the fruit production that farmers require. In fact, fertilizers account for half of the world's food. Said another way, half of the world's people would not be here if it were not for fertilizers. Long ago, scientists and farmers, like in the lower right-hand picture, figured out that you got very little crop if any crop at all, particularly on sandy soils without fertilization. So, fertilizer has been a very important factor to agriculture in a state like Florida. Here, I show you a picture of some data taken from that study that I just showed you in the previous picture. Without nitrogen fertilizer, very little yield. But it doesn't take much nitrogen added to get to the highest yield. What else do you notice about this particular graph? Well, I noticed that at about, between 140 and 200 pounds per acre of nitrogen, you get maximum yield. What happens when I put more nitrogen on in the hopes that more is better? It's not better, in fact, it's even worse. Plants are adapted this way that, and our crops respond to a certain level of nutrients. We call this the right rate of nitrogen and we'll study this a little bit later on. And so,f a farmer is looking for more yield by more fertilizer, they might run into this situation which, which would be a negative impact on their profitability. But this extra nitrogen that's going on out here and not returning a crop, the question becomes where does that extra nitrogen end up if the crop is not using it? Here's another shot of a tomato field under plastic mulch, a little different kind of plastic mulch because these crops are grown in the warm fall. But again, you see plots out here have, have been fertilized, looks like they're growing well, probably producing a good crop, versus parts of this field that have not been fertilized to an adequate, adequate extent, low yields and probably very small fruits. So, it doesn't take many of these kinds of studies to illustrate the importance of fertilizer to agriculture in the state of Florida. The question becomes, how do we manage those nutrients so that they benefit our crops and our productivity and our good return on investment for the farm but do not contribute negatively to the water quality if they get lost from the land through leaching, or erosion? Besides fertilizer for our agriculture, water is extremely important. You might say, well, why is that? Florida is a humid state and gets lots of lots of water, rainfall. And you would be right except that in many of our agriculture areas that rainfall may not fall when the farm needs the water. And so, we supplement rainfall with irrigation. And I'm showing you a picture here of center pivot irrigation systems. In central and northern Florida, center pivots, I think you might recall, the picture of the center pivot in operation on a sweet corn field. These are very important irrigation systems for agriculture. The challenge that we have with irrigation systems like the center pivot, they're very efficient and very effective at delivering water to the crop. But they also need to be managed and we'll talk a little bit about irrigation management best management practices so that the water delivered from these irrigation systems benefits the crop and stays in the root zone and does not leach below the root zone as it would be the case if we applied too much water. Because when it does in a sandy soil, it can move mobile nutrients like nitrogen below the root zone and eventually into our springs. Another innovation that 's been around for several decades irrigation system is drip irrigation. I've already showed you a small farmer in northern Florida using drip irrigation. Drip irrigation is a system where we have a, a plastic, a polyethylene tube, that is laid on the ground near the plant's base, and supplies water and nutrients. The advantage of drip irrigation is that water and nutrients can be applied right there at the plant, in the root zone, and not anywhere else, so that we can make very efficient use of the water and the fertilizers that we apply to the crop. And for many of our vegetable crops, drip irrigation is part of a best management process for those crops. But like with fertilizer, we need to manage water. Here are two pictures of over or excessive irrigation. And you can see, when too much water is applied, you can see in this top picture how some of the water is starting to erode the soil and exit this field. If that happens, a situation like this can occur, where water and some of the soil and the nutrients, particularly phosphorus that's attached to those soil particles can move off of that site, and may end up in a water body. So, water needs to be managed. We'll talk about the concept of keeping nutrients and water in the root zone. And right rate of fertilizer is important but right rate and right amount of water is equally important, particularly on our sandy soils. And when these nutrients get loose in the system and end up in our water body, eutrophication can happen when things are not managed properly. And, of course agriculture agriculture's farmers, do not want to lose soil or nutrients or water because those represent dollars that are being invested in the production of that crop and the return on investment of those inputs is less. So, some take-homes from this particular lecture. Hopefully, we've acknowledged that Florida obviously has a very, very important and varied agriculture industry. It's very important to the economy of the state. It produces a lot of good food that a lot of people like to eat. Agriculture is critical to this state's economy because it's large but also because it's a steady force in the economy. You could count on agriculture to the, in the economy. We also have taken a little bit of a glimpse, and we'll look at it more but we've taken a glimpse at some of the climate and soil challenges that the state has. Rainfall is heavy and not very predictable. Soils that are very sandy. They're good for agriculture, but they're a challenge for managing water and nutrients. So, all of this comes together, at least in my mind to make Florida a, an excellent place to study and determine best management practices. That may, in fact, even be applicable to other places in this country and also around the world. So, I think Florida is and will be leading the way in determining best management practices for agriculture and adopting sustainable agriculture land management practices. I hope you'll agree.
