DeLee Parker shows off her family's locally grown potatoes in an ad for Lay's Potato Chips that aired during the 2025 Super Bowl.
Published on March 4, 2025 at 12:38 pm
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Even though its population has ballooned in recent years, St. Johns County is still home to the “Potato Capital of Florida.” Now, the county wants to create an advisory board to give local farmers a voice on developments and other projects.
A new Agricultural Advisory Committee would allow for a board of career farmers from St. Johns County to weigh in on how developments may affect them, as well as how they can spread the word on the work they’re doing.
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The decision to move forward on creating the committee came during the Board of County Commissioners meeting Tuesday morning.
“When we’re getting our staff reports and making decisions on developments,” County Commissioner Sarah Arnold said, “we see studies on traffic impacts, and we see studies on school concurrency, and we see studies on drainage, but we don’t have any information on how it could impact these active ag operations that are so important to our economy here in St. Johns County.”
Arnold gave the example of the 3,000-home “agrihood” development that came before the County Commission last year. The board ultimately rejected that project, but Arnold said that after the board’s denial, several local growers told her that a largescale development implementing a community farm could have affected their businesses.
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There are already various local boards composed of farmers — like an existing advisory committee that focuses on educational initiatives and the Florida Growers Association, which is limited to potato growers. But County Adviser Evelyn “Prissy” Fletcher, a University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences professor, says this initiative would give farmers a voice on County Commission decisions.
“Several of you have already heard from your farmers, but this could be a way to continue that conversation to make sure we’re all making decisions that protect them because regardless of your political, religious, cultural beliefs, we all have to eat at the end of the day,” Fletcher told the County Commission.
The board’s role would go beyond providing farmers’ insight on future developments. One goal would also be to come up with more ways for St. Johns County’s farmers to share what they do with the rest of the public.
Fletcher says she wants to keep the momentum going after a national spotlight was shone on St. Johns County farmers during the Super Bowl.
Ultimately, the County Commission agreed that the move would be in line with their goals of ensuring the county’s continued growth minimally affects farmers who have lived and worked in the area for generations.
It’s a good time to be doing so, Intergovernmental Affairs Director Adam Tecler said.
The county’s efforts to strengthen the voice of farmers lines up with a bill filed in the Florida Legislature, SB 110, that, if passed, would, among other things, create an Office of Rural Prosperity in the state’s Department of Commerce.
The county’s move to create the board was met with overwhelmingly positive responses, although several speakers during the board’s public comment period expressed concern about creating another advisory board that ultimately may not have much of a say.
It will be some time before the board is formally created and looking for applicants, but a spokesman for St. Johns County says the next step will be for the County Commission to pass a resolution formally creating the advisory board.
