DADE CITY, Fla. – In an unique interview with Florida’s Voice, Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson celebrated the “30, 50, 100-year implications” of the brand new farm laws signed on Thursday.
Amongst different provisions, the invoice bans fluoride in state consuming water, protects farmers from “ESG” lending practices, requires sincere meals labeling for plant-based merchandise, protects 4-H and FFA applications in faculties from zoning legal guidelines that will stop agriculture services from being on faculty property, and extra.
Discover extra particular particulars right here.
“It’s such a superb factor for the state of Florida, for our customers and our farmers,” Simpson stated, talking to Florida’s Voice senior reporter Amber Jo Cooper on Thursday. “There have been many issues in that farm invoice, and so they got here right here to – what I name ‘actually Florida,’ on the venue right here at Simpson Lakes – we have been very honored to have [Gov. Ron DeSantis] right here, and we’re very proud that received signed.”
“We’re all humble individuals, and for the issues that received executed in inside that farm invoice this yr goes to vary lives,” Simpson stated, who went on to reward the parts of the invoice coping with agriculture services on faculty land, the fluoride ban and extra.
“For our children and our households, going ahead… the housing portion, what that’s going to do for farming and inexpensive housing… not medicating our inhabitants by way of the water, not solely eradicating fluoride, however any medicine that governments would wish to put in our water,” he stated. “We’re not going to do this in Florida any longer, and so it’s actually going to vary individuals’s lives.”
JUST IN – EXCLUSIVE: Agriculture Commissioner @WiltonSimpson celebrates the signing of in the present day’s farm invoice, says it is going to “change individuals’s lives” and stops “medicating” individuals by way of fluoride within the water
“This can be a significant invoice that is going to have 30, 50, 100 yr… pic.twitter.com/PAJXuOdi6R
— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) Could 15, 2025
The agriculture commissioner additionally commented on the photo voltaic side of the laws, which takes impact July 1.
“Now, any photo voltaic panel farm that’s decommissioned the Division of Agriculture has the primary proper of refusal to purchase that property,” he stated. “We’re going to then strip it of its improvement rights and promote it again into the farming neighborhood.”
“The purpose is for the long run good thing about Florida as these photo voltaic farms, as a result of they purchased quite a lot of good agriculture land – as these get decommissioned, and beginning in about 20 years, we are going to begin placing that again into manufacturing agriculture,” Simpson stated.
EXCLUSIVE – @WiltonSimpson on the newly-signed farm invoice: “Now, any photo voltaic panel farm that’s decommissioned the Division of Agriculture has the primary proper of refusal to purchase that property. We’re going to then strip it of its improvement rights and promote it again into the farming… pic.twitter.com/n9G6lya455
— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) Could 15, 2025
Simpson added that the photo voltaic portion performs into state efforts to protect the Wildlife Hall and a program to guard rural and household lands.
“[It helps preserve] the a part of Florida we’d like for a lot of, many generations to return,” he stated.
Requested what his subsequent steps are as agriculture commissioner, now that the 2025 Legislative Session is almost full, Simpson stated his division plans to gather information from farms throughout the state.
“I’m going, tonight, to North Florida, in Lafayette County, to fulfill a bunch of farmers,” he stated. “That’s the place we get our concepts from. We exit to the countryside. We hear from of us. We see what native governments are doing to get in the way in which of farmers. We wish to take away the hurdles, all of the hurdles we are able to take away, both approach of our farmers or our customers. That’s precisely what we wish to do.”
Simpson stated that Hemp has been one matter of dialogue, touting that his division has eliminated over a million packages of unlawful hemp within the final yr and a half.
“These are the form of issues that we glance to do this are going to make a distinction in our individuals’s lives, not only a invoice that everyone can get together with, however a invoice that’s actually going to be significant to our agriculture neighborhood, our customers and particularly our youngsters,” he stated.
Farm invoice turns into regulation: Fluoride ban, farmer protections pushed by Simpson, Tuck, Truenow and Alvarez
Additionally watch Florida’s Voice’s full video report on the farm package deal, that includes reactions each from officers and different individuals devoted to agriculture.
The laws was authorised by the Home within the 2025 Legislative Session, by a vote of 88-27, and by the Senate 27-9.
