Benefits
Agriculture makes huge contributions to Florida’s economy
Economic impact:
According to a recent study published by the University of Florida’s Department of Food and Resource Economics, agriculture makes more than a $100 billion positive impact on the state’s economy.
Not only is agriculture’s importance to Florida’s economy huge, it’s been growing: The impact jumped by 66 percent since 2000.
Employment:
Agriculture means jobs. And in Florida more than 404,000 people are directly employed (full- and part-time) in agriculture. Total employment impact is estimated at a whopping 766,884 full-time and part-time jobs.
Value added:
The direct value-added contribution of agricultural, food manufacturing, and natural resource industries in 2006 was estimated at $20.4 billion (2007 dollars), and total value-added impacts were $44.36 billion.
Value-added is a broad measure of economic contribution that is comparable to the gross domestic product (GDP) at the national level, which represents the net income created by an industry or the difference between industry revenues and input purchases from other sectors; it includes personal and business net income, and capital consumption. The labor (earned) income impact was estimated to be $27.74 billion. Indirect business taxes paid to local, state, and federal governments were $2.98 billion.
The industry groups with the largest value-added impacts in Florida were:
| Environmental horticulture |
$8.14 billion |
| Forestry and forest products |
$7.98 billion |
| Fruits and vegetable farming and processing |
$7.28 billion |
| Agricultural inputs and support services |
$6.54 billion |
| Other food product manufacturing |
$6.36 billion |
| Tobacco farming and manufacturing |
$2.91 billion |
| Mining |
$1.94 billion |
| Sugarcane farming and refined sugar manufacturing |
$1.42 billion |
| Livestock and dairy farming and animal products manufacturing |
$1.10 billion |
Relatively smaller industry groups with value added impacts of less than $1 billion were:
| Other crop farming |
$227 million |
| Fishing and seafood products |
$221 million |
| Grain and oilseed farming and processing |
$160 million |
| Wildlife hunting |
$81 million |
In terms of employment impacts, the largest industry groups were:
| Environmental horticulture |
178,805 jobs |
| Agricultural inputs and services |
161,342 jobs |
| Forestry, wood, and paper products manufacturing |
116,951 jobs |
| Fruit and vegetable farming and processing |
16,203 jobs |
Individual industry sectors that generated the largest value-added impacts were:
| Landscape services |
$5.47 billion |
| Soft drink and ice manufacturing |
$3.53 billion |
| Other tobacco product manufacturing |
$2.72 billion |
| Greenhouse and nursery production |
$2.67 billion |
| Fruit farming |
$2.40 billion |
| Agriculture and forestry support activities |
$2.31 billion |
| Vegetable and melon farming |
$2.21 billion |
| Phosphatic fertilizer manufacturing |
$2.20 billion |
| Fruit and vegetable canning and drying |
$1.71 billion |
| Paper and paperboard mills |
$1.63 billion |
| Forest nurseries and timber tracts |
$1.38 billion |
| Veterinary services |
$1.05 billion |
| Engineered wood and truss manufacturing |
$1.03 billion |
Regional value-added impacts of agricultural, food manufacturing, and natural resource industries the nine economic regions of Florida were:
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale |
$11.59 billion |
| Orlando |
$10.27 billion |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater |
$7.80 billion |
| Jacksonville |
$6.53 billion |
| Sarasota-Bradenton |
$4.38 billion |
| Gainesville |
$1.38 billion |
| Tallahassee |
$1.17 billion |
| Pensacola |
$761 million |
| Panama City |
$542 million |
All the above data and charts are from EDIS document FE702, a publication of the Food and Resource Economics Department, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. Published November 2007. Please visit the EDIS website at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu. For this complete report in PDF format visit http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/FE/FE70200.pdf. For this complete report in HTML format visit http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FE702.