While many people remember a cash-centered square with tables and tents offering mostly fruits, vegetables, and potted plants, innovations have transformed the farmers market into a laboratory for the entrepreneurially minded. There are many advantages to beginning a small business at the local market, such as low cost, reduced risk, and immediate customer feedback.

Historically, the farmers market provided a place for customers to bypass the supermarket and trade cash to farmers for fresh produce. Though items like lettuce, eggplant, and watermelons can still be found in stalls, there are also artisans, home cottages, and crafts, providing a range of goods, from baked goods and homemade sauces to woodworking and other unique art. 

Thanks to mobile payment vendors, such as Square, Shopify, and PayPal, etc., providing non-cash payment options, new business owners starting out can provide a means of using credit/debit to sell goods without the need for a retail space. For budding entrepreneurs looking to test the viability of their products, farmers markets and local festivals are the logical first step.

Bill Davenport, a retired U.S. Navy chief, has written three books providing tips and guidance for those wanting to be a vendor at a farmers market or even launch their own market. Davenport runs Anchored Market Ventures out of Panama City, where his company organizes four full-time farmers markets and seven specialty markets that pop up once a year in the area, including three at Aaron Bessant Park in Panama City Beach.

Each year, Davenport works with almost 700 vendors at the markets he organizes. That number has been pretty stable the past couple years after spiking up to around 1,100 vendors in 2020 and 2021.

“Right around COVID,” Davenport says, “we saw a significant increase. Folks were avoiding brick-and-mortar businesses. More people were remotely working from home, so they were looking for other ways to supplement their income.”

Davenport says the low barrier to entry is one of the biggest attractions to starting a business at a farmers market, which can usually be set up for approximately $100 the first week, then around $40 a week afterward, which is significantly lower than renting a retail space with a fixed cost and overhead with a combined total into the thousands, depending on location.

“It’s a great way to fine-tune your products and your business before taking that next step to go brick and mortar,” Davenport says. “It’s also a great way to get instant feedback because you are on a very personal level with your customer base, getting face-to-face interaction week in and week out.” That feedback allows owners to fine-tune their businesses in real time rather than waiting for customers to leave comments on social media, he adds.

The biggest mistake Davenport has seen vendors make in starting their business at a farmers market is coming to the table with a hobbyist mindset, explaining, “Some start out thinking this is a hobby, with a ‘I’m good at it’ and ‘I like doing it’ mentality but still treating it as a hobby.” When vendors take this approach, he feels they set themselves up for failure.

Davenport says ultimately, “It is a business. You have to track your financials, your expenditures, your income,” and that mentality is key. Successful owners are meticulous with product tracking.

A strong believer in the farmers market concept, Davenport wants his markets to offer an outlet for locals to expand their hobbies and get their small businesses off the ground. “If folks are making it and it’s local,” Davenport says, “then at the end of the day, we are putting money back into the local economy.”

One of the annual markets that Davenport organizes is the Panama City Beach Fall Festival & Market, now in its third year. In 2024, the farmers market section of the festival featured 60 vendors, 8 food trucks, and 27 business booths.

According to Kylie Coffey, special events coordinator for the Panama City Beach Parks & Recreation Department, attendance for the event has been growing each year, and they expect up to 1,200 people this fall, depending on the weather.

For Coffey, the big attraction centers around anything and everything fall-related “because we just don’t get enough fall in Florida,” adding that the pumpkins are a big draw for her and many of the customers attending the market.

The annual market takes place in September and is free to the public.

Conservation Florida has named Beck Partners CEO Justin Beck to serve as the chairman of its newly established Northwest Advisory Council.

Conservation Florida is a state-wide accredited land conservancy dedicated to saving Florida’s natural and agricultural landscapes for future generations. Its conservation projects support Florida’s native plants and wildlife, fresh water, conservation corridors, family farms and ranches, the economy and nature-based recreation.

Founded in 1999, Conservation Florida has led the way in strategic and evidence-based land protection and has saved over 25,000 acres of critical habitat through acquisition, facilitation and incubation of conservation projects.

It has done so by developing conservation strategies, exploring funding sources and purchasing or accepting donations of land and conservation easements. Its other services include providing expertise to guide landowners through the land protection process, serving as a community partner in support of statewide land conservation and promoting land conservation through effective education and advocacy.

The Northwest Advisory Council will serve as a community champion of Conservation Florida and its work in the area and provide in-depth, firsthand knowledge of the region that can be used by the organization to develop its holistic statewide strategy.

“Protecting what makes Northwest Florida special for future generations is something I believe in dearly,” Beck said. “And having the opportunity to work with Conservation Florida is a chance to really make a difference and preserve the special places and way of life that we enjoy here.”

Beck Partners is a full-service commercial real estate, insurance and property management firm with offices in Pensacola, Tallahassee and Mobile, Alabama.

Beck began working at Beck Partners in 2005, where he started as a sales associate. He has a deep understanding of real estate investment, ground-up development, and value-add investment strategies. Over the past decade, he has completed nearly 1,500 transactions totaling more than $500 million.

Farming is a risky enterprise, and aquaculture — a form of farming — no less so.

Besides the common culprits of weather, markets, diseases and government regulations, oyster growers were dealt two extraordinary blows in recent times. First came 20ı8’s Hurricane Michael, and just when the industry was recovering, the 2020 pandemic hit.

Aquaculturists, however, are a resilient lot as they must be, if they are to cope with the capriciousness of nature and the marketplace. The oyster companies that are pulling through the pandemic — however battered — are those that adapted quickly to the “new normal.”

“The innovative ones found a way around the coronavirus,” said Bob Ballard, director of the Wakulla Environmental Institute (WEI), which teaches aquaculture. “Those who sat around hoping things would return to normal without being proactive are probably not in business.”

Among the survivors are OysterMom, Saucey Lady Oysters, Nature Coast Oyster, Outlaw Oyster and Oyster Boss. OysterMom and Nature Coast are small, mostly retail operations that farm single leases, whereas Saucey Lady, Outlaw Oyster and Oyster Boss are larger growers that farm multiple leases, process their own and others’ oysters, and largely wholesale their products. Outlaw Oyster additionally sells aquaculture supplies.

When the pandemic closed bars and restaurants, these companies pivoted rapidly and turned to or intensified retail and direct-to-consumer sales.

“I accelerated retail marketing,” said OysterMom’s Deborah Keller, whose business is solidly grounded in retail. Customers order from Keller via phone or text and pick up their oysters during designated hours. She also sells oysters online and at several Tallahassee open markets, as well as operating a catering service.

“I survived because I was established in retail,” Keller said. “The other reason is I’ve stayed small.”

Jennifer and John Fountain own Nature Coast Oyster. A self-described “newbie” who has been in business since 20ı8, Jennifer sells her oysters to a Panacea processor, who in turn sells them regionally and across the Southeast. Besides the pandemic-caused drop in sales, the Fountains’ oysters suffered high mortalities.

“I’m fortunate my husband works full time and has a good income so that I’m able to keep going,” Jennifer said. “If this were our livelihood, I don’t know how we would have made it.”

Partners Tim Jordan and Walt Dickson run Saucey Lady Oysters in Panacea. Jordan described their clientele as mostly upper-end bars and restaurants in the Southeast. He estimated that his business has fallen off 50 to 75 percent since the pandemic arrived.

“Before, we were selling 20,000 oysters weekly,” he said. “Now we’re doing about half.” His company is trying to find the key to selling directly to customers. “It’s something we’re pursuing. We know the market’s there. We just haven’t hit the right combination.”

Danita Sassor and Blake Garner own Outlaw Oyster, another Panacea-based operation.

“We’re not doing great, but we’re doing good enough, considering the circumstances,” Sassor said. When the lockdown dried up their regional and out-of-state wholesaling, Sassor said they switched to retailing via social media.

“Customers came out of the woodwork,” she said. “Our retail sales went through the roof when our wholesale sales dropped to nothing.” Since then, wholesaling has somewhat rebounded, but nothing like before.

“We used to sell 30,000 weekly,” she said. “Now we’re selling about ı0,000. It’s not great, but I’m happy to still be in business.”

Jeff Tilley and son Reid own Oyster Boss, a Sopchoppy-based operation whose customers span the Southeast and include New Orleans. The week the restaurants and bars closed, Tilley had 30,000 oysters ready for delivery. Faced with a potential disaster, he switched to retail, cut prices and began advertising on social media.

“The long and short of it is that we sold all 30,000, and by the following week, we were back in production,” he said. Sales have since normalized. “I’ve maintained a healthy balance sheet by finding creative ways to bring our products to buyers,” Tilley added. He’s also diversified into selling crawfish and wild-caught shrimp and oysters.

“I want to be the Walmart of Sopchoppy,” he said, laughing.

Portia Sapp heads the aquaculture division at the Florida Department of Agriculture, which oversees the industry. She notes that shellfish farmers face additional marketing hurdles because of stringent state requirements to ensure consumers’ safety. “There are many extra safety protections in place for shellfish that don’t apply to other commodities,” she said.

Notwithstanding the obstacles and setbacks, Sapp said the industry is thriving. “It’s rapidly growing,” she said. “Every year, there’s more interest and new areas developed.”

Saucey Lady’s Jordon offers one reason why.

“Almost any endeavor nowadays, corporate America has taken over,” he said. “But oyster farming remains relatively small.”

Oyster farmers relish the independence and entrepreneurial challenge. The work, they also say, keeps them fit and healthy, and the sunrises and sunsets on the water can’t be beat.

Hewing to its mission to meld education, conservation and job creation into its every endeavor, the Wakulla Environmental Institute (WEI) continues to offer a diverse mix of traditional and technological programs.

Housed in a specially designed energy-efficient and self-sufficient building on ı58 acres of natural Florida woodlands in Wakulla County, the WEI exemplifies the green values that it promotes through its environmentally focused classes.

At the helm of WEI, an offshoot of Tallahassee Community College (TCC), is executive director Bob Ballard, who has been with the facility since its inception and fashions its various programs in partnership with longtime TCC President Jim Murdaugh.

Ballard explained that he comes up with program ideas, vets them for viability, and if they pass the test, proposes them to Murdaugh, who may expand or enhance them and ultimately decides their fates.

“I have to be the forward thinker,” Ballard said. “I think of an idea, ask if the timing is right, can I get the funding, do people want this, is it something they can earn a living from? You put all these things together and try to make it work.

“We can’t afford not to be successful,” he added. “WEI is very young and has a staff of only three, plus adjunct professors. So everything that we do has to hit a home run.”

Technology has allowed WEI to expand its service area via online classes. But its base remains students from Wakulla, Franklin and Leon counties, many of them former fishermen or retired or about-to-retire state workers looking for new starts.

The pandemic hammered WEI, forcing it to reduce class sizes to allow for social distancing and to conduct portions of classes online. Notwithstanding the obstacles, however, the facility has soldiered on with its core programs in oyster aquaculture, drones, agriculture and conservation.

Best known and most popular is the oyster aquaculture program, now in its seventh year and boasting hundreds of graduates.

“We were the ones that started the oyster aquaculture industry in Florida,” Ballard said. He will also tell you that the businesses and jobs that the program has helped create have bettered Wakulla County’s economy, as well the overall health of the marine ecosystem.

Second in popularity is the five-year-old drone program, which can lead to attainment of a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ı07 license. The FAA, in fact, has designated WEI a training center.

“If you’re flying drones and earning income from it, you need an FAA ı07 license,” Ballard said.

Classes in this program include constructing and operating drones and editing aerial videos gathered by such unmanned systems.

“It’s one thing to know how to fly a drone and have a license,” Ballard said. “But if you don’t know how to edit the video to present a polished product to your employer, the skill’s not worth much.”

The agriculture program has a horticulture certification class and two more on the horizon: one on the use of drones in precision agricultural applications, the other on small-plot farming.

It’s the latter — in which students will learn how to produce crops on a small scale to supplement their incomes — that Ballard is most excited about.

“I believe this is going to be bigger and more popular than aquaculture,” he said.

WEI has set up a demonstration plot where students will learn how to produce a variety of fruits, berries and vegetables, as well as how to pond-raise catfish and tilapia, and keep bees for honey.

“I call it our one-acre Eden,” Ballard said. “It will show what can be done on an acre.” The plan is for WEI eventually to partner with Wakulla County and establish a farmers market where students can sell their products.

Last but not least is the conservation program, which offers a course on current environmental issues relative to human activity and climate change, with another on the way on caring for exotic animals. Meanwhile, its once-popular green guide certification program, which trained guides for the ecotourism industry, is undergoing revision. Interest in the program waned after its initial success.

“I think we exhausted the demand,” Ballard said.

Setbacks don’t dampen Ballard’s enthusiasm, however. He’s constantly thinking up new ideas.

“I have things cooking in my brain that aren’t yet ready for prime time,” he said. Always, he adds, whatever program he conceptualizes, it must hold the promise of gainful employment for students. “I can’t have a program unless I can demonstrate financial light at the tunnel’s end.”

It’s a challenge that he thoroughly enjoys.

“It’s the best job I’ve had,” Ballard said. “One day I’m in the garden, the next I’m out on the oyster boat and another I’m flying drones. I’m only limited by my imagination.”

In 1999, Paul Bradshaw, after an unsatisfying foray into cattle ranching in the karst hills north of Tallahassee, read a haunting passage from ecologist Aldo Leopold’s Sand Mountain Almanac.

The ecologist had been forced to shoot a wolf and, with a smitten heart, watched the “fierce green fire” dying in its eyes. The passage caused Bradshaw to reflect with sadness upon diminishing biodiversity, and it stayed with him.

At the time, Bradshaw and his wife, Sally, presided over a “one-acre Eden” that was home to a few pedestrian farm animals. A greenhouse garden dominated the backyard. The couple’s energies were devoted mostly to their consuming jobs, his as a lobbyist and hers in high-stakes politics.

How that mini-Eden in Havana, Florida, grew into present-day Greenfire Farms is serendipitous. The big epiphany came when Bradshaw made the acquaintance of a Coronation Sussex chicken.

The Coronation is a venerable breed, pale gray of feather and succulent of flesh, and specially developed, back in the day, to honor England’s King Edward VIII. Introduced to just one Sussex beauty, Bradshaw became fouled in chickens. His tiny hobby farm evolved into a 45-acre Ararat for dry-docking a spectacular collection of rare and beautiful birds.

Ah, chickens! When they are mentioned, what American’s first thought doesn’t go to the primeval Chicken Riddle, a joke so universal that few would fail to recognize even an allusion to it: A chicken sees a duck about to cross the road. “Don’t do it,” says the chicken. “You’ll never hear the end of it!”

“Chickens! Can’t live with ’em; can’t live without ’em!” Anyone who has ever walked barefoot through a backyard full of free-ranging Henriettas or chowed down on hot wings knows the truth of that proposition. But stereotyping Gallus gallus as nothing more than a silly, barnyard critter to be found either pointlessly crossing thoroughfares or adorning rotisserie spits is doing the ancient order of the chicken a great disservice.

Contrary to a kindergarten fable profiling Chicken Little as a hysterical wimp fleeing the collapse of the sky, the chicken’s original domestication may not have been inspired by its succulence but its fierce, inborn combativeness. Ancient historian Herodotus reports that the chicken may have saved Western civilization.

In the fifth century B.C., the Greek general Themistocles, leading his army to confront a vast Persian host at Marathon, encountered along his way two roosters squared off and fighting. Themistocles, a blunt commoner, told his soldiers to watch the avian battle:

“Behold these who do not fight for their household gods, or for the monuments of their ancestors, or for glory, liberty, or the safety of their children, but only because one will not give way to the other.”

Given that feathery inspiration, the Greek hoplites then ruled the day in Marathon with that same gut-level intensity.

The ancient mystique regarding the noble characteristics inherent in Gallus gallus has come home to roost in the breast of Paul Bradshaw.

According to modern ornithologists, if today’s domestic chicken were to log on to Ancestry.com/henny-penny, it could trace its lineage back to the dinosaurs. Eight to 10,000 years ago, the line, having long survived the extinction of its progenitors, manifested as Southeast Asia’s red jungle fowl.

DNA studies have tracked the ancient domestication and diaspora of the chicken through India to the Mediterranean. There, in seven-hilled Rome, the chicken pecked out a unique status in public life. In important questions of state, the chicken’s part in divining the will of the gods — either with its blood, or choosing one pile of grain over another —imbued it with an almost sacred aura.

Two millennia later, Greenfire stewards 53 breeds and, individually, 1,200 “rare hens and roosters” collected from every clime: chickens like the Tomaru, dating to the Tang Dynasty in China, with its luxuriant, ninja-black plumage; the Brown Red Game Cock, Alabama’s fighting bird from Irish stock; the Pavlovskaya from Russia, saved from extinction and cold hardy with a punk-rock explosion of feathers on its head; the Ayam Ketawa or “Laughing Chicken”; and the Ayam Cemani, both from Indonesia. The latter is a chicken black, literally to the bone, organs and flesh. Bradshaw says it’s his most requested bird ever.

Apropos Florida, Greenfire Farms is a gated community, more akin to stables of pedigreed racehorses than any commercial hatchery. Bradshaw avows that Greenfire selects and raises its own breeding flock rather than buying and incubating anonymous eggs-in-the-poke from industrialized eggatoriums.

Bradshaw so seriously takes his mission to preserve chickenhood’s variations and provide exotic chicken growers with healthy, top-dollar chicks that Greenfire’s hatching areas resemble a NASA sterile-room facility. Buyers are supplied by mail; if they were to visit the facilities, they might introduce contaminants.

A day after hatching, the on-order chicks are put in a special Postal Service box (winter heat pad, optional). Greenfire advises buyers to order no fewer than three chicks. Shipped together, each chick has at least two other shock-absorbing fluff-balls in the box during something like a stagecoach ride through the Badlands to wherever their journey takes them. Back home, the 1,200 adult chickens at Greenfire can be found, mostly dallying, in the sunshine and fresh air of Panhandle Florida.

Greenfire ships out some 50,000 chicks a year. Cream Legbars, which were brought to the U.S. from England and lay blue eggs, are currently popular. Male chicks go for $19 and the females for $29.

All black Ayam Cemani chicks, when in stock, fetch $199.

Wherever, there are no chickens without eggs: Which color does Monsieur or Madame prefer. Classic white? Blue? Green? Or perhaps a sophisticated, chocolate-brown, preferred, according to Ian Fleming, by none other than Bond, James Bond.

To folks fancying colored eggs, Greenfire will dispatch its Rainbow Egg-Layer Mix — at least three different breeds of chicks to produce eggs the envy of the Easter Bunny.

Bradshaw’s goal of preserving diversity within the ranks of a much-taken-for-granted animal friend is foremost a labor of love.

Actor Bill Murray once said, “I dream of a better world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned.” Could Paul Bradshaw’s fondness for the birds someday make it so?

Farmers whose lives are tied to trees are hurting in the Sunshine State.

In Central Florida, a pathogen that originated in China is devastating the citrus industry.

The bacterium huang long bing prevents fruit from ripening or may cause ripening fruit to fall to the ground prematurely.

A few hours north and west of the state’s orange groves, timber growers took a big hit in October 2018.

The penultimate cause may have been global warming — who knows? — but the immediate cause was winds that blew too darn hard.

Timber farmers and citrus growers, then, are united in a quest to find a replacement crop that doesn’t require years to mature. Hemp, some believe, may be an answer.

State Sen. George Gainer (R-Panama City) is optimistic about hemp, which interests him from two perspectives: He is the vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, and he represents a district that was molested
by Michael.

“I think it’s got all kinda possibilities,” said Gainer, quickly adding, “What I like about it is that it doesn’t really have an addiction danger to it.”

The Senate Agriculture Committee, Gainer said, has taken in several presentations on hemp, and he has grown convinced that a hemp industry could flourish in Florida.

“We’re tryin’ to get this thing hurried up, so that they can at least get a test crop planted in the spring,” Gainer said in December.

He noted that Kentucky got a head start on hemp production due in part to the influence of Mitch McConnell, the majority leader in the U.S. Senate.

In Kentucky, the issue was not green oranges or fallen trees, but a disappearing tobacco industry.

“We’re going to make an official request to Sen. McConnell to do what he can to give Florida the same green light,” Gainer said.

Gainer noted that FAMU has been engaged in hemp research for years and has a test farm in Gadsden County for that purpose.

He said the presence of that farm may affect the location of a hemp receiving or production facility.

Robert Presnell is the city manager in Chattahoochee and was county administrator in Gadsden County when it landed the Trulieve medical marijuana production facility. Three plant nursery owners, including two in Gadsden County, combined to bring about that project, he said. Presnell was instrumental in getting the approval process fast tracked.

“The medical marijuana business has been a tremendous boost for us,” said Presnell, who estimated that it employs 1,000 Gadsden County residents.

State Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried has predicted that hemp could become a $20 billion to $30 billion a year industry in Florida.

“It’s going to be something that is going to replace all of our Styrofoam, our plastics, our paper,” Fried has said. “Hemp is going to be what I call an industrial revolution in our state and across the country, and it’s all biodegradable.”

“Any time you have that much money on the table, things get very competitive,” Presnell said. “Growing hemp will only be successful in areas reasonably close to receiving facilities. I could grow 40 acres of it here in Gadsden County, but if I have to take it to Atlanta, that’s not a very viable option.”

Presnell can relate to farmers who lost timber crops to Michael. He grows “trees and cows” on a farm a couple of miles east of Chattahoochee.

“I was lucky,” he said. “I cut my trees and replanted a few years ago, so I had a lot of young, limber trees in rotation. Timing is everything.”

Presnell likes a suggestion made by Beth Cicchetti, executive director of the Gadsden County Development Council. Cicchetti is hopeful that Cal-Maine’s egg-producing facilities in Quincy, shuttered after Hurricane Michael, might be converted to hemp industry use.

“If that could happen, Gadsden County might become a hemp industry hub for a multi-county region,” Presnell said.

Taylor Biehl is a co-founder and the vice president of the Florida Hemp Association, based in Tallahassee.

He said that, in Florida, the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) will regulate the hemp industry and has been responsible for developing rules regarding hemp for approval by the federal government.

“The rules have been finalized and they have made it through a challenge period,” Biehl said in December.

Still being worked on was a concern on the part of the federal government that the hemp crop in Florida might run “too hot,” that is, it might exceed the federally imposed THC limit of 0.3 percent. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis; hemp and marijuana are classifications of cannabis.

Biehl relayed to 850 Magazine an update supplied by FDACS.

In it, the department clarified that permits to engage in any aspect of the hemp business in Florida will not be limited, and the industry will be horizontal in character.

That is, a business may choose to participate in a single part of the hemp business, a few parts or all of them.

In this regard, the hemp industry, as proposed, differs from the vertically integrated medical marijuana industry.

Also, according to FDACS:

• A rule governing the use of hemp extract in animal feed was set to become effective Jan. 1.
• A rule to allow university research pilot projects to certify seeds under Florida law was due to be filed for final adoption in January.
• FDACS’s proposed cultivation rule was being revised to align it with U.S. Department of Agriculture rules.
• FDACS was recommending to USDA sampling and testing methodologies designed to lower the incidence of “hot plants” and subsequent requirements to destroy crops.      

FDACS said that, consistent with Gainer’s wishes, it expected cultivation to occur in the first quarter of 2020.

“People are heavily focused on revitalizing the timber industry, and we have received many, many calls from timber farmers,” Biehl said.

Citrus growers and entrepreneurs, too, are ringing the Florida Hemp Association’s phones.  

Transformational is a word that often crops up when proponents speak of the ocean shellfish facility that the Wakulla Environmental Institute (WEI) proposes building on its 158-acre campus in Wakulla County.

Supporters say the facility — consisting of a nursery/hatchery, processing component and training space — will revitalize Panacea, and by extension Wakulla County and the region, through job creation and ancillary economic benefits.

The WEI, an offshoot of Tallahassee Community College (TCC), is seeking $13.5 million from Triumph Gulf Coast, Inc., to construct a $21.5 million state-of-the-art facility, with TCC to contribute the balance.

Triumph, a state-organized nonprofit corporation, oversees and administers the distribution of the settlement money from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill to the eight adversely impacted Panhandle counties.

Projections call for the facility to create 529 direct jobs and another 15,000-plus indirect jobs, augmenting the area’s GDP by $480 million over seven years.

“For every dollar Triumph invests in this project, the facility will generate over $36 of return into the regional economy,” states the grant application.

Bob Ballard, WEI executive director, explains the projections are based on numbers garnered from the institute’s oyster aquaculture program during the last five years.

He notes that the program has already led to the creation of 100-plus businesses with 150 employees in sustainable seafood farming.

“We extrapolated from that,” Ballard says.

The facility proposes annually graduating 28 oyster farmers/entrepreneurs, who will each launch a business and hire three to five employees, spurring economic growth.

The facility’s other objectives are twofold. First, the nursery/hatchery will produce seed, filling an existing gap and leading to increased oyster production.

Second, the processing will employ two technologies to ensure a safer consumer product, which is expected to double the oysters’ per-unit price.

“Our goal is to produce 500 million seed annually,” Ballard says of the first goal.

Florida oyster farmers currently get their seed from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

“We come hat in hand and are the last to get seed,” Ballard says. “We’re probably getting half the seed we need annually. Other hatcheries are trying to ramp up, but they can’t keep up with Florida’s growing demand.”

The second crucial element is ensuring the safe consumption of raw oysters. Despite government and industry efforts and best management practices, food poisoning from pathogens in raw oysters always poses a risk.

The processing will kill the bacterium via flash freezing and microwave pasteurization.

“Freezing gives the oysters a two-year shelf life,” Ballard says.

“The advantage to freezing is we can buy large volumes of oysters, freeze them, and sell them over a period of years. Freezing allows us to scoop up all the mature oysters in the area and preserve them, so that we can protect the price by preventing a market glut.”

Microwave pasteurization, a newer technology, is so precise and sensitive it kills the bacterium without harming the oysters.

“The oysters remain alive,” Ballard says. “It’s just that you must eat them within five to seven days.”

Fresh, safer oysters, goes the argument, will sell for a dollar each, double the current 50 cents, enhancing the economic benefits.

The Wakulla County Commission lists the facility among its top priorities for Triumph funding.

“Oyster aquaculture is one of the hottest, most emergent industries that we have,” says Wakulla County Commissioner Ralph Thomas.

“In few instances do we have opportunities to be part of a pioneering industry. We have that with oyster aquaculture.”

He appreciates the industry’s transformational potential.

“We have a lot of attributes in Wakulla County, but what we don’t have are highway, rail or port systems,” Thomas says.

“So that many of the things that attract businesses, we geographically don’t have. But we have that big beautiful bay, good water quality and excellent conditions for growing oysters. To me, it’s the perfect mix and the perfect time to support and encourage this.”

The Wakulla County Chamber of Commerce likewise endorses the project.

“We thought a way of life had gone away, and the coastal fishing industry was never going to be revitalized,” says Chamber President Dr. Rachel Pienta.

“But the new technology offered by oyster farming and aquaculture can provide a way for people to have that coastal fishing, agricultural-oriented life that Wakulla was built on. If the project realizes a portion of what it’s hoping to do, it could be transformational for Wakulla County.”

Ballard points to Cedar Key as an example of what could happen.

“Twenty years ago, Cedar Key was starting to grow clams,” Ballard notes.

“Today, Cedar Key is a beautiful, thriving town with lots of fisheries and clam farmers. It transformed the town in a wonderful way. Panacea used to be like that. Then the net ban and other things happened, and Panacea has fallen on hard times. This facility, we believe, will be the catalyst for Panacea to come back strongly.”