Transcripts from the legal field podcast

 Speaker 01: 0:00

Welcome to the Legal Field Podcast. where we discuss legal and regulatory topics that are of critical importance to the agriculture industry. My name is Amanda Perry Carl, and I am an agricultural lawyer whose family has been farming in Florida since 1823, before Florida even became a state. I have spent almost 20 years as an attorney in the agricultural industry and have made it my mission to ensure that everyone in our incredible industry understands the legal and regulatory issues that we face so that we can keep feeding Florida, America, the world. So if you're a farmer, rancher, or grower, if you're involved in raising cattle, sheep, poultry, goats, hogs, horses, or other livestock, if you grow fruits, vegetables, or sod, if you are involved with the aquaculture, turfgrass, or horticulture industries, if you are fighting the good fight to help our citrus industry survive, or if you just like to eat and you appreciate our ag producers, this podcast is for you. If you are interested in protecting and preserving our agricultural heritage, lands, and way of life, then come join us in the legal field and see what's growing on. Hello and welcome to our first ever episode of the Legal Field Podcast. I am Amanda Perry Carl, and I am the host of the podcast. And today we are so excited that our very first guest of the Legal Field Podcast is a person who was very instrumental in even introducing me to the concept of being an agricultural lawyer and instrumental in the trajectory of my career, Dr. Michael Olexa. Dr. Olexa works at the University of Florida as a professor in both the College of Ag and an undergrad in the College of Ag and Life Sciences. And he also is the director of the UF IFAS Center for Ag and Natural Resources Law. So Dr. Olexa, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Speaker 00: 2:06

Well, my pleasure, Amanda. It's so good to see you again. It's always good to see a former student and looking forward to the podcast.

Speaker 01: 2:14

This is going to be awesome. Just as a little background on how I first got to know Dr. Olexa before we get into our questions. And our topics for today, I was a young undergrad student trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I had grown up in ag and knew I wanted to advocate for our amazing industry in some way, but had no clue what I was doing, what I wanted to do. And I was in the College of Ag and Life Sciences studying ag education and was introduced, I think it was at a tailgater in the O'Connell Center, the then O'Connell Center, And I came across the booth set up for the Ag Law minor, which at that time was really new. And I don't know how this many years have passed. You'll talk soon about how many years you've been doing the minor. I don't know how I'm that old and I've been practicing this long. But it was one of the first classes to go through. And in the first class I sat in, it was your Ag Law class on the backside of one of the McCarty buildings. I don't remember which one it was. And it was in that class that you inspired me to be an ag lawyer. So I want to thank you so much for that because it's been almost 20 years now of an incredible career because of your inspiration.

Speaker 00: 3:29

Well, thank you so much, Amanda.

Speaker 01: 3:32

And what McCarty building was that, that your ag law class was in for so many years?

Speaker 00: 3:36

That was McCarty A and McCarty B. For the past several years, most of my classes have been in McCarty A.

Speaker 01: 3:46

Okay. Yes, that class was just so wonderful, and I appreciate the trajectory of my career because of you. And it's been so satisfactory over these last almost two decades. I can't believe I've been practicing that long, but thank you for that. I want to chat first about your experiences in your career path, because everybody who ever has sat in any of your classes has enjoyed some awesome stories about your career and your about things that you've experienced. So can you tell all of our listeners and viewers a little bit about your career path and how you ended up at the University of Florida as a professor and director of this Ag Law program?

Speaker 00: 4:29

Well, you know, it's really a serendipitous type of a story. I was in the military, Navy at the time, and I had a friend of mine who since passed, Jack Saladini, who was getting his graduate degree here at the University of Florida in plant pathology. Jack and I grew up in the same town in West Virginia, and Jack said, look, why don't you come down and visit, which I did. Jack and I were about the same size. So Jack went ahead and let me his civvies, his civilian clothes. At that time, to be in uniform was, during the Vietnam War, it was a little different. So I walked around campus. I fell in love with the University of Florida. And I remember going up to the Plaza of the Americas and sitting, leaning up against a tree, sitting down, leaning up against a tree. And I said to myself, if everything works out, I want to come back here. So whenever I got out of the service, I took a job for a short period of time. I did save up some money. I had the GI Bill, and I applied and got accepted to graduate school here at the University of Florida. I put everything I had in the world into my sea bag in a stereo outfit and headed for Florida. And I got situated here. I went ahead and I got my master's degree in plant pathology and my doctorate degree in plant path with minors in mycology and entomology. While here, I was really excited to see Florida. I was in the fields down in South Florida, Immokalee, Belle Glade, as a plant pathologist, as a student, and also later on working on a postdoc. To make a long story short, I was linked up with a professor here in the Food and Resource Economics Department by the name of James Warshaw. He was just a phenomenal individual, and he was working on different issues that involved science and crops and what have you. I went ahead and I worked with him. I helped him. And I was still working in South Florida. My major professor in my graduate program was able to get me some work through the Army Corps of Engineers dealing with a study of biological control of water hyacinth and water hydrilla. One day, Jim Warshaw called me into his office and he says, you got to go to law school. And I said, look, I've got this PhD degree. I've, uh, I've got a career plan track. He says, look. He looked at me and he says, I'll pay for your law school education. And I said, look, I'm working. I'm working on this thing down in South Florida and all. So the long and short of it is I'm thinking to myself, I don't want to be beholden, but I still have the GI Bill. So I went ahead during that period of time and followed his advice. I was able to still work in the Everglades area. and attend a law school at Nova Southeastern University. I finished up there. I passed the bar. And then after passage of the bar, I was contacted again by Jim Warshaw and another individual by name of Grover Smart. And they had asked me if I could work on a grant because at the time I was planning on just getting involved in just sort of a general practice area. And I did a little bit of it. So to make a long story short, I went ahead and I says, what's the job? And he says, well, it's a job with the USDA. And that particular job is working with ag scientists and prepping them for cross-examination and what was then referred to as RPAR, Rebuttable Presumption Against Registration with Pesticide Assessment Reports. So that's how I got locked into the USDA and what was to be a one-year job. grant? Well, one year led into two years. Eventually, there was a new thing coming on board called biotechnology. And with the science degree and with the law degree, I was able to meld both careers together. And I was back in Washington, D.C. My boss was an Air Force colonel from the White House. And I got heavily involved. I was first serving as a national program leader in ag law in I was then sent to the Secretary of Agriculture's office as a policy advisor in biotechnology. Subsequently, for the next three years, that's what I was primarily engaged in. Then I met my wife up in Washington, D.C. I later found out she really didn't like cold weather. Sometimes I wondered whether or not that's why she married me, because she knew I was from Florida. But we've been married now. We got married in 1990, and my daughter, Hope, came along. And it's just been a wonderful career. But whenever I was in Washington, D.C., my mentor, unfortunately, Jim Warshaw, passed. And they had asked me if I could take his position in setting up in the Ag Law Center, which I did. And that went on for a few years. And then in 2008, I was contacted by the then vice president of IFAS. And I was asked if I could change the name of the center to reflect more of the natural resource issues, habitat protection in agriculture, And they went ahead and we opted. And with the provost blessings, we became the Center for Agricultural and Natural Resource Law. So to make a long story short, I never planned to go to law school, but things just sort of happened that way. And that's where I am today.

Speaker 01: 10:46

Sometimes God's plans are greater than our plans, and we just roll with it, and then we have no idea

Speaker 00: 10:51

why. That's exactly what I did. I rolled with it. I had a great deal of respect for Jim. As a matter of fact, a very close colleague and friend of mine was working for Jim at the time back in the 70s, and his name was Michael Minton. And I got to know Michael and we still, all of these individuals, I still keep in touch with. And I have so over the years, including former students.

Speaker 01: 11:19

Well, I'm glad that that's how your career path ended up, that you ended up going into law and going to law school, because otherwise I probably wouldn't have been introduced to the agricultural law program and doing what I do. So I am grateful that that's how your career path ended up. Are there any favorite parts of your career along that whole trajectory, whether it was in D.C.? And I know meeting your wife is probably one of your favorite parts of your whole career path that you'd like to share any particular stories or duties that you had that are your favorite.

Speaker 00: 11:53

Well, actually, there are several. Obviously, meeting my wife was paramount. In working at the federal level, I had the unique opportunity to work with a large number of different agricultural groups. The interesting thing about it was the background, the science, the STEM backgrounds in agriculture and the fact that I was a crop scout for a while. I really got... on my hands working out in the fields and whatnot. It really helped me. Being in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, talking with the sugar cane, or not the sugar cane, but the sugar beet people, the grain growers. all over the Midwest and the West, working with a lot of different agricultural commodity producers. Specifically, a lot of it had to do not only with pesticide assessment, but also this new and upcoming thing at the time was biotechnology. The position also took me for travel in the Western Pacific. where I worked on Guam with the Chamorros. We were dealing with endangered species protection and also a lot of the groundwater issues there because at that particular time, a lot of areas of Guam were being purchased for setting up golf courses, and there was concern about groundwater contamination there. So the position itself has connected me over the years with a large number of different agricultural groups and also 1862 and 1890 land-grant universities. So it's been a very, very blessed career for me because it's taken me to a lot of different venues around from the academic standpoint and also from the commercial standpoint.

Speaker 01: 14:05

It's also really neat to see how ag production is around the country and different crops. I think me being a native Floridian who has, you know, I've been here since I was born. My family's been here since 1823. We know our crops in Florida. We know how production goes in Florida, but it's really cool to travel the country. And as you've traveled the world, and see how things are so different. Water and water rights around the country and around the world are so different.

Speaker 00: 14:33

Oh yeah, there's no question about it. Florida, one thing that I love about working in Florida, we've got three temperate zones. You can go up into the panhandle and you're dealing with some of the Midwestern crops. You're dealing with peanuts. You're dealing with soybeans, grain crops. And then there's Central Florida as we're moving further and further south with citrus. Everything in the starfruit and other tropical plants as you get into the deep southern portions of the state of Florida. It's really, we are a minor crop state and there are so many challenges and issues in dealing with the number of these minor crops and also tremendous amounts of opportunities in different types of agricultural production and different types of agricultural production systems. And subsequently, that has just been a real, just a real fortunate thing for me to have experienced these different cropping systems here in the state of Florida.

Speaker 01: 15:39

Now, I want to, you used to always tell your classes about your story of meeting your wife while in D.C. Before we move on to talk about the Ag Law Center, can you share with our listeners and viewers how you guys met in D.C.??

Speaker 00: 15:50

Yes, I will. I have to go back to a dear friend of mine. He was here at the University of Florida getting a graduate degree in political science. He was also a veteran. He was a chopper pilot in NAM. He did two tours. Great guy. Well, he got accepted to the State Department. And he was going through State Department training in Washington, D.C. when I was about to travel up there. And he said, look, you're here. Let's go to an Irish pub. So we went to an Irish pub. And while in the Irish pub, there was a lady. She was there. They had an Irish dancing thing there. And I happened to look at her and You know, the word for female in Irish, if my memory is correct, is Colleen. So I looked at her and I says, well, tell me, Colleen, what do you think about the Irish dancing? A little bit of a broke there. Well, her name was Colleen. And it turns out the band that was playing, I'd requested a song, Black Velvet Band, and she had also requested the same song. So I told her I was from Florida. She told me she was interested in long-distance relationships. But one thing led to another, and we started seeing each other, and we eventually got married. And I owe it to my friend Bob, who decided to take me to Murphy's Pub in Alexandria, Virginia. That's where we met.

Speaker 01: 17:29

See, despite what everybody thinks, good things can happen in D.C., and good relationships can develop in D.C., right?

Speaker 00: 17:35

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 01: 17:39

Now let's transition a little bit. I want to spend a lot of time talking about the Ag Law Center or the Center for Natural Resources and Agricultural Law. I'm old, so I keep flipping back to the old name, but I want to talk a lot about the center and what happens at the center, what the future is, some of the things that you do in the center, because I think it's so important for the states to have this robust relationship Center for Ag and Natural Resources Law at our land-grant university at UF. I talk to a lot more high school kids and young college kids who are interested in agricultural law more than ever before. So I think... Oh, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 00: 18:21

Well, one of the real interesting things about the center, we really... My appointment here is 70% teaching, 30% extension plus research. The faculty that are appointed here in the College of Agriculture have their appointments broken down into specific areas. That's my specific area. And I utilize both of them. The focus of the center, based on my appointment, really addresses two key areas, naturally teaching and naturally extension. As far as the teaching component is concerned, What we've been able to do with teaching in the year 2000, we established the undergraduate minor in agriculture and natural resource law. Prior to its establishment, the prior 10 years, we taught a couple of different courses in agricultural law, primarily the agricultural natural resource law. With the establishment of the undergraduate minor in ag and natural resource law, I teach the core courses, which is ag law and risk management and also agricultural and natural resource law. Those are the core courses. This is a 15-credit minor course. Six of them are the core courses, which I teach, and the remaining nine credit hours are primarily focused on policy courses and law courses. And I've got a list of some of the, just a couple of the policy courses and law courses could also include government regulation and food, water resource sustainability, U.S. food and agricultural policy. The students that complete the minor, and we've had over 500 students now that have completed the minor, it's a job getter. It really has given them an opportunity to hedge up over time. other individuals that are looking for jobs that are ag or, and I want to stress this, ag related here in Florida and other areas. About 15 to 20% of our students will go on to law school. And I've had students that have been accepted to law schools all over the country, Yale, University of Virginia, naturally the University of Florida, FSU, other law schools here in the state of Florida. The degree itself, the students that take the course, this does appear on their transcripts. So it'll appear on their transcripts, and once again, it has really helped these students get jobs. I had one student notify me that when he went in for a job interview in Tampa, as an example, the Well, not the hearing officer, but the hiring professional really got tied up and asking him questions about the minor. What were some of the courses? What did they pick up? And it's been a real plus for the students. And we've had some really, really great students that have completed the course and have done exceptionally well in the agricultural area and also in the political area.

Speaker 01: 21:53

And I know you've had some pretty notable alumni out of the program. Do you want to give some of those names to our viewers and listeners? Because you've had some really awesome alumni come through the program.

Speaker 00: 22:06

Well, you know, one of the things that have really made my career for me is seeing what my students have done. I've done a lot of different things in my life, but I've thoroughly enjoyed teaching. And over the years, I've had some great students yourself. It's just a classic example of what the courses that we've done here through the Center for Ag and Natural Resource Law, the catalyst that it's been able to provide for students. Some of the students we have, I have one student who's currently in Congress, Greg Steube, and I still stay in touch with Representative Steube. As a matter of fact, I ran into him at a bar meeting here a couple of years ago, but we do stay in touch. A former student who I met during the 100th anniversary of Alpha Gamma Rho is Adam Putnam. We've had Chad Johnson, who's currently a legislative representative in Tallahassee with District 22. Steven Hall, former general counsel of the Florida Department of Ag and Consumer Services. Robert Angus Williams, he was former general counsel of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Then we have Noah Valenstein. He was a former secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Stacey Sims, uh, She's chief operating officer of the Florida Farm Bureau Federation. Then we have James Spratt, owner of Magnolia Strategies. Now, one thing that I do want to say, there's two real good stories I'd like to share with you, if I may.

Speaker 01: 23:49

Absolutely.

Speaker 00: 23:50

Number one, any of my students that have been deployed that were an active military and were deployed overseas, I always made it a point to keep in touch with them and to get them care packages. Greg Steube is a classic example of that. Jim Spratt, at one point, his father was in the Florida legislature. And there's a... There's a great hot sauce. I love hot sauces, one of which is called Gator Hammock Hot Sauce, manufactured in Felda, Florida. And I used to drive through Felda when I was working in the Florida Everglades. And I believe it was Buddy Taylor Gator Hammock Hot Sauce. And I happened to mention to Jim that I wanted to get some overseas. His father brought up a case of Gator Hammock Hot Sauce. I wrapped it up. got it up to Fort Benning, Georgia and got it out. So these are just the kind of things that I've enjoyed doing and working with my students over the years.

Speaker 01: 24:57

That's awesome. And you know, that goes to the kind of person you are and why your students have always respected you so much because you have always been there truly to help and support your students, to help us with our career paths, to help us figure out what we want to do and to help the ag industry. You've been such a huge, asset to the ag industry in general throughout your entire career. And what I think is super notable about your alumni that you listed is some of those went into the legal practice. Some of them went into making laws into the legislature. And then Jim Spratt has gone into lobbying the legislature and making of laws. So it's pretty cool to see the list of some of your most notable students that have come through in so many different aspects of legal, lawmaking, lobbying for lawmaking.

Speaker 00: 25:48

And you know, one of the real neat things for the 20 years that I've taught, and again, I'm phasing out at the law school, I am looking towards retirement, and I also want to make sure that before I retire, we have the Center for Ag and Natural Resource Law well set, not only in endowments and funding, but I want my successor to come in and really do a great job and have everything ready before I walk out. But I've had a number of law students that have been introduced to us. to agricultural law and the importance of agriculture to the state of Florida, not only from the standpoint of agricultural production, but a lot do not fully understand the significance of agricultural lands as far as habitat protection, endangered species protection, water retention. There are so many different aspects of it, and many of them do not understand that 3.8 million acres in the state of Florida are privately owned. This is extremely important. It's also extremely important for the preservation of agriculture and preservation of agricultural lands in the state of Florida. It is one of the few... areas that can, uh, that is in constant reproduction, reproducing itself in crop production, in habitat protection, in water recharge areas and whatnot. And as I tell a lot of my, I had one individual who, uh, whose son decided to be in a college of agriculture, called me up and he said, look, I, I, all you guys are nothing but cows and plows. So I spend, uh, 40 minutes educating him on some of the deep aspects of agriculture, that it's big, that it's broad, that it's basic. It reaches into all aspects of society and the significance and importance of it. And I think a lot of this really, really came true because I know whenever I taught at the law school, the first thing I would ask my students, do you consider yourself civilized? Let me see your show of hands. All hands went up. My next comment was, what do you think would happen if you were cut off from the food supply for two weeks, and especially those of you with children? And what really struck me was driving by a number of these large supermarkets in Florida during the COVID epidemic and seeing people in long lines, six feet apart, waiting to get into those supermarkets to buy basic food staples. Agriculture truly is our life support system in this country. It really is.

Speaker 01: 28:45

It's funny that you say that. During COVID, as I was usually out there in front of the Walmart at 645 on Saturday morning waiting to get in to get food for five boys who were hungry, I actually thought about your opening line in our ag law class at the law school and how many of those students at the law school in that class, to your point, had no background in ag. They had no idea what the agricultural industry looked like. And it was great at the end of that course, at the end of that semester, to see some of my classmates who knew nothing about agriculture come out of your ag law class with a much better understanding and appreciation. And I think that class at the law school is so important because you are reaching a very different group of students. Most of them don't have an ag background. And I think that's so important.

Speaker 00: 29:32

Right. And not only that, but many of them will, and many of them are right now, with sole and small firm sections. There was silk stocking for the larger firms here in the state of Florida. In addition to that, they're actively involved politically. And they understand that the big, broad, and basic nature of agriculture and exactly how important we are. Also, during times of difficult economic times with recessions, it's agriculture that literally keeps a lot of the lights on here in the state of Florida. Very, very important.

Speaker 01: 30:11

Those of us who had to go to work every day still and were lucky to still go to work every day were those working for ag companies, that we were deemed essential. And I think a lot of people saw that during COVID of what was deemed essential, and it's agriculture feeding America, feeding the state, feeding the world.

Speaker 00: 30:29

Well, you know, if I may just share one more story with you, I was raised, well, about eight years, well, actually, even before eight years, I was a small boy on my grandmother's subsistence farm. My grandmother survived World War I in Europe. She was cut off from her husband who had come to the States and later a war broke out. I saw my grandmother at one point when I was a small boy drop a slice of bread on the ground. She picked up that bread and she kissed it and then fed it to the birds. Years later, I asked my Aunt Helen, who was living in Tampa, I shared that story with her. My Aunt Helen and my Uncle John survived in Europe during World War I with my grandmother. And she told me at one point they were starving to death. And they were crying. She and my Uncle John were crying. They didn't have enough to eat. And my grandmother was crying. My grandmother held out her arms and said to them, this is all I have for you to eat. And what really struck me about that a few years later when I was watching an old movie rerun of The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, who, by the way, was a native West Virginian. I have to say that. But I do consider myself a Floridian. But the bottom line is the movie that was made in the 1930s, before my time, Paul Mooney was the actor. He received the Academy Award for that movie. And there's a scene in the movie, if my recollection is correct, where there are two men pulling a yoke because the Austin had been slain. There's famine in China. And one individual looks at the other individual and he says, I hear there's going to be a revolution. And the other individual looks at him and says, what is revolution? And the response is, I do not know, but it has something to do with food. You cannot have a constitutional republic. You cannot have a democratic form of government with a lot of hungry people. Agriculture is so significantly important to this country. That's who we are.

Speaker 01: 32:46

Absolutely. And it's it's a national security issue, too. You know, like to your point, I think a lot of people don't realize that it is so critical. It's critical to our state as we see so much development in the state of Florida. We need those lands. We need the wildlife corridor to be intact. We need our ranch lands, our farmlands and to feed our state. And I think that the College of Ag in general does a great job of helping this and promote this and educate people on this that comes through the College of Ag. And I think that the center does an absolutely amazing job. As we have a few minutes left here, I want to make sure that I give you enough time to talk about the future of the center, what your future plans look like. I want to talk a little bit about what you want to do in retirement before we end. So what do you need for the center? How can people help if they want to help to keep this continuing after your retirement?

Speaker 00: 33:43

Well, really, the key here is finding Naturally, it'd be funding and endowments just to keep the lights on and to keep things moving. Whenever Jim Warshaw established the center in 1981, it was established by the Florida Board of Regents as a type three non-funded center. So all the operations of the center are non-funded. Only what we can achieve through endowments like the Warshaw and the Mitten endowments and also fundraising contributes from individuals. And subsequently, through our teaching efforts and also through our extension efforts in publishing through the electronic data information source, we have a large number of agricultural law publications out there. They deal with a variety of issues, land use, farm and ranch property rights, etc., tree falls responsibilities for tree owners, etc., It's all out there, but that's what we really need to keep things going. And we've been able to keep things going for a very, very long time. And subsequently, there have been some great benefactors, one up in Live Oak, Ernest Sellers and others that have been such great such a key and they are so strongly focused on the importance and also the importance of our younger people and our teaching efforts and our extension efforts as well.

Speaker 01: 35:21

And we'll make sure to include at the end of this podcast links for that as well. So if people want to go to the website and go to those links, they can locate that information as well because this really is, it's critical for our state, for our industry to to educate folks as they come through. And like I said, the ag law class at the law school, I think, is always phenomenal because it reaches students outside the College of Ag as well. And I think it really educates a totally different group of students that then go out into the legal practice, into the state of Florida, other states, as they disperse and it spreads that information and that importance of our industry.

Speaker 00: 35:57

Yeah, and I will say that we're getting students now from colleges all over the University of Florida campus. Now, the website itself, if they can Google the Center for Agricultural and Natural Resource Law, and there's a little site there, Support Center. Just click on that. It'll take you to another screen, which is similar to the first screen, where it just says Center for Agricultural and Natural Resource Law, and the donation window is there. I will also say that we're in the process right now of updating the website, and they can also contact The UF IFAS Foundation, we're currently working with some wonderful people in the UF IFAS Foundation for fundraising. They can also contact them as well.

Speaker 01: 36:47

That is awesome. And I know you're looking to retire at some point in the near future so you can enjoy some time doing some other fun things. Can you talk to our listeners a little bit about what you plan to do in retirement after retirement? A long career, a very well-earned retirement.

Speaker 00: 37:04

Well, there's really two things. I now have two grandchildren, Grace and Michael. I want to spend a little bit of time with them. I want them to know who their grandfather is before I buy the farm. That's an expression that we used in the service. The other thing that I want to do, I want to fish. I spent my master's degree work. I lived in the lighthouse out on Seahorse Key. I got to know all the old conks out there. I've got my own cast nets. I love to fish. I want to get out and do a little more fishing. The other thing that I want to do is I want to volunteer. I mentioned to you earlier that I've always sent care packages to any of my students that were in active military overseas, especially in the combat zones. What I want to do, I'm a member of the American Legion and also a lifetime member of the Disabled American Veterans. We have a wonderful VA hospital here in Gainesville, Florida. I want to volunteer with Veterans Affairs and And I'll be traveling back and forth from Texas. I've got a lot of relatives in Texas. They settled there back in the 1800s. But I'd like to visit with my daughter and get involved out there as well. That, for me, is very, very important.

Speaker 01: 38:28

The time spent with grandkids is so worth it. You will not regret retiring and going and spending time with your grandkids. And they will be so lucky to have the time spent with you and the memories that they will have for their entire life.

Speaker 00: 38:43

Yeah, as a matter of fact, my daughter, my daughter Hope was always asking me to write up some stories and I've already written some up. I want to make sure that I'm going to put a little notebook together and give it to her as a gift.

Speaker 01: 38:59

My granny is now 96 and I'm actually taking the boys tomorrow to my dad's house over in Marion County. And we're going to go pick some peanuts in his garden. And my granny is so excited to come over and help. She's got her oxygen tank, but she's wanting to come over and help. So we're taking the boys over tomorrow to do that. And so time spent with their great grandmother at 96 is just so important and so critical. So they are excited to go and spend time with her and pick peanuts with her. And I know that time spent with your grandkids will be some of the most core memories they'll ever have.

Speaker 00: 39:39

Oh, yeah. And one thing that I have learned, and I'm sure those that will be watching this podcast would agree with me 100%, they grow up so fast. They do. Blink, and they're grown up. I cannot believe I'm a grandfather. It just seems like I just brought our daughter back from Shands when she was born. But here it is all these years later and it goes by so very, very quickly.

Speaker 01: 40:05

It does. It seems like we just adopted our boys and the oldest was seven and now he's almost 13 and a half and turning into a man. And I don't know when that happened to the little boys that we adopted five and a half years ago.

Speaker 00: 40:18

Yeah. And whenever they hit that teenage years, there's like a button that's pushed. Then they'll come back to you. I remember a quote by Mark Twain who said, when I was 18 years old, I thought my old man was the dumbest person on earth. And when I turned 21, I was amazed at how much he had learned in three years. That's it. But they'll come back around. They'll come back around. So

Speaker 01: 40:45

true. Well, do you have any last things you'd like to say to our listeners or viewers about the center, about the industry in general, about any of your experiences, any final words you'd like to give to our listeners?

Speaker 00: 40:59

Yeah, I really believe in my research, in my heart, that what we're really looking at here is some incredible, incredible days ahead as far as innovative sciences and what agriculture is doing in the way of environmental protection through such things as genetically modified organisms where you can extract, you can plant plants, plants in arid soils and still crop production, medicinal type of plants. It can be used as a nutrient supplements and whatnot. We are just, we are just, opening up a new vista in agriculture and what's available out there and what the future generations are going to be able to experience. And not only experience, but also develop. Develop new agricultural technologies, new means of production, even in the inner cities as far as... bringing communities together with urban gardens and what have you. The future of agriculture here in Florida and nationwide is just, in my belief, I just wish I could live to be 200 years old to see it, but it's there and it's going to open up more and more and more. And I know that UF IFAS is innovative. It's the things that we're doing through UF IFAS, the research and education centers around the state of Florida. And it's just going to open us up into an incredible future. We've got some challenges. Cleaning is a real problem, but we're going to overcome that. And in the end, we're going to have just a new vista in agriculture for the state of Florida. I just wish I could be live long enough to see it, but we all have our moment in time.

Speaker 01: 43:02

Well, I want to thank you so much for being here today on the podcast. I know I can speak for all of your students and former students at how grateful we are for all of your work at the Center for all of these years and at UF-IFAS. You have inspired so many students, generations of students, and I just want to thank you for all of your time investing in your students and for your time with us here today.

Speaker 00: 43:25

Well, I certainly appreciate it. And if I've missed any students with my earlier discussion, mea culpa and my apologies. There's just so many wonderful students that have been through the program. And that in our extension outreach through our publications is what we're really all about, especially focusing in on the future and the future of agriculture here in the state of Florida.

Speaker 01: 43:49

It's bright. It definitely is. Thank you so much.

Speaker 00: 43:54

And thank you, Amanda. It's good to see you again.

Speaker 01: 43:56

You too. It's always good to see you. Thank you for listening to the Legal Field Podcast. For more content, please visit the Facebook page of Florida Ag Law or go to floridaaglaw.com and join us next time on the Legal Field Podcast to see what's growing on.

  Speaker 00: 0:00

Welcome to the Legal Field Podcast, where we discuss legal and regulatory topics that are of critical importance to the agriculture industry. My name is Amanda Perry Carl, and I am an agricultural lawyer whose family has been farming in Florida since 1823, before Florida even became a state. I have spent almost 20 years as an attorney in the agricultural industry and have made it my mission to ensure that everyone in our incredible industry understands the legal and regulatory issues that we face so that we can keep feeding Florida, America, and the world. So if you're a farmer, rancher, or grower, if you are involved in raising cattle, sheep, poultry, goats, hogs, horses, or other livestock, if you grow fruits, vegetables, or sod, if you are involved with the aquaculture, turfgrass, or horticulture industries, if you are fighting the good fight to help our citrus industry survive, or if you just like to eat and you appreciate our ag producers, this podcast is for you. If you are interested in protecting and preserving our agricultural heritage, lands, and way of life, Well, welcome to another episode of the Legal Field Podcast. My name is Amanda Carl, and I am the host of the podcast, and we thank you for joining us here today. I'm so excited that our guest today is Steven Hall. Steven, thanks for joining us today. 

Speaker 01: 1:31

great to be here.

Speaker 00: 1:32

So Steven is currently the Executive Director of CRAFT, which is the Citrus Research and Field Trial Foundation, and previously served as Deputy Commissioner and General Counsel for the Florida Department of Ag and Consumer Services. Steven, I think you served 18, 17, 18 years with the department?

Speaker 01: 1:50

Something like that, yeah.

Speaker 00: 1:51

Your entire legal career until last year. Also, on a personal note, we've known each other since high school, I think, FFA days. And we're in Professor Olexa's Ag Law program together. For anybody who listened to our episode last month, Professor Olexa was our guest last month, and Steven and I both had the honor to be in Professor Olexa's Ag Law program. I think I'm biased, but I think we were the best class to ever go through his program. We had a lot of awesome people in our class. I don't know if he would say the same thing. He wouldn't want to be that biased, but I think we were. So if you could, Steven, just give us a little bit of background on your upbringing, your ties to agriculture, how you got involved in agriculture.

Speaker 01: 2:34

Sure. First, thanks for having me, Amanda. This is really cool to be on and talk about things that I love, agriculture and the law. Well, and that's really kind of how I ended up in the roles that I did. So I grew up on a family farm outside of Malone, Florida, which, as I describe, is a mile from Alabama, seven miles from Georgia. We're up in the corner in the panhandle, and my family has been in that area for over 200 years. And so they were kind of founders of the town and have been farming there that entire time. We still are lucky enough to have the family home on the farm. And so I grew up on the farm. Growing up, it was cattle and hog and peanut operation mainly. I grew our corn and other cover crops and things like that and worked daily on the farm with my dad and grandfather and just grew up loving agriculture and the industry and the people. And the work was hard. Didn't always love it. I don't know that anybody always will say that. But in looking back, I... you know i missed i missed that piece do missed working on the farm every day um but uh it was one of those things where uh my family you know basically made the same problems my dad did to that my grandfather made my dad is hey um if you want to come back and farm we can find a way to make it work but you need to go try to find something else first and so i went to the University of Florida with Kind of had the law school in my mind. I had participated in teen court growing up and really kind of loved the idea of the law and what it could do and what it meant. And I also grew up with the idea of watching the water wars. The Apalachicola River was kind of in our backyard on the other side of town and That was really kind of the eye-opening to me of watching the impact that these big legal decisions and this government regulation of that impacted Florida and agriculture. And I thought that maybe if I worked hard, I could find a way to be part of that and be helpful. And so I went to the University of Florida, got my degree in Food and Resource Economics. free and easy, as Commissioner Putnam likes to call it. To me, it wasn't necessarily that. It was neither free nor easy, but made it through and was able to go to law school and from there.

Speaker 00: 5:09

And I think for our listeners who may not be familiar, there are native Floridians and some of us have been here for two, our families for 200 years. And to think about what our ancestors, our family came to Central Florida in 1823 and to think about what our ancestors dealt with in Florida with no air conditioning, windows open at night and everything wanting to kill you. They were some tough people.

Speaker 01: 5:32

Absolutely, they were. I have had a theory about the people that came here way back then that... Same kind of theory of the people went out west, right? They went looking for fame and fortune or for their own freedom. And you really had to be wanting to get away from something or strive out on your own to come south into Florida. And so our families that did that and had been here for that long were pretty amazing. Our family homestead house is still, my great-grandmother lived in it up until the 70s. And it has the windows that don't open and the slats in the floor are not air-conditioned. and all the things. It's basically a family museum at this point in time. So it's really cool, and it's a nice piece of heritage that I've got home very regularly, and where I am, and teaching my kids about it. We still have our old farm implements and everything in the barn for the farm, and it's a real treasure of history for the family.

Speaker 00: 6:30

That's awesome. They were tough in coming here and brave, Or I like to say sometimes maybe our family was running from something leaving South Carolina. I don't know. But they were tough. Yes. They were looking for a better life.

Speaker 01: 6:44

There are all sorts of family rumors about all that as well.

Speaker 00: 6:49

I'm sure. So I know probably what one of your highlights of college and law school were, but can you tell us maybe some of the highlights of your time in college at U.S. and then in law school as well?

Speaker 01: 7:03

Okay. Okay. So, yeah, so I'm proud to be a brother of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity. My father is an AGR or was an AGR as well. Um, and, uh, really there was, they never really thought about doing anything else. I kind of moved into the AGR house before I was actually initiated into, into it and, and, and paid for that in some fun ways. But, uh, it was, it was, it was really a good home for me. And I had been going there with my dad since I was, I don't know, 12 or 13 years old to the house on game days and stuff. And it really felt like home and, uh, and easily worked that walk through there. I was, uh, I was also proud to be an ambassador for the college and IFAS and enjoyed that a lot, meeting people from all parts of the college and professors, universities. I worked on campus. I had two or three jobs for the college and was busy and was in a bunch of other different clubs and things that were all important. able to make me, you know, have openings and meet different people and be around people and just enjoyed my time on campus. It was about two and a half years, I think. I started, I went to my first two years at Chipola College, which is the junior college back home, and then transferred into UF and enjoyed my time there and was really thankful for all the experiences I had and then was ready to go to law school and I got my the best offer from Cumberland, which is at Samford University, and had several different offers, and some of the places were for better or worse and closer to home, but this one was closer to home. I was just so happened that my farm is halfway between Birmingham, which is where Samford is, and Gainesville. And it was basically the same distance either way. And so I went to Cumberland. And while I was at Cumberland, I was encouraged and had the opportunity to get a joint master's degree. So I have my master's in environmental management and my law degree there. And I did that, was really thinking about because by then, after taking Dr. Olexa's agricultural law minor, I was pretty set on coming back to Florida and doing agricultural law somewhere. I wasn't exactly sure where when I started that. But with food and resource economics, I had a good ag business background and an economic understanding of how the world worked. And being in law school, what I realized, what I was doing, what I was working for on behalf of farmers, I knew that I needed to get more of a science background. And so the master's in environmental management was a hard science. All the hard sciences that I would end up needing and use in my life and my career so far to help me get that understanding. So my master's degree while in law school was a little bit crazy. It was a law school load plus doing master's classes at night. But I didn't have anything else to do other than study and work. So it was a good opportunity and it paid off in the long run. So I was proud to be a Cumberland alum. I'm actually get to... They've started an advisory group for their joint, their master's and law degree program. The board's just been formed. They're going to be on, they asked me to serve on the boards. I'm excited to do that. And to me, and when I was hiring lawyers, it worked out for me, but when I was hiring lawyers, I was always looking for the attorneys who were well-branded and had that, especially when I was at the department, because understanding that the four-department agriculture is really a science-based agency. with all the different things we do and so having people that are well-rounded and well-read and have at least a working understanding of how to spell science is very helpful for those lawyers because the people we're working with are making scientific decisions and they need to know the law but also to be able to translate a scientist. As I say, sometimes I I'm lucky enough to be married to a veterinarian who is, so is the scientist every day. So I speak science very fluently because of that, but also working with our, our, our PhDs and our, our, you know, different people with that hard sciences background that, that, that speak that because scientists speak differently and think differently than lawyers do where we live in a world of grace. They are very much in the world of black and white, either it is or it isn't. And so being able to translate that a lot of times paid off over the course of my career several times.

Speaker 00: 11:41

And I think that's a lot of times hard to find is lawyers with that science background. I've had quite a few high school and college age students who are interested in being ag lawyers recently reach out and ask about some of the things they should do to prepare for that. And I think that's one thing that's really important and differentiates you as well and prepares you a little bit more. So I think that advice is really good for anybody who may be listening. Who's younger and thinking about that career path to help them figure out how to strategize and make the best moves in college. Absolutely.

Speaker 01: 12:11

And just being well-rounded and just being well-rounded to having that understanding is going to help you in your life. It's going to help you be a better attorney. It's going to, cause you're, cause you're not going to be, um, I'm not sure I've ever met somebody who's a political scientist. in the real world, right? I mean, there's probably a few out there and they probably live here in Tallahassee. They're lobbying or doing things like that. But the vast majority of people you're going to be working for, especially in the agriculture world, they're out there making decisions every day. As farmers, you know, us farmers wear, you know, lots of different hats. And they're weathermen, they're scientists, they're workers, they're doing all the different things, they're engineers. And being able to have some sort of understanding background if you're willing to stay in this, in that in that world and work for those people, helping to understand where they're coming from at least and having been exposed to it at least some point in time in your life, I think just makes you a better lawyer.

Speaker 00: 13:03

Absolutely. And the business side of it too, just really understanding the inner workings of the business. I think that's critical. Yep. So how did you then end up getting the job at the Department of Ag and deciding that that's what you want to then go do? Where you spent decades, which is great.

Speaker 01: 13:19

Yeah. So, uh, There were no agriculture lawyers when I was in law school. There was nobody to model after. You had people like Scotty Butler, who was a giant in the legal world, but he was the longtime general counsel of Florida Farm Bureau. and there was one or two others who if you did a rudimentary google search okay so guys this was 25 years ago now and uh well and there was just nobody to model and the people that had that there was nobody saying agricultural law on their website it was if they were doing it they were doing land use and they were doing wills and trusts and they were working for farmers but there was no such thing as an agricultural law you know practice um So I went looking for a place that I could get some exposure and find out to that. And my search really led me to the Department of Agriculture. And I had some connections at USDA. And I was thinking, do I want to try to work in D.C.? And kind of went down that route and realized that that was too far from home. Wanted to be close to my family. Tiffany and I were friends. very serious and knew she wanted it. Well, she was in vet school by then and was wanting to stay in Florida and practice. And I was like, no, that's not the, that's not the route I've had ever towards my career, several opportunities to go to DC. And I've just, I never took the, I never took the plunge to do that. It just, uh, the Tallahassee rat race was enough for me. And, um, and so anyway, back on, on track, I, uh, found the department. I figured out who the general counsel was and commissioner Bronson was the commissioner at the time. And I got my resume to a family friend in the commissioner's office. And it got to miss Rhodes, who was the chief of staff. And she sent it to the, uh, general counsel who, uh, called me cold, called me one day and basically said, who are you? And how did your resume end up on my desk? His name was Richard Trichler and who, who, uh, became a friend of mine and I worked, eventually worked for, and I told him that, you know, where I was and what I was doing. And I said, Hey, I think I want to do an internship at the department general, department general counsel's office. And he said, I don't have an intern. I don't have any interns and we don't have an internship program. And I said, well, I don't need to be paid. I have a friend that'll let me sleep on his couch until I say, I just want to come work here. I think I want to do agricultural law. And, uh, The conversation went on, and I remember him saying something to the effect of, I'm not going to be able to get rid of you, am I? And I said, I really would like to work at the department. And he said, I'll call you back. And so three days went by, and he called me back, and he said, okay, I'm not going to pay you anything, but if you show up by this date, we'll see what we can do. And so I did show up on the day. at the legal suite of the general counsel in the Mayo building at the department and was there for almost 20 years from that day. Your persistence. It did. You got rid of me. It did. And I proved my worth, I think, as an intern. And it was one of those deals where it was very clearly I was going to go back to law school at the end of the summer And uh, but they wanted me to they let me they let me work as much as I wanted to and I work five days a week Um, you know 10 10 hour days, you know 7 :30 to whenever whenever the general counsel or whoever one attorney I was working with went home. I stayed. One of those deals because again, I was sleeping on my buddy's couch. So I wasn't in a hurry to go home and uh, and then uh At the end of the summer they were like, hey, what are you doing for Christmas? and Um, I was like, well, I actually, I was just going to go to the farm and hang out. And they were like, well, would you like to work? And so I ended up, they offered me to come back. So I came out and what I quickly realized was, I think that year Christmas was in the middle of the work week. And all the attorneys wanted to be off for, and be on vacation for Christmas. So they needed somebody to man, be in the office and man the phones. Yeah. Yeah, I came back and worked over like a month over the holidays there, and they all left Christmas. And I only went home for Christmas Day that year, or maybe we had Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve, something like that. But I worked the rest of the week, and they kind of left me. And in charge of things that was his intern there to answer the phone and do whatever. And I remember they specifically said, if anything goes wrong, call John Costigan, who was the deputy general counsel at the time. And I don't know if for anybody who's ever worked at the department who may be listening to this, there's always some sort of equine emergency every year at Christmas because that's when all the horses are coming south. Well, sure enough, there was a, I forget what it was, there was some disease outbreak going on and the state veterinarian called the legal office at the time and said, hey, this thing is happening. What do I do? And I'm the legal intern and sitting there thinking oh my gosh what do you do and I said I don't know let me call you back and so i read the statute I looked at it and I said okay this is what I do and then I was like I was like I need to call somebody and get somebody to tell me that I'm right and so I called on and I was like hey this is what's going on this is what I think is right he said yeah that sounds good tell him that and so that's what I did and so I proved my worth there and I um so I started as an intern and I never left the payroll till the day I turned in my uh resignation uh last year when I left the department so

Speaker 00: 19:14

that's an awesome career story of perseverance getting your foot in the door and sometimes you don't take no for an answer and then you end up with nearly two decade career

Speaker 01: 19:24

And some really good people taking chances on me. And seeing that I had interest in some people that didn't know me or didn't know me or my family or anything. There was just this kid who came from a farming background that the department has historically taken care of and given opportunities to. And I just like to think I took advantage of that because the people gave me those opportunities.

Speaker 00: 19:50

And staying at the department for almost 20 years, is really for most people, if you know or don't know this, it's kind of unheard of to stay as an attorney in a government agency for that long. I shouldn't say unheard of, but it's not that common to stay that long. What would you say were the things that kept you there? Was it the people? Was it the work you were doing? Was it a combination of all of that? Because it's a thankless job a lot of times to be an attorney in a government agency. It's hard work. Public eyes are always on you. So what do you think it was that kept you there?

Speaker 01: 20:25

I loved the work first. So it was fulfilling. I was never somebody who I ever really thought I was going to go do private practice. It was just not what motivated me. You're at a state agency. Nobody that works there does it for that. My... family so it might come from a family of farmers and my mother was a school teacher and principal so public service runs throughout my family on both sides of it as well and so falling into the department was probably always kind of destined for me because that's just how I was also big in leadership development through FFA and through HOBE another organization I spent a lot of time volunteering and working with and work and just being committed to that. It is very rare to be at an agency that long, although if it happens often, it happens a lot at the department because you get an expertise or kind of grew up in the department, as some of us have said, who get there through the leadership and a lot of homegrown talent. It's very rare, though, for because most attorneys in Tallahassee are jumping either in and out of private practice or they're getting their feet wet and then go into private practice because, frankly, that's where student loans and funds and everything, that's where it drives people. Or in some instances, they get offers at another agency for a couple of thousand dollars more and they make the jump because that's where the salaries take you. But to me, I was never... I don't want this to sound arrogant or anything else, but I did not come to work for the state government. I guess, given my background, I was probably, I may have always been kind of be the deputy general counsel of the department, which thankful that I had the opportunity to do for almost six years for commissioners and which was. Very, very rare. Most general counsel is absolutely a senior political appointed position. And to do that for multiple commissioners is very rare. And I was lucky enough to do that. And I think that's because all the commissioners saw that I had the background and the ability to do that and provide them good guidance. And I'm thankful for that, your staff, and seeing that as well.

Speaker 00: 22:59

And so I want to talk a little bit about some of the things you did while you were at the department. One of those, the next guest we're going to have on the podcast next month is Ben Moore from The Ugly Company. And they do a lot of stuff in food waste and they're doing a lot of awesome work in taking food waste and making really cool food products. But we both know there's a lot of liability in a lot of states that scares people away or potential liability that scares companies away from getting into the food waste space. I know while you were at the department, You guys had done a lot of work in terms of food waste and food donations. Could you talk about that a little bit and some of the things that you did to help improve those circumstances in the state of Florida for people who were trying to help eliminate food waste?

Speaker 01: 23:45

So I take very little and was just part of the group that did this. And it was there were major corporations in the state who came to the department and said, hey, we we have food. all this food that is being prepared food that is going to waste. And it's one of those deals where we would like to be able to do something with it. We're just, we're just throwing this away and we'd like to see it. And so, uh, our division of food safety, who is overseas food safety and the preparation and sale, um, outside of restaurants and hotels, which are done by other agencies, really went to work and to try to figure out a way to do that. And it really necessarily wasn't a legal matter. It was a regulatory matter, and it was an opportunity to find a way to partner to try to get government out of the way and doing it in a safe way. And I don't think they're necessarily done with all the work they did. They were starting that when I was leaving the department, but they're continuing to work on that. And I think that was one of the things that I was proud of from my time at the department. And it was a history of things. The worst answer I would ever get was when I would ask, well, why do we do something this way? It was, well, we've always done it that way, right? Well, that's... That's not an acceptable answer. It was always, okay, well, either it's because it's convenient for us to do it that way, the law requires us to do it that way, or there's some reason that it was put in place that technology or time has changed and maybe we can do it better. And so that was always a driver of me. One of the things I did is started as an intern. They put me in charge of agency rulemaking. And so there was a time when, uh for many years uh where i was over i was in charge of all the agency's rules and I was the the the most agencies office general counsel oversees agencies rule making the commissioner or their agency head has to do final off but the lawyers are the ones who were working with staff to do that and i was able to build a um actually started that first summer I was at the department I was able to build the infrastructure in the department where all the rules flowed through the office general counsel for the attorneys and eventually the general counsel reviewed and signed off before it was presented to the commissioner's office and the commissioner for approval at the different stages that required that. And so I spent about 12 years of my time at the department as the agency that we call the agency rulemaking coordinator and overseeing that. And so working through, there was a time where every rule that was on the books for the department had my fingerprints on it. And whether it was from our division of licensing and concealed weapons permitting processes and things around that, or which that's mainly statutory, but thinking through the different licenses that They do all the way through our food safety divisions to our traditional ag divisions, office of ag water policy, consumer services. I either wrote or helped write or rewrite those rules. And so we did a lot of those questions, just like we did coming back to your question about the food waste of whenever these rules came before us, when my specific missions, what I wanted to do was, is it clear? Is it concise? And is it within the statutory constraints and authority given to the department? And then finally, doesn't make sense why are we doing it this way is it and do we have to do it and how burdensome is is it on the people that have to comply with it can they can can some farmer standing in his field or some business owner that has to comply with his rule read it understand by reading it exactly what they have to do and comply with it. And so that they don't have to go call somebody or ask somebody or hire a lawyer or anybody else to do, to help them read it and understand what they need to do. And so I was proud of that work that we did, um, working on that, cleaning that up. Agency rules get a, they get a bad rap sometime. And, um, my friends in the legislature will sometimes say that, you know, agencies over-regulate. I agree. A lot of agencies do that, but also no agency rule exists, uh, without there's some law in the book saying that the legislature wrote says, hey, agency, go write this rule. That's just not how that's how the law works in Florida. So there is a law out there that says the agency has the ability to go do this. And so I figured the thing we could do at the department for the people that we are working with on a daily basis was at least write it in a way that they could understand it and write it in a way that is as least burdensome to them as it could be. Sometimes they had some hoops that had jumped through because of the law and the statute that required that rule to be existing. But the least we could do was write it in a way that they could understand it. And so I'm proud of the work we did for there.

Speaker 00: 28:37

Which I think is so important. As much as my business thrives on some of that. It's important for people, for individuals, for farmers, for property owners, for residents, business owners, to be able to read clear and concise rules and understand them without having to hire attorneys. I know I would be out of business, but at the same time, it's important for our business owners, our property owners, our individuals, our residents of the state to have that. So it's very important when we have folks in government who are doing things the right way And it's very appreciated by the resident. Is there anything else you want to share about your time with the department before we move on to your current role? Any projects that you're the most proud of? Anything that happened during your tenure that you'd like to share? S

Speaker 01: 29:29

yeah. So I'd say a couple of things. I got to first, I want to say, because they're probably the most likely people to listen to this. I want to say how proud I am of the team I was able to assemble. at the team of attorneys that I got to work with, I was able to hire some really good people and work with them on a daily basis. They know who they are and were hardworking and dedicated. What I always told people in interviews was I think there are three types of lawyers. I think there are yes attorneys who say yes whenever the client asks because They get paid to do that and it keeps the client happy and that's good. And then there are the no attorneys who just say no to everything the client asks for because that keeps them safe and it's an easy answer. And the lawyer says no, most people take it as that and go on. But the client never grows or learns or has the opportunity to do anything. And so what I always tried to be in what I do the people I tried to hire, whatever, what I call the no, but attorneys, I wanted the attorneys that the, because they're sometimes in a lawyer's job or your, our job is to tell the client, no, that there, no, you can't do it the way, the way you've asked me to do it, but let's find a way to accomplish. What is your goal? And let's find a way to accomplish it. So being the no, but attorney is what I, I called myself and, and, and tried to, uh, And tried to pride myself on hiring people. And I think we were able to do that for quite a few years and put together a really good team of attorneys. I, if, if we had been a standalone law firm, I would have put us up against any law firm of any size with the people that I was able to, cause they were dedicated and they were good and they were smart and they worked hard. And, um, and so I was proud, I'm proud of that. I'm also on the program areas. I was thinking about your question on this, and I'd say there are a few that I kind of had the opportunity to be about. Talk about the agency rulemaking, and that's very in the weeds for lawyers and agency lawyers specifically. We only understand why I think that's a cool thing. But there were some programs I was able to be in and around on. I saw the growth and evolution of our Office of Agriculture Water Policy, which going back to where I started was one of the really big reasons why I wanted to be at the department. and learn about that and work in that area. And I was able to be their program attorney for a few years and really work on that and help them develop our best management practices and watch it evolve and grow and work in that area and just understanding the impact that that has today, even down to things like our agricultural statutes and the agritourism conferences and see that grow, work in that area and be in the rooms and help write some of those laws that are on the books and protecting those different parts of industry and why our agricultural BMPs have grown beyond just water quality and water quantity standards and why they're so important to pretty much everything that happens in agriculture in Florida these days. I also had a ground floor seat at the table working on our Rural and Family Lands Program. And it was until Commissioner Simpson came along, it was... underfunded and had all the potential and he has really put a lot of money into it and has grown and it is doing amazing things because i like everybody else native Florida and just weep for the days where We weren't growing houses on some of our most productive land and we could grow anything on them, but a lot of it's turned into those solar, those rooftops now or solar farms. And while I understand why that's inevitable, I miss those. And so keeping some of that rural and family lands, some of our agricultural lands in our production agriculture, I think is important because I think, again, like Commissioner Simpson says, agriculture in Florida is a national security issue. We have the ability here to feed not only everybody in our state, but the rest of the country with the production land that we have and do it in times of year where nobody else can do it. And so I think that's so important that we continue to preserve that. I had a very unique opportunity, and it's never quite turned into what I think some people had hoped it would be. But, uh, in, uh, I was commissioner Bronson hired me and I grew up under his chief of staff, his commissioner Rhodes and Richard Trichler, the general and John Costigan, the one I talked about. But then as they were leaving and transitioning out of the agency, uh, when commissioner Putnam came in, uh, who I had, uh, obviously as a fellow AGR and had known for many years, he kept me on board as an attorney. And I worked under our general counsel, Lorena Hawley. And then when John and Lorena were leaving the department in the last year or two of Commissioner Putnam's term for different reasons and other great opportunities, he took a chance on me. He and Mike Joyner, who I should absolutely... talk about as well, who was the commissioner, took a chance on me and hired me to be the general counsel. And I went from a senior attorney to a deputy commissioner, or excuse me, a deputy general counsel, and then general counsel in all about six months. And so it was after being around and being the same title for like 10 plus years, I was very quickly promoted up the ranks. And they took the chance on me and believed in me. And really, Commissioner Putnam and Mike did that for me and put me in a position. And so when they were leaving and Commissioner Fried was coming in, the 2018 farm bill had just passed and in that farm bill uh allowed for the cultivation of hemp by states and then the regulation of that and obviously seeing commissioner freed running for office and then seeing her being elected it was very clear to me what her first priorities was and so uh uh Mike and everything, we were able, allowed me to try to kind of pull the team together so that we could hit the ground running when she got in the door. And when she got there, uh, we basically had a framework of a plan in place about how we could, uh, build a regulatory program around hemp and what statutes we would need. And so we were able to present that to her team when they got on the ground and they liked it. And we were able to, um, build a program from scratch, which is at most agencies is very rare. And so, uh, whether it was whether it's hemp or not and it was never intended to be the the the thing that has turned into and the department has cracked down really hard on the on the abuse of the the attracted to children if the nuisances and stuff that have come along since that uh but the actual growing and the cultivation of hemp that we did uh the program we end up writing uh getting passed in the law and then adopting and rules in record time just to help that industry stand up and uh exist uh we were able to do and do in a way that everybody, I think generally around that industry that wanted to be a part of that industry thought was open and transparent and accessible to them and that there were nobody, there was no, we didn't pick winners and losers and we did it in a way. And then attorneys will also understand that building something from scratch like that is unusual. You don't get to build it. You don't get to build anything. And we were able to put together a a group of people from across the agency that touch, at one point in time, seven different parts of the agencies and have a set of rules and everything all come online at nearly the same time. And what ended up happening is our regulations and our framework that we adopted in Florida, USDA liked so much, they essentially copied and pasted and it became the national standards. And so that was because of a lot of hard work by a lot of people who really put... we had to do a lot of, uh, groundbreaking science and understanding and researching to understand what we're doing. Cause we were regulating entirely new crop and putting all that together. And so to be able to be a part of that and lead that effort, I think was, was really cool. And so, um, um, those would be the things that are top of my head that I think, and then, and then just being with the people at the department and make an impact and being friends with those people and just learning as much as I did. I think that was my main takeaways. So.

Speaker 00: 37:50

And that Hemp program is, was groundbreaking and it, kind of another interesting thing about ag and ag law. So I think so often, and I get asked this question a lot too, well, what is ag law and what do you do? And kind of at that point, it's a little bit of everything. And sometimes it's the unexpected and it's the new and it's the groundbreaking. And a lot of people don't often think about hemp as agriculture, but that's agriculture. And it covers so many different things that I think a lot of folks don't think about. It's expansive. So now you've moved into citrus. primarily doing citrus working for CRAFT. And I know for native Floridians, for people outside of Florida, everyone around the country and the world thinks of Florida and they think of citrus. They also think of Florida man, but we don't want them to think of Florida man. We want them to think of the good things, not Florida man. But we know our citrus industry has been in danger for a while between canker and greening and development. You've seen so many, especially to the north, you know, north central Florida, central Florida over my childhood, We slowly watched all of that. And then in adulthood, move farther south. So can you tell us a little bit about what CRAFT is doing? Because I think it's really important to a lot of people to try to save our citrus industry. And people want to smell the orange blossoms when they drive. That smell is intoxicating. People have never smelled it. It's like nothing you've ever smelled before.

Speaker 01: 39:12

Yeah, So... The citrus industry is the iconic agriculture industry in the state. It is our heritage in a lot of ways. It was one of the first crops ever cultivated in the state. When the Spanish explorers got off the boat in St. Augustine, obviously they brought citrus with them for all the health benefits and everything. But one of the first things they did was they planted citrus right there off the shores. It has been here since the founding of Florida, modern Florida. And it is one of those are part of the industry that has moved and evolved. It started in North Florida and then the freezes in the early part of the 1900s sent it south. And then citrus diseases have really kind of taken over and impacted it, especially over my course of my career, starting in the early 2000s and into that, starting with citrus canker and then citrus greening. When I was at the department, one of my roles was working on our citrus canker litigation. As the newbie attorney and the new guy in low man on the totem pole, I did a lot of the grunt work and all the research and working with our in-house counsel and our outside counsel and managing them and doing depositions and trying that because the department was being defended for its actions trying to eradicate cankers. citrus canker and we went we had i think i was part of three different cases that went all the way to the state supreme court and we there was even some appeals the u.s supreme court that ever had actually got hurt and upheld but um being around that uh i didn't get to grow up i was to grow up on a cattle and peanut farm in the panhandle but we had satsuma trees and things like that but i was never part of production citrus But I grew up, especially at college, grew up with a lot of guys and girls who did grow up in that industry and knew their love and how they farmed was differently. So over my career, I've watched that industry, which was at its peak in the late 1990s, lose 95% of its production. over this year. And I think the good news is, according to the statistics that just released over the last couple of weeks, we've kind of hit a final plateau. I don't know how much lower we've been. Maybe we're finally at rock bottom. We had, there were some hope with last year that production would have picked up, but then we were hit by, the state was hit by three storms, two of which severely impacted the heart of the citrus producing area now. And so we kind of, I think there's a, we'll never know what it could have been If maybe we have potentially seen an increase this year, but for the storms, but we didn't. And so we're living with that reality. So Matt Joyner, who is the executive director of the Florida Citrus Mutual, and I worked together under Commissioner Putnam. And, uh, a couple in 2019, he came and was at a part of the meeting at the, at the commissioner's office where they were asking, Hey, we have this idea about, we want to do this, this research with the growers and they, I got pulled into the meeting and basically said, I would, and they said, this is what we want to do. And I said, well, what I would do is I'd create a direct support organization of the department. It's a standalone nonprofit. It's outside of the agency. So it's easier for contracting directly with the growers. And there's a lot of benefits of that. And you can follow your funding through that. And they said, that's a great idea. Go do that. And so I actually signed the creation documents as the department's general counsel to create the citrus research and field trial foundation, which is, Then five years later, Matt comes back to me on behalf of the board who was seeking a new executive director and came to me and said, hey, is there ever, are you interested? Commissioner Simpson and Kathy had, after almost six years of being general counsel and working 10, 12 hour days, I was exhausted. They had came to me and gave me the opportunity to serve as an assistant deputy commissioner. And I had a really enjoyed that, um, in a completely different role instead of working with, it's a colleague and the attorney for the division directors. I was now supervising some of these people and working with our DSOs and like the state, the fair board and doing some really cool, fun things with that. And, uh, Matt came along and it's like, Hey, would you ever be interested? And I had kind of really gotten to the point where I'd climbed as high as I was ever going to get at the, at the department as far as, you know, job wise. Yeah. And as the kids were getting older, I've got, uh, I have two kids, a boy and a girl who were both in elementary school and I had been to very few school events. And, uh, I was getting to the point where I was, I was kind of thinking around that maybe I should focus more on myself and my family a little bit more than my career. And, uh. there's one, I think it was one of those God things where he kind of opened the door for me that I needed. And, uh, Matt showed up and was like, why are you interested? And I'm like, you know what? Let's have a conversation. Next thing I know, I'm meeting with the chair of the board of the CRAFT program and they're offering me the job. And I said, yes. And so after almost 20 years at the department, I, as an intern all the way through all those adventures we talked about, I was able to, in full circle, come back and now lead the organization I signed the creation documents for about five years earlier, never understanding or having any conception that that was ever going to be a possibility. And so the mission of the CRAFT program is to take and do applied research. We have these brilliant scientists from especially University of Florida and IFAS and other parts of the country and USDA who are doing this amazing research to try to revitalize the citrus industry. It's been absolutely ravaged by the citrus greening diseases and the Asian psyllid that spreads it. And it's that which is a bacterium, which is a vascular disease of the citrus tree. Basically, when

Comply or Die: When Social Responsibility and Sustainability Compliance Goes Well Beyond Food Safety Laws and Regulations
 

FSMA. The Produce Safety Rule(i). Preventative Controls for Human Food(ii). Preventative Controls for Animal Food(iii). Foreign Supplier Verification(iv). Sanitary Transportation(v). It is 2025, and your client (let’s call it “ABC Produce” or “ABC”) “thinks” it finally has a handle on the plethora of laws and regulations surrounding food safety. Policies, procedures, and people have been put into place at ABC to achieve compliance with all of these laws and regulations, so ABC Produce’s business is on track for a smooth ride without seatbelts needed? Not so fast – ABC’s compliance ride will be taking some rollercoaster-like twists and turns because of social responsibility and sustainability.  

In today’s complex business environment, mere compliance with federal, state, and local food safety laws and regulations alone is not enough for most retailers, brokers, and buyers. Influencers and consumers are demanding transparency across the supply chain because they want their wallets to align with their hearts. And without their purchases and social media posts, we all know that ABC Produce’s business can’t improve its financial standing or customer demand for ABC’s fruit and vegetables.   
 

Most retailers have established their own food rules and standards, which ABC Produce and its employees, subcontractors (including domestic and H2A labor providers), vendors, and suppliers have agreed to comply with long ago. Though some of these are not statutory or regulatory requirements for selling the product, ABC will become legally, contractually obligated to comply with the rules and standards if ABC chooses to become a supplier or maintain its supplier role. Food safety from crop to consumer is only the ticket into the concert, folks. If ABC wants an all-access pass with VIP sourcing opportunities, then it must understand, monitor, verify, and certify with a recognized third-party audit provider two newer barriers to entry: 1) Social Responsibility and 2) Sustainability.  
 

Now, don’t let those alliterative “S” words confuse you, as there are distinct differences. In the simplest of terms, “social responsibility” focuses on labor standards and health and safety, while “sustainability” focuses more on environmental impacts and business ethics. Social responsibility and sustainability do go together—like peas and carrots—but each term has essential and differing components for compliance.  
 

If you or your clients have confused the terms - don’t feel bad. We all have been guilty of combining them. Maybe it is because those same retailers, buyers, and brokers who are asking ABC to comply with food safety laws and their internal food safety standards are the same ones who began the discussion several years ago by combining the concepts of “sustainability” and “social responsibility” in writing and seminars. Examples given by these retailers, buyers, and brokers were fuzzy and were provided in non-mandatory, online seminars during COVID without retailer or buyer agreements in place, and ABC was given no real deadline to comply or show that it was meeting benchmarks in this new compliance journey. ABC may have even blindly answered “Yes” to the multitude of information-gathering questionnaires sent by each customer concerning both topics. Sound familiar? Maybe not, as the legal teams for many produce companies never even saw the questionnaires.  
 

ABC thought that doing business with several outwardly respectable labor providers and having a tight and federally compliant H-2A contract for pay, transportation, food, and housing would equal simultaneous compliance with “social responsibility.” ABC is also a respected brand in its own right and has a year-round supply of its core produce items from both internal, domestic grower contracts and international grower contracts. ABC has achieved superior food safety scores throughout the supply chain, maintains high credit ratings, and is a “preferred” supplier for multitudes of domestic and Canadian store distribution and processing centers. However, this just might not be enough in this new world of sustainability and social responsibility requirements.
 

Late last summer, the proverbial “hammer” was dropped with a consortium of larger brands requiring social responsibility and sustainability audit certification in accordance with international standards, including ISO and the United Nations. We aren’t in Kansas anymore - or California, Arizona, Florida, Michigan, or New York. Simple legal compliance in those states does not equate to international standard compliance or ABC’s ability to demonstrate compliance during an audit. In the seminars mentioned above, ABC, along with most of its fellow producers and suppliers, realized that it had a major, internal knowledge and capacity deficit when it came to this new level of compliance, as well as a budgetary deficit.  
 

ABC, like most other produce entities, added a food safety team member or a retained consultant to its management pool 10-15 years ago. This one person or small team probably wears more than the food safety/quality assurance hat and is already stretched thin with maintaining and transferring to buyers via a myriad of electronic systems the required training, monitoring, testing, and trade recordkeeping documents—oftentimes, by every truckload. These compliance champions may even lead every single farm or facility tour because “they know all the answers.” Of course, everyone’s favorite “Safety Guy” or “Safety Gal” who saves the day during every food safety audit can manage two more emerging compliance areas that sound similar, right? Not so fast, my produce friend! Crop to Consumer corporate compliance for social responsibility and sustainability may just have more ambiguities and complexities than food safety. Why?  
 

Food safety in the produce industry has evolved more from response to the following: 1) outbreak-driven lawsuits, 2) commodity-association membership requirements, mutating FSMA guidance and 3) customer directives founded on perceived or known risk—potentially from a commodity grown, harvested, packed or even processed far differently than ABC’s product. Time and time again, a “one size fits all” approach has shown to not work well in food safety, and it is already proving to make social responsibility and sustainability compliance extremely difficult.   
 

ABC will have to be able to “prove” its compliance with the social responsibility and sustainability requirements put in place by its customers, but how will it do this?  Well, some retailers are now requiring this “proof of compliance” through a “SMETA” 4 Pillar Audit. SMETA stands for Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audits. The four pillars of these audits are: 1) labor standards; 2) health and safety; 3) environmental impacts; and 4) business ethics.  
 

These SMETA 4 Pillar Audits are a new concept for most in the agricultural industry in general. The standards in these audits are often applicable more for manufacturing, and the application in the world of produce just doesn’t translate very well. Produce companies selling to many of the desirable retailers are starting to have to comply with and undergo SMETA audits, and they truly have no idea what to expect. This is a whole new world of compliance and audits for the industry. What ABC and others thought was going to be a pretty smooth ride has now turned into a rollercoaster full of drops, inversions, and helixes!
 

ABC has always worked hard to treat its employees well and to use only vendors, subcontractors, and suppliers who treat their employees well. ABC also acts as a good environmental steward, and its leaders are very ethically minded.  So ABC might think “why do we need to jump through more hoops when we are doing the “right” thing already. This buyer-imposed ‘social responsibility and sustainability’ thing is too costly and too time consuming. We are already complying with “the law” – we don’t legally have to do this, and we are not going to!”   
 

ABC can absolutely make this choice and not contractually obligate itself to comply with retailer, buyer, and broker-imposed social responsibility and sustainability requirements. Consequently, ABC will also be choosing to walk away from a market for its product, income for its business, and an opportunity for its business to survive and thrive. The agriculture industry faces enough challenges in America - high costs of labor and inputs, weather challenges, a society that has been taught to hate and distrust farmers, regulatory challenges, and more – and ABC might think it is simply avoiding more challenges to its ability to just survive. However, realistically, ABC Produce’s choice to “avoid more challenges” really could be a choice of taking itself out of the produce marketplace. You see, producers now have to accept that we live in a world where food “compliance” means far more than statutory and regulatory compliance – it means complying with private, contractual obligations with customers. Producers, including ABC, now must consider whether to “comply or die,”
 

___________________________
(i) 21 CFR Part 112
(ii) 21 CFR Part 117
(iii) 21 CFR Part 507
(iv) 21 CFR Part 1
(v) 21 CFR Part 1  

As published in the March, 2025 edition of "Farm to Firm - The Official Newsletter of The American Agricultural Law Association"