Better nuisance laws would help contain environmental damage from sugarcane farming | Opinion
In 1931, the United States Sugar Corporation (USSC) experienced its first successful harvest of sugarcane Florida. Since then, the sugarcane industry has become deeply rooted in South Florida. Sugarcane harvesting, however, comes at a steep environmental cost to Florida and its residents. It may be time for Florida to reconsider its relationship with “Big Sugar” through permit reform.
In 2021, the United States produced over 33 million tons of sugarcane, with a majority of the crop harvested in the fields near the city of Belle Glade, Florida. Regionally, the industry employs 14,000 people and generates annual revenues of $800 million. The city has a median household income of $28,028, significantly lower than the Florida statewide median of $57,703.
Sugarcane farming, though a significant part of Belle Glade’s economy, may inflict unintended consequences on the residents of the community and the environment.
During the farming process, sugarcane must be burned to reveal the stalk. When burns occur alongside wind in Belle Glade, the ash colloquially known as “black snow” is sent in their direction. An investigation carried out by the Palm Beach Post revealed that a malfunction in the state’s air quality measurement system gave Belle Glade citizens the false notion that the air they breathed was safe. In reality, it was littered with ash from sugar burnings.
This air pollution has led to long and short-term health effects. Researchers in Florida State University’s Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science, among others, linked sugarcane smoke to one to six deaths per year in South Florida.
The risk of potential lawsuits led the sugar industry to lobby the Florida legislature to limit its legal exposure. Florida’s Right to Farm Act was amended in 2021 to protect farmers from “nuisance” lawsuits. The legislation restricts nuisance suits to residents living within a half-mile of the burning site and only allows compensation for effects on property values.
Ash, of course, can travel much farther than a half mile depending on wind speeds.
Florida’s act not only limits legal action. It also disincentivizes it.
Many of South Florida’s citizens rely on the sugar industry for income. The benefit of job and income security needs to be weighed against the unintended environmental and personal harms – what economists call “externalities” or “spillover effects.”
Other states, however, have addressed the consequences of sugarcane burnings without restricting citizens’ access to compensation. Louisiana, another dominant producer of sugarcane, implemented policies that address the spillover effects of burnings onto nearby communities. The state outlaws open burnings, but allows ‘prescribed burns.’
Prescribed burns are controlled fires that follow guidelines that decrease the spread of ash and smoke into neighboring areas. These strategies include burning techniques supervised by certified prescribed burn managers and operating under recommended weather conditions.
In Florida, authorized burns are not required to acknowledge wind conditions when performing burns. Specific weather conditions ought to be taken into consideration when authorizing permits. By adopting implausible and unreasonable limits on the ability of citizens to sue farmers over legitimate public health harms, the state in effect subsidizes the sugar industry.
The Florida Department of Forestry denied 3% of permit applications during the 2020 harvesting season. This suggests that the thresholds for receiving a permit were low.
Providing more effective ways to manage environmental externalities would provide public health benefits.
Florida residents face a dilemma between the sugarcane industry being a source of income and the lasting health effects it has on them and their families. Jobs and public health should not be in conflict.
As state legislators prepare for the 2023 session, they should strongly consider Louisiana’s framework for re-centering state policy toward sugarcane burning to address the public health externalities created by current farming techniques.
Mae Baltz, a senior economics major at Florida State University, is a policy analyst in the DeVoe L. Moore Center in the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy at FSU and at Reason Foundation.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Better nuisance laws would help contain environmental damage from sugarcane farming
