Gene Brock and his son, Kirk, stand on North Florida land that the Brock Family has been farming for generations. The Brocks and their farm will be featured on a special television show that the Florida Department of Agriculture produced for the Florida Farm Bureau.
The Florida Report premiers 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 21, and will repeat at 4:30 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, and 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).
Gene Brock planted his first corn crop with a mule on his father's farm in 1949, and he and his family still farm the same rolling hills and fine sandy soil of North Florida today. These days, however, the Brocks protect the soil from erosion using no-till farming and a winter cover crop that produces a tremendous amount of biomass to enrich the soil. As leaders in the agricultural community, the Brocks have gone beyond adopting innovative conservation practices; they actively share what they have learned with other farmers in their community.
The televised program will also profile Florida's unique and diverse aquaculture industry, which provides a living to thousands of Floridians. While "aquaculture" simply means "farming in water," it is today a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States and a growing industry in the Sunshine State. Aquaculture provides a wide variety of careers from biologists and botanists to operation managers and marketing professionals.
The segment to be aired takes viewers to farms that produce fish and shellfish for food and bait, tropical fish and aquatic plants for aquariums, and waterscape ponds and alligators for food and leather.
The Marketing Division of the Florida Department of Agriculture produces the program for Florida Farm Bureau as part of a shared outreach campaign to increase public awareness of agriculture, the state's second-largest industry. The campaign focuses on the message, "Safe, Affordable and Abundant: Food for Thought from Florida's Farmers."
