Sugar-Bashing Un-American, undeserved
Letters - Palm Beach Post
What did our local farmers do to deserve the questionable, cherry-picked reporting coming from the Palm Beach Post lately? As someone that has grown up around Palm Beach County agriculture, I can say with certainty that sugarcane farmers take every step to be good stewards of land, water and air.
Sugarcane farming employs more than 12,500 and supports $3.2 billion in Florida’s economy. Farmers in Palm Beach County grow food millions of Americans depend on every winter. We get enough misinformation on social media these days. The last thing we need is our local newspaper at its all-time low joining the chorus.
Farmers may be an easy target, but they take their jobs seriously and do a lot of good for our local communities. I didn’t see many environmental activists pushing these false anti-farmer narratives handing out food in our communities when the pandemic started. Some of the most kind and selfless gestures came from the Western Palm Beach County farming community. Unlike these “Johnny-Come-Latelys” expressing concern about our so-called air quality problem, the farmers have been around for generations and will continue to be despite what the Palm Beach Post thinks.
Savannah Arrieta, West Palm Beach
Sugar farmers are good people
As a longtime resident of the Glades, I have come to enjoy living in a place where farming is valued. The farmers who live and work here are our friends and neighbors, attend church, send their children to school, and raise their families here.
The false image of "Big Sugar" presented in the recent Palm Beach Post story is not what we have come to know about our local farmers. These individuals are the type of people that will give you the shirts off their backs, feed you, and support your school, church, or youth sports team. They also employ thousands of people in our communities and the Glades economy would suffer if the farms were forced to close.
I do not support the idea that Glades sugarcane farmers do not have our communities' best interests in mind. They take every precaution prior to burning sugarcane fields and despite the Post's reporting, public data clearly shows that our communities have among the best air quality in the state.
The Post's story, which was only written after working with ProPublica, showed there's a hidden agenda that is nor supported by the residents of the Glades.
Allie H. Biggs, Pahokee