Glades Voices Need to Be Heard on Good Air Quality

Residents Reject Sensationalist  Media Portrayal

By Janet B. Taylor, Founder Glades Lives Matter and Former Hendry County Commissioner

Glades Lives Matter was founded to give a voice to the everyday people of the Glades because its often missing from discussions of issues that greatly impact our daily lives.  Sadly, our voice is continually dismissed when the media repeats misinformation about our rural communities and air quality.  In 24/7news cycles chasing clickbait, sensational comments often outweigh the truth.

At issue are anti-farming articles about our Glades communities. I personally confirmed our farming communities’ good, clean air quality but that usually doesn’t fit into the preferred narrative.

As a lifelong resident of these communities, I feel compelled to set the record straight.  Local residents cherish our small-town way of life and our agricultural heritage.  Our local sugarcane and vegetable farmers are partners in every aspect of our community—they are neighbors who live, work and raise their families alongside ours.

Attempts by outside activists to bring race and environmental justice to farming practices is misguided.  How can any news publication consider with any credibility, the idea that smoke from a pre-harvest sugarcane fire is going to impact a minority home more or differently than its non-minority neighbors?  Contrary to most news reports on the cane burning issue, the Glades communities are home to all manner of folks—Black, White, Brown-and everything in between.   Editors must not think readers will jump on a headline saying “Sugarcane smoke is affecting middle-class white farmers living on their farms,” yet if cane burns were truly an issue, these folks are right in the heart of it.

As a nation, we do have legitimate environmental and social justice issues stemming from our environment, policing, housing, schools and social progress, including in rural communities like ours. But our sugarcane farmers are not an issue; they are a valued community partner.

Here in the Glades – the worst injustice is certainly nothing related to local agriculture but rather, the constant attacks on our communities and our farm-based economy from outside our communities driven mainly by wealthy, coastal activist groups with political agendas.  These groups themselves lack the diversity we see in our farming communities.  Yet they repeatedly want to speak for us, about us, and say that they are trying to “help us” when they actually want to use us, and to use environmental justice to further their own agenda.

Consider then, the facts that are readily available on pre-harvest sugarcane burning and our Glades area:

There are a number of professional-grade air quality monitors in our farming areas.  Not just “one” as many reports state.  Every one of them reporting data that proves our Glades air meets all state and federal Clean Air Standards for good, safe air quality.  This data is regularly reported to the public.

According to the American Lung Association: Palm Beach County, where the largest acres of sugarcane farming, including prescribed burns, are located– not only received an “A” grade for particle pollution, but also had the lowest actual particulate average of 6.8 in the state.  Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection proclaimed the state’s air quality is better than it’s ever been.

The independent Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s county health rankings rank Palm Beach and Hendry County (top 2 FL counties for sugarcane) among the lowest for particulate matter. According to their 2023 report, Palm Beach County averages 6.7 and Hendry County, 7.5.  The state average in Florida is 7.8.  EPA’s annual standard is 12 .

All of our local hospitals and health departments confirm that there are no increases in respiratory issues associated with the local harvest season.  Any reports to the contrary are due to “cherry-picking” or manipulating data or studies to fit a pre-determined negative outcome.  Particularly egregious is the FSU “death” study which used no actual local deaths or hospital outcomes to determine causation for its conclusions.  Smoke and mirrors.

While this may be merely reading material for many, for those of us who live in the Glades, maintaining farming means maintaining our livelihoods.  It means jobs, and it’s what puts food on our tables and food on the tables of millions of American families.  That’s why we’re fighting to set the record straight.  Glades Lives Matter.  All Lives Matter.  The Truth matters.