ABSTRACT
Most Florida farms are relatively small, produce valuable commodities, and do not cause significant water resource problems. However, the conversion of wetlands to usable farm land was the main motivation for draining the Everglades and the huge marshes of the Upper St. Johns River, cutting off 20,000 acres of the wetland borders of Lake Apopka and channelizing many rivers for drainage and flood control. The boosters and land speculators who created Miami Beach, Golden Gate Estates, and other massive housing developments in wetlands had their own fleet of dredges, but they could not compete in scale with massive agricultural drainage operations funded by government agencies.
