Growing in the Everglades

Growing IN THE EVERGLADES

By Corey Darnell, Videographer and Graphic Designer

LEWIS POPE III, OWNER OF POPE FARMS, is a thirdgeneration farmer in the Everglades Agricultural Area in the South Florida region. His agricultural enterprise produces sweet corn, green beans, sugarcane and cabbage.

Pope Farms is located in Pahokee, near the southeastern side of Lake Okeechobee. Pope’s grandfather began farming in the area in the early 1930s. Pope

started working on his grandfather’s operation at a very young age and then became fully involved when he was 19 years old. It was shortly after he became involved on

the farm that he joined his county Farm Bureau. Pope began as a member of the Western Palm Beach County Farm Bureau in his early twenties.

“THE EVERGLADES AGRICULTURAL AREA...FEEDS THE U.S. WHEN THERE AREN’T WINTER VEGETABLES ANYWHERE ELSE.”

He worked with the county Farm Bureau for the past 19 years to help with the annual Sweet Corn Fiesta. The Sweet Corn Fiesta is an annual event held in West Palm Beach to educate and inform the public about the importance and economic value of agriculture to the local community while promoting the crop.

Over time, Pope says that labor has been a big issue with the amount of available workers

getting scarce. He has also been involved with Florida Farm Bureau’s advisory committees.

According to Pope, his involvement on the Florida Farm Bureau Labor Advisory Committee has allowed him the opportunity to learn valuable knowledge about the H2A worker program.

Recently, Pope Farms hosted a class from the Everglades Preparatory School in the corn fields. Pope said that most of these students had never visited a farm before and he felt it was important to teach young people where their food comes from.

Along with the crop production, Pope is also involved with a packinghouse facility in Belle Glade, Florida known as Branch: A Family of Farms.

In this packinghouse, the crops come straight from the fields and are loaded off trucks to a conveyor belt where they are sorted by hand and then packed into crates. Those crates are then stacked onto pallets and moved to be washed down with chilled water before being packed on trucks ready to be shipped out.

Sweet corn from Pope Farms can be found at supermarkets and grocery stores all over Florida with the green and yellow Branch logo.

One of Pope’s main motivations for farming is to work toward maintaining this farm in the family. “I am sixty years old now and I still enjoy going out to the fields every day to run our harvest operation.”