Facing pressures are most of the leading crops in Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry and Lee counties-citrus, vegetable, cattle and sugarcane. The shining exception is the ornamentals industry-landscaping plants-which blossoms with urban development.

As more agricultural lands are converted to residential or commercial uses, rising land values increase pressure on farmers, especially those raising cattle and vegetables, who generally work on leased lands. "At some point, an ag operation, no matter how profitable, cannot compete with that immediate sale value of that land," says Fritz Roka, associate professor of agriculture economics at the University of Florida's Southwest Florida Research and Education Center in Immokalee.

Among growers' biggest concerns is the competition that expanding urban areas creates for limited water supplies-a point driven home by recent years of drought that have strengthened watering restrictions in urban areas. Growers have used low-volume irrigation systems for about 20 years-required by watering permits. "Water-use issues are going to become more tenuous because ag industries do use a lot of water, and as a result there's going to be a tug-of-war for this resource in the future at some point," says Dallas Townsend, director of Hendry County's extension bureau.

Since 1979, when Townsend arrived, vegetable acreage in Hendry has grown from about 8,000 to more than 25,000, he says. "That's because all the vegetable farming on the east coast is gone to development," Townsend says. Total vegetable acreage in Southwest Florida has been fairly stable, but farms have moved as urbanization has encroached.

Twenty years ago, for example, tomato farms were abundant in Bonita Springs. "That, for the most part, is gone," Roka says. Hendry County is now home to a majority of tomato farms, and the county also claims the lion's share of the region's citrus industry, with nearly 95,000 acres of the more than 170,000 acres in the five-county area.

Adding to the loss of agricultural lands are environmental initiatives such as the Everglades restoration project and Florida panther protection, agriculturists contend. Tens of thousands of acres of farmland have been bought for conservation in Hendry alone. "When you have the pressure of population growth and competition for irrigation water, then you have the pressure of government agencies buying up vast tracts of land that are good ag lands, what ultimately happens is you just downsize the ag industry," Townsend says. "When you start taking those kinds of lands out, you not only take the tax base away from the county, you take the economic activity that's occurring on that land away."

Population growth changes the political climate as well, and choices in political leaders can affect the agricultural community. For example, Florida produce growers oppose international trade, which exposes them to competition from cheaper produce from other countries. Midwesterners who move here, however, might favor global trade because the major commodities in their home states are corn, soybean and wheat, which growers need to export.

As an area becomes more urban, people without any understanding of agriculture often become policy makers, some agriculturists say. For example, tree-trimming ordinances, which are intended to protect green spaces, have sometimes undermined citrus growers' ability to maintain their groves, says Ron Hamel, executive vice president of the Gulf Citrus Growers Association, based in La Belle. Other conflicts arise when a residential community is developed next to a farm where such regular practices as crop spraying take place.

The sector that stands apart is the ornamentals industry, which has thrived as communities multiply. "A lot of the trees and shrubs go into these developments. That's driven very directly by housing starts," says John Haydu, professor in agriculture economics with the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences. Ornamentals can generate from $5,000 to $50,000 per acre, depending on the crop. "Hardly any other ag crop can compete with that," he says.

Plants are grown locally because transportation costs are high and because plants must be tolerant to the climate, says Roka. "It's very high value, so you don't need a lot of acres to make a decent living," he adds.

But even the ornamentals industry faces challenges from growth. "As the state population continues to grow it's going to put more and more pressure on agriculture, including the nursery industry," Haydu says. "Southwest Florida is not going to be immune to that."