The three Republican candidates for Florida Agriculture Commissioner presented their views to approximately 200 attendees at a recent Candidate Summit Luncheon near Orlando. Coldwell Banker Commercial Saunders Real Estate organized and 
hosted the event in conjunction with its 10th annual Lay of the Land Conference, which draws a strong agricultural following.
Dean Saunders
Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam attended as a candidate for Florida governor, and was the only gubernatorial candidate who showed. Saunders said other known candidates for these statewide offices were invited but declined to attend. Putnam’s comments to the media were reported already on this website at the time of the event. You can click below to hear a couple brief comments from Saunders about the special Candidate Summit Luncheon and the upcoming primary for Florida agriculture commissioner.
This news post previews a series of special reports to follow in the days ahead. Five feature news posts, one each day throughout next week, will feature the three candidates for Florida agriculture commissioner who attended the summit, including (in the order they spoke), Matt Caldwell, Denise Grimsley and Baxter Troutman.
Traditionally AgNet’s radio and magazine media seldom tread into covering political races for any particular public office. We’re simply not set up for it, nor do we have the resources for that type of news coverage. Therefore, we prefer staying focused on farm news and information that we hope our audience finds informative, useful and interesting. Occasionally, however, opportunities present themselves to ask questions of candidates about agriculture, in the normal course of our industry coverage, particularly when they step into agricultural events that make it more appropriate for us to do so.
Such was the case with this event earlier in April, where I asked each of the Republican candidates for Florida agriculture commissioner the same five questions individually. The voice recordings of each of their answers, exactly as they provided them to each of the five questions, will be featured one per day over the next five weekdays on this website.
Stay tuned.
Gary Cooper, AgNet Media