Florida’s 31 rural counties are poised for a transformation with a statewide impact.

Currently, Florida’s rural counties account for only 2.92% of the state’s $1.6 trillion economy, yet they have outpaced non-rural counties in GDP growth over the past five years. With targeted investment and smart policies, Florida can achieve the ambitious goal set in the “Florida 2030 Blueprint” — doubling the rural share of GDP (since the Blueprint plan was launched in 2018) to 5.56% by 2030.

As Senate President Ben Albritton recently noted at the Florida Chamber’s Legislative Fly-in, the state must prepare for a “Rural Renaissance” to drive opportunity and economic growth. This isn’t just a hopeful vision — it’s a strategic imperative. The momentum is there, but unlocking the full potential of rural Florida will require prioritizing infrastructure, manufacturing, broadband access, AgTech and workforce development.

The rural growth engine is running — but needs focus and fuel

Since 2018, rural counties have seen 56.6% GDP growth, surpassing the 49.1% growth rate of non-rural counties. Some counties — like Liberty, Okeechobee and Walton — have experienced extraordinary economic expansion. This shows that Florida’s rural communities when given the right tools, can be powerful economic engines.

However, the challenge remains: rural businesses need better access to markets, workers need better access to jobs, and families need better access to opportunity. That means investing in transportation networks, manufacturing, agricultural technology, and digital connectivity that link rural areas to the broader economy.

Infrastructure is the foundation of rural prosperity

Transportation plays a critical role in rural economic success. Many of Florida’s key rural industries — agriculture, forestry, manufacturing, AgTech and others — depend on efficient logistics systems.

To truly accelerate economic expansion, Florida must prioritize rural transportation projects that connect communities to ports, highways and rail systems. Expanding these linkages will attract businesses, create jobs and drive export growth — a goal outlined in the Florida 2030 Blueprint to double goods exports and triple services exports.

Florida’s agriculture industry feeds the world. By combining research and development (R&D) with agriculture, technology and innovation-based investments can help leverage rural Florida’s assets.

Additionally, manufacturing presents a key growth opportunity for rural Florida, leveraging affordable land for expansion. The manufacturing sector’s share of jobs is currently at 4.9%, but investing in infrastructure — highways, rail and logistics — can position rural counties as prime locations for manufacturing. This will strengthen Florida’s global competitiveness and export potential while also creating high-wage jobs.

Broadband: The digital highway to economic growth

Just as roads and bridges connect physical goods, broadband connects people and businesses to the digital economy. Yet, a stark divide remains — only 84.4% of rural households have broadband internet subscriptions, compared to 90.5% in non-rural areas. In some counties, fewer than 75% of families have reliable high-speed internet.

This gap isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a roadblock to prosperity.

Lack of broadband limits small businesses, restricts remote talent acquisition and job opportunities, and reduces access to education and health care.

The good news? Florida is making major investments. In 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced $247 million for broadband expansion through the Capital Projects Fund. This is a step in the right direction and strategic planning with public-private partnerships is needed to ensure 100% of Florida residents — regardless of ZIP code — have access to high-speed connectivity, one of the Florida 2030 Blueprint goals.

Building a workforce for rural success

Currently, new business formations in rural counties lag behind non-rural areas — rural counties accounted for just 3% of new business applications last year.

The key to reversing this trend? Investing in workforce development and entrepreneurship.

The Florida College System is already helping by offering Entrepreneurship college credit certificates in rural areas, training local talent to start and sustain businesses. Expanding these programs and encouraging enrollment will be essential to building a strong pipeline of local business owners who can drive local economic growth. Additionally, rural communities should better leverage Florida’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs, which enroll over 230,000 students annually in degree or certificate programs in high-demand fields like construction, manufacturing and logistics. These programs ensure that local businesses have access to a skilled workforce, reducing the need for employers to look outside their communities.

The future of rural Florida starts now

Florida’s rural counties have already proven they can drive economic growth — but realizing their full potential requires continued investment and collaboration to contribute to Florida’s long-term economic success.

The Florida Chamber Foundation is working toward this vision every day. To learn more about strategies driving Florida’s rural economic growth, join us at the 2025 Florida Transportation, Growth, and Infrastructure Solution Summit on Dec. 3, 2025 (click here to register today), where rural economic development will be a key focus. The Florida Chamber Foundation Community Development Partners Board is engaged in the yearlong work to advance the Florida 2030 Blueprint goals — contact Dr. Richard to discuss membership and how you can become a driving force for the future of Florida’s 31 rural counties.

Click HERE to read the full research brief that informed this op-ed.

___

Dr. Keith Richard is vice president of Research for the Florida Chamber Foundation.

Post Views: 0

Since President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the body of water formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico will now be called the Gulf of America, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is officially following suit.

FWC officials announced that the agency will rename the body of water to Gulf of America “in all Commission materials, documents, and rules set forth” in the state’s official maps, forms, and resources.

FWC Executive Director Roger Young stated that the agency must follow the President’s orders.

“As a vital resource for the State of Florida and its citizens, providing both recreational and economic opportunities through fishing, boating, tourism, and other outdoor pursuits, the Gulf of America plays a significant role in our nation’s and state’s economy and leisure activities,” said Young.

One of Trump’s first official actions after taking the oath of office on January 20 was to stipulate that the Gulf of Mexico would henceforth be renamed the Gulf of America. This move was not without controversy.

The Associated Press, one of the world’s leading news agencies, has refused to use the new name. This decision, which affects the materials used by Florida Politics, led Trump to retaliate by barring the news outlet from the White House press pool.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has threatened to file a civil suit against Google, the internet search engine and map service, over the name change of the body of water.

Young emphasized that the FWC has multiple services and functions related to what is now the Gulf of America, which runs along Florida’s entire West Coast.

The Division of Marine Fisheries monitors and conducts numerous marine management projects in the Gulf of America.

The Fish and Wildlife Research Institute serves as the primary research agency for that area.

Additionally, the FWC Division of Law Enforcement patrols thousands of miles of waterways in the Gulf, including the Boating and Waterways section within that division.

Post Views: 0

The nation will hear a new President sing a far different tune in his prime-time address before Congress on Tuesday night. Some Americans will lustily sing along. Others will plug their ears.

The old tune is out – the one where a president declares “we strongly support NATO,” “I believe strongly in free trade” and Washington must do more to promote clean air, clean water, women’s health and civil rights.

That was Donald Trump in 2017.

That was back when gestures of bipartisanship and appeals to national unity were still in the mix on the night the president comes before Congress to hold forth on the state of the union. Trump, then new at the job, was just getting his footing in the halls of power and not ready to stomp on everything.

It would be three more years before Americans would see Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, then the House Speaker and his State of the Union host in the chamber, performatively rip up a copy of Trump’s speech in disgust over its contents.

On Tuesday, Americans who tune into Trump’s address will see whether he speaks to the whole country, as he mostly did in his first such speech in the chamber as president, or only to the roughly half who voted for him.

They will see also whether he hews to ceremony and common courtesies, as he did in 2017, or goes full bore on showmanship and incitement.

He comes into it days after assailing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his face and before the cameras in the Oval Office for not expressing sufficient gratitude for U.S. support in Ukraine’s war with Russia. It was a display of public humiliation by an American president to an allied foreign leader with no parallel in anyone’s memory.

Jarrett Borden, walking to lunch on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, Florida, this past week, expressed ambivalence about Trump, having heard a lot of “hogwash” from him even while liking some of what he has done. Borden anticipates a good show Tuesday and will watch.

“I want to see if he’s going to leave the mic open for Elon Musk, like it’s an open mic at a club or something,” he said, citing the billionaire architect of Trump’s civil service purge. “This is what he’s been doing recently, which is comical.”

In Philadelphia, visual artist Nova Villanueva will spend Tuesday evening doing something — anything — else. She is into avoiding politics and social media altogether these fraught days.

“Yeah, it’s kind of sad,” she said. “It’s almost like I have to be ignorant to be at peace with myself and my life right now.”

A new President’s first speech to Congress is not designated a State of the Union address, coming so close to the Jan. 20 inauguration. But it serves the same purpose, offering an annual accounting of what has been done, what is ahead and what condition the country is in, as the President sees it.

It is customary in modern times for the president to say the state of the union is strong, no matter what a mess it may be in. Trump won the election saying the state of the union was in shambles and he was going to make it right.

The Trump who addressed Congress on Feb. 28, 2017, is recognizable now, despite the measured tone and content of that speech. After all, he had already shocked the political class by assailing “American carnage” from the inaugural stage.

He told Congress that night he wanted NATO members to spend more on their armed forces, wanted trade to be “fair” as well as free, and wanted foreign countries in crises to be made stable enough so that people who fled to the U.S. could go back home. But he did not open his first term with the wrenching turns in foreign policy, civil service firings, stirrings of mass deportation or cries of “drill, baby, drill” of today.

In a line that could have come from any president of either party, Trump noted in his 2017 speech that, “with the help of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, we have formed a council with our neighbors in Canada to help ensure that women entrepreneurs have access to the networks, markets and capital they need to start a business and live out their financial dreams.”

Now he belittles Trudeau as “governor” of a land he wants to make the 51st state and is about to slam with tariffs, along with Mexico. Canadians, not known for displays of patriotism, are seething about their neighbor and rushing to buy and fly their flag.

In Philadelphia, small-time entrepreneur Michael Mangraviti cannot help but take some satisfaction in Trump’s scouring of the bureaucracy as the firings pile up with scant regard for how well people did their jobs or how those jobs helped keep services to the public running.

“He said for years and years, ‘Drain the swamp, drain the swamp,’” Mangraviti said. “But, you know, now is the time to actually drain the swamp.”

“We’ve seen time and time and time again that the government is horribly, horribly ineffective at everything it wants to do,” he went on. “The fact that they’re actually taking action on something that they say they’re going to do, the fact that they’re ready to take the ax and take it to our government, is something I appreciate.”

To Cassandra Piper, a Philadelphia instrumentalist, Trump’s move to stop making pennies was a “fine decision” — unlike everything else he has said and done.

“I comprehensively disapprove of the changes that are being made,” Piper said, stopping to speak while walking by the Liberty Bell Center. “Not that I was all too happy with the status quo beforehand in the first place, but there’s absolutely no good that can come from the inhumanity of mass deportation, something that this country has already been scarred by.

So, too, with Trump’s selection of vaccination skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary and his choice of Musk to lead the effort to “effectively plunder the government of its resources,” in Piper’s view.

In Hollywood, Florida, Borden, who is Black, said that to the extent Trump can take money that Washington spends overseas and pump it into the U.S. economy, “then you are making America great again. But do that without the racial overtones. Do that without the negative energy, and we’re going to be OK.”

“I think the world is just the world, and we should all just love each other,” he said.

Abraham Lincoln might have agreed, as he summoned the “better angels of our nature” in an inaugural speech, a month before the Civil War, that pleaded with Americans not to “break our bonds of affection.”

Trump had something to say on that subject, too, in 2017: “We all bleed the same blood.”

___

Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

Post Views: 0