Being a land steward is important to Trevor Starling of Starling Nursery, Inc. in Seville. He was recently awarded a County Alliance for Responsible Environmental Stewardship (CARES) award by the Florida Farm Bureau Federation for his natural resource conservation efforts.
Starling began his agriculture career in landscaping at 14 years old. “I had a little nursery behind my parent’s house and then it just evolved into this,” Starling said. At 18, he joined Volusia County Farm Bureau and benefitted from the camaraderie of other agriculture producers, he said.
In 1998, at 26, Starling went into business with a partner who had some land. “We started an acre at a time and eventually, once we built it up, we started buying neighboring properties.” He has since bought out his business partner and has continued to expand the nursery.
Today, Starling Nursery has 180 production acres, growing 10 products including shade trees and ornamentals. “We started with three items and over time we obviously started growing more items and just slowly created a customer base. We sell to the local market, which is landscapers and garden centers and we mainly focus on shipping out of state which is the whole Southeast.”
With impressive growth, comes impressive environmental responsibility. The nursery is watered using drip line irrigation. Water comes from large containers and manmade irrigation ponds. “We just do the right things. We only water for a few minutes at a time and we use a time-released fertilizer so we’re not over fertilizing.”
“You have to use pesticides and fertilizers in a responsible way so you don’t have run off and drip and you’ve got neighbors and everything else that you have to take into consideration,” Starling explained.
“It is imperative to recognize all Florida farmers who go the extra mile in caring for natural resources,” said Florida Farm Bureau President John L. Hoblick. “The CARES award is our way to honor these farmers and ranchers and bring awareness of production agriculture’s commitment to superior natural resource management.”
Florida Farm Bureau and the Suwannee River Partnership established the CARES program in 2001. Recipients are recognized for their superior natural resources conservation and for using state-of-the-art natural resource management systems, or Best Management Practices, on their properties. More than 800 agriculturists in Florida have received the CARES award since the program was established.
CARES has become a model nationwide with over 60 public partnerships, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource and Conservation Service, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and Florida’s water management districts, agricultural organizations, businesses and local government.