Homegrown<\/a> program
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More produce stands are popping up, giving more people access to fresh produce
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One produce stand in Plant City has been providing fresh produce for three years now
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The fruit stand is located off of County Line and East State Road 60<\/p>\nFrancisco Manzano prides himself on selling fresh produce.<\/p>\n
“These are from here, Plant City, they\u2019ve recently been picked,” Manzano said.<\/p>\n
He opened his produce stand on County Line Road in Plant City about three years ago. Before that, he used to\u00a0work on farms, traveling from state to state for work.<\/p>\n
From strawberries, onions to tomatoes, everything is locally sourced.<\/p>\n
And he says that while it\u2019s his main source of income, he can provide fresh produce at a much lower cost. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit cheaper and fresher, and we try to sell things that the community is asking or looking for,” he said.<\/p>\n
Manzano says his produce stand has grown to include several varieties of fruits and vegetables, and it\u2019s been a benefit to the people who stop by.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe the people that come here are people with little or low resources, but those clients are the ones that are helping us to thrive,” Manzano said.<\/p>\n
Monica Petrella is the food system program coordinator with UF\/IFAS extension. She says they have seen more people interested in growing their own food and others growing a surplus, leading to more growers opening produce stands.<\/p>\n
Petrella believes it\u2019s a process that brings benefits to the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we have the community capacity to grow, sell and distribute our own food, I always think that is a good thing,” she said. “Because it allows us to be more nimble and flexible and less dependent on these systems that we might not have control over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manzano hopes his produce stand becomes a local hub for all things local. \u201cThis is food that we live from, and this is something that is good,” he said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a growing trend that\u2019s putting fresh food within reach of more families.<\/p>\n
UF\/IFAS extension also offers programs to teach people how to harvest their own food.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PLANT CITY, Fla. \u2014\u00a0You may notice more produce stands around Hillsborough County. The University of Florida\u2019s Institute of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2031,274,558,276,2200,6076,115,135,137,136,278,2032,835],"class_list":["post-117520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-local-business","tag-app-top-stories","tag-business","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-lizbeth-gutierrez","tag-news","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories","tag-trending-topics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}