Editor's note: This article was originally published by The Florida Trib.

An industry-backed state law that takes effect July 1 will make it easier for developers to turn farmland into suburban subdivisions over the objections of local governments and communities.

The bill’s sponsors say they’re defending Floridians’ property rights. Environmental activists say it’s the latest step the state legislature has taken to speed suburban sprawl and weaken local power to regulate zoning and environmental protections.

The law, SB 686, paves the way for landowners to build homes and businesses in “agricultural enclaves,” tracts of farmland surrounded on 75% of their boundaries by urban development or highways. These landowners can turn farms and timberland into suburbs and business parks, no matter what the local zoning plan or the community says.

The law authorizes single-family homes, but not apartment buildings, in agricultural enclaves next to neighborhoods or land zoned for future development. If the surrounding properties have commercial or industrial buildings, landowners can build those, too.

Once a landowner applies for an agricultural enclave designation, local governments must hold a public hearing and approve or deny the request within 90 days, or it will be approved automatically. Landowners can appeal denials to a circuit court.

The law expires Jan. 1, 2028, giving landowners 18 months to act.

“Our main concern is that it will help to proliferate sprawl in Florida, moving the urban area into areas that are currently agricultural or natural without requiring those landowners to undergo the same type of public hearings and public planning efforts that other landowners would have to go through,” said Kim Dinkins, policy and planning director for 1000 Friends of Florida, a nonprofit that promotes land conservation and denser urban development.

The law’s House sponsor, Bonita Springs Republican Adam Botana, said he supported the bill to stick up for landowners facing unreasonable red tape from local governments.

“Sometimes certain municipalities and counties get a little big for their britches, and they need to be either restricted or cut back,” he said.

Anna Eskamani, a Democratic House member from Orlando who voted against the law, said local oversight is critical to rein in “large special interests that are able to influence the legislature to create land use policies that are in their favor.”

“Once you lose farmland and pasture land to development, it never goes back,” she said. “We are just at so much risk in Florida of building over everything.”

Paving future conservation land

Botana said the law addresses critics’ environmental concerns by forbidding landowners to apply for an agricultural enclave designation in the Everglades Protection Area, the Wekiva Study Area and other environmentally sensitive spots listed as “areas of critical state concern,” including Big Cypress, the Green Swamp Area and the Florida Keys.

Military installations and ranges, land under a conservation easement and all of Miami-Dade and Broward counties are also exempt.

But environmentalists say those limits don’t go far enough.

“You have environmental ecosystems everywhere in the state that might not be labeled as of critical concern, but are important to drainage, flood prevention, threatened species and quality of life,” said Eskamani.

There are millions of acres of farms and ranches in the Florida Wildlife Corridor that the state hasn’t bought or put under a conservation easement yet. Dinkins said the agricultural enclave law makes it easier to develop “vulnerable areas at the urban fringe” that could be important to conserve one day.

“We ought to be doing what we can to keep those farms viable because they provide a buffer from rampant development,” said Smart. “But that’s not what we’re doing. This legislation makes it easier to pave it over.”

‘Everybody has a boss’

The state legislature’s nonpartisan analysis of the law’s impact doesn’t say how many potential agricultural enclaves there are in Florida. But Botana said there are “probably, in total, five or 10” cases where Florida landowners might use the agricultural enclave designation.

“You have cities or counties that don’t want to change the rights for that person. They just say, ‘No, we want to keep this little green area,’” Botana said, adding, “When that happens, people come and say, ‘Hey, this is unfair.’”

Botana declined to say whether he heard that from specific landowners or whether the bill was designed to grease the wheels for a particular development. Big business groups including the Associated Industries of Florida supported the bill.

“Everybody has a boss, right?” Botana said. “At the end of the day, it’s the people who put you in office.”

Limiting local government

Environmentalists say the agricultural enclave law is part of a bigger project in Tallahassee to weaken local governments and empower developers.

The legislature passed the Live Local Act in 2023, allowing developers to ignore zoning, density and height restrictions for projects that include affordable housing. Lawmakers amended or expanded the measure in 2024, 2025 and 2026. Last year, they passed SB 180, barring local governments from creating any new development rules “more restrictive and burdensome” than existing requirements, effectively freezing local zoning.

“There’s been so much legislation in the last few years to help developers develop more quickly, with less public oversight and we would say more recklessly, while undermining local community planning processes,” said Gil Smart, policy director of the nonprofit Friends of the Everglades.

Ocala Republican Stan McClain, who sponsored the agricultural enclave bill in the state senate, introduced another bill this year that would allow developers to build mega-projects totalling more than 10,000 acres on rural land without local zoning approval or public hearings. The “Blue Ribbon Projects” bill failed to pass a committee vote.

But the agricultural enclave law may offer hope for supporters of the Blue Ribbon Projects bill. When McClain first introduced the agricultural enclave bill in 2025, it narrowly lost a committee vote. He reintroduced the bill this year and it passed overwhelmingly.

“Bad ideas in Tallahassee never truly die. They’re just resurrected in the next legislative session,” Smart said. “I fully expect to see the Blue Ribbon Projects bill back.”

Nicolás Rivero is an environmental accountability reporter at The Florida Trib. He can be reached at nicolas.rivero@floridatrib.org. The Tributary is a nonprofit newsroom producing high-impact government accountability and investigative journalism in the public interest. Based in Jacksonville, the Florida Trib's mission is to shine a light on systemic problems and solutions, hold those in power accountable, and focus on under covered topics through collaboration with other news organizations and the community.