Broker plants seeds with sellers

Longtime Florida agricultural land broker Ben Crosby has a challenge he hasn't seen in decades: Demand for farmland in the Sunshine State has outstripped supply.

“We are busy day and night,” Crosby tells Coffee Talk. “We are spending a lot of time trying to find willing sellers.”

Crosby, in a release, says “seemingly disconnected events and trends” nationwide have come together to create the high demand. Those events include high land prices for Midwest farms and chronic water shortages in California and Texas. “Most of my career, I've been helping land owners find buyers,” says Crosby, president of Winter Haven-based Crosby & Associates, one of the largest land brokers in the state. “Now, things are turned upside down and buyers are calling on me for help in finding agricultural land to buy.”