FEATURE | p e o p l e
An Eye Toward The Future Woman of the Year in Ag Angela TenBroeck Focusing on Sustainability by PAUL CATALA
ANGELA TENBROECK
A
ANGELA TENBROECK’S agricultural roots stem back to the 18th century when her ancestors began working as sharecroppers in Georgia. Farm life has sustained her family for generations since, and now TenBroeck’s varied accomplishments and contributions to agriculture have earned her the designation of Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ 2021 Woman of the Year in Agriculture.
20 | CFAN
Past recipients have worked in all aspects of the ag industry, including cattle, produce, timber, citrus, equine, horticulture, sugarcane, dairy, and education. TenBroeck, a fourth-generation farmer, says her family had “always farmed to survive,” so focusing on agricultural sustainability has been her main focus. The Jacksonville native partly credits her great-grandfather, farmer Clifford Miller, for her interest in fostering innovation in farming. At her Palatka farm, Worldwide Aquaponics, TenBroeck, 47, specializes in agricultural growth, space-saving and sustainable food production. The family began working in hydroponics, growing plants without soil, before moving into aquaponics, raising and growing fish and plants together within the same environment, considered
to be a “sustainable” process. The farm’s noted work within aquaponics has been an ongoing growth and maturation process for TenBroeck. “My great-grandfather Miller wanted to farm differently when he moved his farm from Lakeland to Jacksonville’s west side. He saw resources getting scarce and thought this was a better way of farming,” she says. “Today, we use his practices of farming in our greenhouses and then utilizing the waste of our farms on our fields to grow vegetables. He always did that.” TenBroeck’s family has worked in hydroponics since the 1970s. Besides Worldwide Aquaponics, TenBroeck ran the aquaponics farm Trader Hills CONTINUED ON PAGE 34 FloridaAgNews.com
