Buying a farm, nursery or agricultural service business in Florida

Many of these businesses grow and sell plants. Wholesale nurseries raise trees, palms, shrubs and foliage for landscapers, builders and garden centers. Others grow sod, vegetables or citrus, or raise cattle. Some are service businesses that work other people's land: grove care, spraying, land clearing, custom harvesting or supplying crews at harvest.

Growers sell by the truckload, often on credit to landscape contractors and retailers. Service businesses bill by the acre, the hour or the job. Very little is under contract. What keeps sales steady is buyers who come back season after season. A nursery also grows its stock for months or years, in the ground or in containers, before any of it sells, so a lot of cash is tied up in plants.

Teams are small: a grower or production manager, field workers (some seasonal), a driver or two and someone taking orders. Much of the value is often in the land, the wells and the equipment, so you may be buying real estate and a business at the same time.

• A grower or production manager who knows the crop and plans to stay. In a nursery, much of the know-how lives with that person.
• Repeat buyers spread across landscapers, builders and retailers, not one big account.
• Inventory that is counted, healthy and in the sizes and varieties that sell in your area now.
• Reliable water: wells, pumps and irrigation in good repair, and a water use permit that covers what the business actually pumps.
• A clean record with state plant inspectors: no stop-sale orders or quarantines.
• Shade houses, greenhouses, tractors and trucks that weren't patched together after the last storm.
• Records good enough to show which crops or services actually make money.

No single license covers farming. Nurseries, stock dealers and plant brokers need a certificate of registration from the Division of Plant Industry at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS), renewed yearly (section 581.131, Florida Statutes). For a nursery, the certificate depends on an inspection finding the stock free of serious pests (rule 5B-2.002). Ask the division whether a new owner needs a new one. If you buy farm products from growers to resell, including most nursery stock, you generally need an FDACS dealer license and a bond, unless you pay at the time of purchase (sections 604.15 to 604.34).

Using restricted-use pesticides takes a person with an FDACS certified applicator license, or someone working under that person's direct supervision (section 487.031). Water use permits must be transferred to the new owner through the water management district. Deadlines vary (45 days after closing in some districts), so ask early. In watersheds under a state cleanup plan, farms must follow FDACS best management practices or do state-prescribed water monitoring (section 403.067).

Supplying farmworkers takes a farm labor contractor certificate from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and it can't be transferred (section 450.30). Farmland can get an agricultural classification, which lowers property taxes. You apply to the county property appraiser, who may take the price you paid into account (section 193.461).

• Land. Is it included, leased or a separate deal? For a leased farm or nursery, the lease's length and renewal terms can matter more than anything else.
• Inventory. Count and grade it with someone who knows plants. Buyers and sellers disagree most over what plants in the ground are worth, and pests or disease can lead to a stop-sale order.
• Weather. Ask about hurricane and freeze damage, what was lost and what insurance or disaster programs paid.
• Labor. How the business finds and pays seasonal workers, whether it uses a labor contractor or the federal H-2A visa program, and whether it follows housing and wage rules.
• Water and environment. Compare what the permit allows with what's actually pumped, and look at fuel tanks, chemical storage and old dump spots. An environmental site assessment is common when land is part of the sale.
• The building cycle. Nursery demand rises and falls with home and commercial construction.

• Which plants or crops make you the most money, and which do you grow mostly out of habit?
• Who are your biggest buyers, and how long have they been buying from you?
• How did the place come through the last few hurricanes or freezes, and what did you change afterward?
• Who grows the crop day to day, and would they stay on after a sale?
• In a dry spring, how much water do you pump compared with what your permit allows?
• When did the state plant inspector last come out, and did they find anything?
• How do you find enough workers at your busiest time of year?
• What would come with the business: the land, the equipment, the plants in the ground and in containers?