County Commissioner Robert Hutchinson has noted Alachua County’s low rank in the share of land under conservation management, 37th among Florida’s 67 counties.

Using the August 2016 update of the Florida Natural Areas Inventory, I calculate that 30 percent of Florida’s acreage has been set aside for conservation. For Alachua County, that share falls just under 20 percent. The leader is Monroe with 96 percent. Others with more than 60 percent include Miami-Dade, Collier and Broward. If you think you see a pattern there, you’re right. Each of those counties has enormous Everglades acreage under federal or state management.

Rounding out the counties topping 60 percent are Franklin and Liberty. With their forest preserves, they too have large acreages under state and federal management.

Where Alachua comes out ahead is in the share of conservation land under local management, with more than 3 percent. That’s better than double the state average and ranks us 10th among counties. None of the nine counties with more than half their land being conserved has more than 1 percent of the total under local management. As to state control, Alachua places at the state average at close to 16 percent.

We fall short by having no federal land. OK, not zero, 190 acres. The lesson is clear. Convince our county commissioners to persuade the federal government to buy more of our land and take care of it for us, taking us from our current 0 percent to the state average 12 percent under federal management. Surely we have areas that warrant federal preservation. Ideally, our future congressional representative will help.

That brings me to another way to help sustain the environment, especially the Everglades. Vote for Ken McGurn for U.S. representative from Florida’s 3rd District. We’re lucky to have two effective candidates, McGurn and Ted Yoho, and you have likely made your choice in keeping with your political views.

But I nonetheless call your attention to a particular bill that Yoho authored, because it’s about a nemesis for those who love the Everglades and detest corporate welfare, Big Sugar. In fact the bill looks like it could have been drafted by Jack Roney, the policy director for the American Sugar Alliance. To be clear, I don’t know that it was. But much of the language matches earlier position papers appearing under Roney’s name.

Yoho introduced the bill as a House resolution on February 27, 2015. It calls for the president to go after all countries that export sugar and negotiate with them to agree to drop all subsidies “direct and indirect” for sugar producers. Once all of them — everyone of them including India, Thailand, Colombia and Cuba — have agreed to that, the president is to “propose to Congress a zero for zero sugar subsidy policy.”

“Zero for zero” is Yoho’s (and Roney’s) phrase for if all other countries stop subsidizing sugar, the U.S. will think about it. In other words, we’ll consider eliminating our own subsidies and import quotas when pigs fly. You can see why the American Sugar Alliance loves it. For over-the-top amusement, watch Yoho’s video about his bill, featuring three children who are shorted on candy when trick or treating because of foreign sugar subsidies. What? One of the kids kills a subsidy zombie with an arrow through the head.

What does the U.S. sugar policy that Yoho is defending do for his constituents? Perhaps it’s good for our health, since it forces us to pay more for sugar and sweets, though the effect is too small to help much. It also gives other countries a comeback — look at your own sugar program — when our trade negotiators try to open up foreign markets to U.S. food products. As a result, our local farmers earn a little bit less.

But those are not the main issues. The main issues are the Everglades and corporate welfare. The conservative National Review calls the billionaire Fanjul brothers, major Florida sugar producers, “the First Family of corporate welfare.” It’s time to send a message that we’re fed up with letting our representatives subsidize those who least need it at the cost of our environment and at the expense of the rest of us.

— Dave Denslow is a retired University of Florida economics professor.