Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, a Republican from Trilby, was elected to the state Cabinet post in 2022 after a decade in the Florida Senate, including two years as Senate president. He has been a successful businessman, with interests including an egg farm and an environmental-safety company.
The News Service has five questions for Wilton Simpson, with responses edited for length.
Q: You’re a member of the State Board of Immigration Enforcement, and you’ve been making quite a few appearances about that issue recently. Can you give me an update on those efforts, especially as it relates to your agency?
SIMPSON: The state of Florida is known to be a law-and-order state. We did many things when I was Senate president, including the $5,000 bonuses to bring law enforcement to Florida.
And, of course, we have over 10,000, I believe, who’ve signed up in the last several years to come to Florida, because of how we back our law enforcement. Joe Biden let, minimally, 10 million people across — terrorists and rapists and murderers and drug gangs.
Once President Trump was elected, he shut down the border, and we had a lot of work to do. The state of Florida has taken a very aggressive stance to deport criminal illegal aliens, and there are plenty here in the state of Florida to be deported as it relates to agriculture. We have ag law enforcement, which a lot of folks don’t realize exists.
A lot of our work is along the northern border (of Florida), because we have 23 interdiction stations where we look for drugs, bugs and thugs, and we’ve been doing that for many years.
By the way, the difference in the last 2 1/2 years is Col.
(Rick “Lee”) Adams is in charge of that organization today, and he’s done an amazing job, expanding ag law to 285 sworn officers, getting the equipment that was needed, the vehicles that we needed, the type of weapons that we needed, the type of technology that we needed to really be able to do the job that needs to be done for the citizens in the state of Florida. … And the Legislature has been very good to the Department of Agriculture.
We have a new interdiction station that's going to go in a major highway coming into Florida, called 231, that's under construction now. We hope that opens in 19 months or so. That’s an entry point where people can come in and get around a lot of our other 23 interdiction stations.
We also are building pullover lanes on other roads that come into Florida that do not have those interdiction stations. … Those additional 80 members of our ag law team are going to be doing roving stations at those pull-offs on a monthly basis.
So we are interdicting folks at the northern border. We are interdicting foods and plants and pests that would come into this state from that northern border. And as you may already know, the ports are handled by the federal government.
So as things come in through our ports, the federal government is the first line of defense, and then from there, ag law would take over. … We have found over 400 stolen semi-trailers in the last two years.
We have found murderers. We have arrested them. We take them back to jail. We have located fugitives that have broken out of jails and turned them back over to law enforcement, individuals that were in child molestation and so on.
We just recently had a major fuel-theft bust in Spring Hill that was a southeastern-wide ring. That was a major bust. There were seven major fugitives arrested. Product was being flown in from Hong Kong to Memphis to Florida, and we worked with our federal, local and state partners on that bust. … We had a major retail-theft bust we announced a few weeks ago. We had thieves going into Home Depot and stealing circuit breakers and smoke detectors.
They were shipping them out to Texas and selling them out there to contractors. … I can tell you 100 stories like these. But when we do these things, we are the force multiplier that takes a lot of these criminals off the street, whether they’re illegal immigrants or not, and it then allows other law-enforcement agencies that are working with us to do other things. It’s a force multiplier that’s making Florida a safer place to live, and we’re very proud of that.
Q: Your office administers the National School Lunch Program for the state. What are your thoughts about efforts to remove ultraprocessed foods from school meals?
SIMPSON: Ultraprocessed foods are doing a lot of things to our society that, over decades now, are continuing to build and to create health issues throughout society. Because the kids, including me, who graduated from high school over 40 years ago, we ate a lot of highly processed foods, or ultraprocessed foods, if you will. … So we are feeding ourselves into depending on medicines and creating hardships for families that are completely unnecessary.
One of the things I'm very proud of is that we’re going to be able to have whole milk back at school, so kids will actually drink milk, because there's such a nutritional value to milk.
But at the same time, there are many ultraprocessed foods in there, a lot of dyes, a lot of ingredients that are put into the breads and the pizzas that are ultraprocessed, that are very high calories, in a lot of cases, for our children, but not nutritious at all.
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What we have to do as a society if we want to sort of break this, I talked many years ago about breaking the cycle of poverty through the education system.
If we have parental choice throughout the state, we give parents choices, right, to be able to break generational poverty. In this case, we're talking about breaking generational habits that have led to these types of health outcomes. Whether it's diabetes, whether it's obesity, all the things that you could relate back to ultraprocessed foods.
We're going to do everything we can in Florida. If there is not a federal definition by the end of the year, we will probably create a definition for the ultraprocessed foods, and then we will pursue that here in the state of Florida, to outlaw, to ban those products. And I think we're going to have to have some sort of a glide path, but it will be a very short one.
I know other states are taking this issue up. We're not going to try to reinvent the wheel here, and we're going to work with the Trump administration to make sure our guidelines are accurate and in line with what the federal policy is going to be. So we've got a lot of work to do in this area, but the work is going to save many lives. It's going to prevent a lot of health issues for our citizens growing up.
Q: With Trump-backed candidate U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds and former House Speaker Paul Renner running for governor in 2026, is there a lane for you in the governor’s race, or are you contemplating reelection as agriculture commissioner or considering other plans?
SIMPSON: You know, Dara, that’s a very good question. It’s kind of amazing the intensity in which questions like this come at people that are in politics as a statewide official. I have not given it serious thought.
When I was in the Florida Senate and Senate president, I thought about doing my job, and I was very fortunate and blessed, in most cases, did not ever get an opponent. But the reality is, I think if we do our jobs, the elections take care of themselves.
We’re two years and nine months in. The election is next year. If we’re going to run for commissioner of agriculture again, or any other office, those decisions should be made next year.
I believe our citizens are tired of politicians just wanting to always run for the next office or just run for office. We should just do our job. I thought when I served in the Senate, it was an honor of a lifetime, and I worked very hard at being a competent and capable Senate president.
You saw the things that we were able to accomplish in my Senate career and my time as Senate president, and I enjoyed every bit of that, of serving the state of Florida and our people in my district and as commissioner of agriculture, again, another honor of a lifetime.
Think of this, a young man from Trilby, Florida — and I'm not young anymore — that grew up in real work, in construction, in asbestos removal, in egg farming, in citrus farming, and I mean from the pulling of mortality and the stacking of eggs, was a Senate president in the state of Florida. Nobody would believe that from Trilby, Florida population 200 or 300, and now I am now the commissioner of agriculture, statewide-elected official.
Who would ever believe that that’s possible, from somebody who didn’t come from a political family? I came from the earth. I was adopted as a child. I grew up in a household where we had several of us that were adopted. I grew up in a household where we had children in that house that were foster kids. I loved my life. I've worked my entire life. I've been paying Social Security since I was about 8 years old, and I'm 59 now, so over 50 years of this.
I love the work. I love the service. … I do highly respect President Trump, as you know, and he's a dear friend. I would say that President Trump clearly has endorsed Byron Donalds, and if Byron is successful, coming into next year, I would not run against a successful President Trump-endorsed candidate. I just am not going to do that.
At the end of the day, I am going to get through this year with the Department of Agriculture. This will be my third year. We've done some amazing things at the department. That's another long-term story, but we've done some amazing things at the department. I'm very proud of the team that I have in Tallahassee, starting with Kathy Mears, my chief of staff. The entire team is an amazing group of people, and it's an honor of a lifetime to serve as commissioner, and we'll make that choice next year.
Q: Your agency, the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, has been very active in enforcing restrictions on euphoria-inducing hemp products to try to keep them out of the hands of children. The governor last year vetoed a bill that would have banned most of those products altogether. Now we’ve got an emergency rule to prohibit sales of certain 7-OH kratom products. Where do you think we're going to end up on kratom and hemp?
SIMPSON: The Legislature has worked with us the last two years. We've been fighting this battle for three years now. This is my third year in office, and you know, our No. 1 goal is to protect our children. As best we can, we are not going to let this get into the hands of our children.
We have removed over a million packages. When you think about the hemp products, the 7-0H products that we have removed, and a lot of these products were targeting our children.
When you think about 7-OH in particular, this is 10 times stronger than morphine. Some folks say, oh, it weans you off of these other more harmful drugs. What's more harmful than a drug that's 10 times more powerful than morphine that you would get in a hospital?
So, basically through a federal loophole in the farm bill that, by the way, was only passed eight years ago. They should have passed another one. Every five years, you're supposed to pass it. … I believe the federal government will come to its senses when they pass the farm bill on these issues.
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In the meantime, it's left up to the states. Attorney General James Uthmeier did do an emergency order to schedule 7-OH. We've removed, I think, about 18,000 packages, and we are removing more every week. We're going to continue to remove those packages.
Again, this is legalized morphine and should not be being sold anywhere in this country without a doctor's prescription, and a doctor's prescription would not include it at these levels. … And remember, Dara, we had 2,500 kids go to the emergency room two years ago because they were making hemp products that look like Skittles and gummy bears and other candies, and they were eating these things, and of course, they were having to go to the emergency room. We know that what we're doing is working, because those encounters are going down.
We know we have bent the curve, but it's still not good enough until we can get these products out of our society. … Think about this. They’ll say, ‘Oh, well, there's tens of thousands of jobs at risk.’ Yeah, there's tens of thousands of jobs at risk for selling products that are Schedule 1 in some cases, illegal drugs, narcotics that not even adults should be using.
Look, if you're over 21 years old and you're an adult, what you do at your house is not any of my business. I do care, because I think it helps destroy the fabric of our state. But adults have adult decisions to make on issues, whether it's alcohol or these products. But make no mistake about it. These products are, in this case, a Schedule 1 narcotic with the 7-OH and I do hope the Legislature takes this up again this year. We will work very hard and tirelessly with them to get this right.
Q: Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. I have a fun one for you. You’re having a dinner party. What three people, living or dead, would you invite?
SIMPSON: That's a good question. I never got to meet Ronald Reagan. Of course, I was working at an egg farm. I would not have had any ability to have met Ronald Reagan. I would love to meet Ronald Reagan. I thought he was a dynamic president and a leader that has transformed these last 50 years of our society. Now I think we're getting away from some of it, but thank God, President Trump was elected, right? So I think Ronald Reagan would be included on that list. Wow.
(President Trump?)
Well, I mean, President Trump, I get to have dinner with him. I'd have President Reagan, maybe President Trump, and then the other one who would be fascinating — you know, I've got all the wet signatures of the presidents in my office. We’re just talking about presidents, not artists or theological folks or anybody else. I’d probably want to meet George Washington.
That's three presidents I'd have dinner with, because George Washington, when you think of what he did for this country and giving up power after two terms. He was very clear on it. He set the tone for the country. There's very few people, given the opportunity to keep running for office, that wouldn't keep doing it. George Washington made the decision that, ‘Look, I'm going to do two terms.’ And it was not against the Constitution. FDR, of course, served four terms, which then caused the constitutional amendment to happen, but the reality is that George Washington was a leader.
I heard yesterday that God puts these leaders in place at certain times in our history that makes us different from the rest of society and makes us Americans who we are. And I think that without a George Washington, you wouldn't have had a lot of these other leaders.
Without Ronald Reagan, we wouldn't have the thriving America that we've been so proud of the last 40 or 50 years. And I think without President Trump winning on this last term, we certainly would have had issues in this country that we probably would not have been able to overcome, not only with the rampage and illegals coming across our borders, and when I mean illegals, I'm talking about the terrorists that came across our borders, the drug users and the drug cartels that came across our border. It's a profound change in our country when you eliminate these types of things. So I think those three gentlemen are three that I would love to have dinner with.
