Every April, Marion County honors Farmland Preservation Month — a recognition of what makes this region unlike anywhere else in the world. But this year, that designation carries new weight. The forces pushing to develop, pave over our horse farms and agricultural land are larger and better-funded.
Horse Farms Forever was founded in 2018 with a simple belief: that protecting this land required someone to show up, stay engaged, and refuse to back down. Since then, we have attended thousands of hours of County Commission meetings. We have reviewed development applications, challenged comprehensive plan amendments, and fought back on projects that would have permanently altered the Farmland Preservation Area.
We have made a difference. But right now, we are facing a wave of commercial development with overwhelming scale and influence. We cannot hold the line alone.
All donations during April have been matched by a generous anonymous donor for Farmland Preservation Month.
What We’re Up Against
Marion County has grown by more than 100,000 residents since our founding. With that growth has come relentless development pressure — and commercial interests that see our farmland not as a treasure, but as an opportunity.
The development pressures are not slowing down — they are accelerating.
New applications, rezonings, and comprehensive plan challenges arrive constantly. Each one, if unchecked, chips away at the buffer that protects horse country. Without sustained, informed opposition, these decisions get made quietly — and they are nearly impossible to reverse. Our fight does not pause.
This Land Cannot Be Replaced
Ocala’s identity as the Horse Capital of the World is not an accident. It was built on the unique limestone-rich soil, the open pastures, and the deliberate protection of agricultural land that made world-class horse breeding possible here and nowhere else quite like this. Once that land is converted to subdivisions, truck stops, and commercial strips — it is gone. Not for a generation. Forever.
Preserving it requires more than appreciation. It requires people willing to do the unglamorous work: sitting through commission meetings, filing formal responses, building legal and policy arguments, and maintaining a consistent presence over years and decades.
That is what Horse Farms Forever does. And this Farmland Preservation Month, we are asking you to make it possible to keep doing it.
We attend nearly every County Commission meeting to monitor development applications and to participate in the updates to the Comprehensive Plan to ensure that the Farmland Preservation Area is protected from urban development.
We thank the County Commissioners for the time they are taking to update the Comprehensive Plan to help preserve our horse farms, agricultural land, and the Farmland Preservation Area.
Preserving our farms will take a united effort, with support from both elected officials and landowners. Please join us.