Pinellas County, FL Right to Farm: Agricultural Zoning Protection (2026)

Section 138-3330 defines commercial agricultural activity broadly: raising, harvesting or selling crops; feeding, breeding, managing or selling livestock, poultry or fur-bearing animals or their produce; dairying and selling dairy products; and any other agricultural, horticultural, animal husbandry or timber use, alone or combined. The applicability clause in (b) draws careful lines around what doesn't count. Stand-alone nurseries and greenhouse operations and community gardens are regulated under their own sections instead. Beekeeping is carved out entirely because it's regulated by state law rather than county zoning.

And minor gardening or animal-keeping typical of an ordinary house lot doesn't trigger this section at all, the code gives growing vegetables or raising backyard chickens as accessory uses on a residential lot as its own example of activity that stays outside the commercial agriculture definition. For activity that does qualify, (c) sets the operating standards: produce and other materials grown on-site can be sold to third-party, off-site retailers, such as selling produce to a store; accessory retail sales on-site are otherwise limited to products tied to the existing agricultural operation unless the district's zoning already allows general retail; accessory offices related to the farm operation are permitted; worker housing can be approved through a Type 2 review but only stays valid while the commercial agricultural activity it supports remains active; and the farm-animal standards in a separate section, § 138-3350, apply on top of everything in this section.