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

Sanford's Land Development Regulations create the Agricultural (AG) zoning district under Section 2.1 to implement the Comprehensive Plan's "Suburban Estates" (SE) future land use designation, and the district text caps residential density at one dwelling unit per one acre, the lowest density ceiling of any residential district in the zoning code. Schedule C, the Area and Dimension Regulations table, backs that density limit with a matching minimum parcel size: an AG lot must contain at least 43,560 square feet, exactly one acre, versus 10,000 square feet or less in the city's standard single-family districts.

Schedule C also sets AG's minimum parcel frontage at 20 feet and minimum parcel width at the building line at 100 feet, with a 35-foot minimum front yard and 35-foot minimum rear yard (each subject to a footnote requiring a five-acre minimum parcel, 100-foot front yard, 50-foot side yard and 100-foot rear yard for any use other than a one-family dwelling), a 20-foot minimum side yard, and a 35-foot maximum building height. Because AG carries no floor area ratio limit, nonresidential and agricultural uses on qualifying parcels are not capped by that intensity measure the way commercial and industrial districts are.

The AG district also appears throughout the Land Development Regulations as one of the city's protected lower-intensity residential classifications: height-exception rules for mechanical appurtenances, commercial-vehicle parking restrictions in residential areas, and wireless-facility siting standards all list AG alongside the SR-1, SR-2 and MR-series residential districts rather than the city's commercial or industrial districts, extending residential-style protections to agriculturally zoned land. A proposed use on AG-zoned land still needs a site development permit confirming it is a permitted use under Schedule B and meets Schedule C's area and dimension standards before the administrative official can approve it.