LAKE WALES — The sun slipped above Crooked Lake on a recent October morning as fourth generation Lake Wales rancher Stuart Fitzgerald and his wife Stephanie got out of a four-wheel drive vehicle, pulled out a bag of mineral-rich biscuits and began dumping the contents on the ground of a pasture along U.S. Highway 27 that his family has ranched since the 1940s.
“Come on, girls!” Fitzgerald called to about two dozen cows and their calves as he made his morning rounds to check on newborns, shriveled umbilical cords still dangling from the most recent arrivals. The cows gathered near him, some with horns, lowing as they jockeyed for a spot to eat.
“I gotta make it work,” Fitzgerald said of his 500 head of cattle on that pasture and two other properties in the Lake Wales area. “We’re losing ground every day.”
Fitzgerald, 49, said he faces things his grandfather, J.K. Stuart, never would have dreamed of when he bought 3,800 acres for about 25 cents an acre in the 1940s. Fitzgerald said those modern pressures include increasing government regulations, encroaching invasive plants and trees, and calves sold to western feed lots from Mexico and Canada — which he said are driving down U.S. prices for beef. He said it’s hard to compete with foreign beef sources because they can raise their cattle cheaper, and they make it even more difficult for consumers to know their steak was raised.
“Being in the cow business, you always feel like you’re under attack,” said Fitzgerald, director of the Polk County Cattleman’s Association.
State history
According to state of Florida archives, the state has the longest history of ranching in the United States. Florida’s first cows were brought by Spanish explorers Juan Ponce de Leon in 1521 and Don Diego de Maldonado in 1540. Long after Ponce de Leon left, the cows remained, growing wild in the Florida scrub. Early British settlers brought their own brand of cattle and, over time, the Spanish Andalusian and British breeds mixed, eventually becoming scrub or Cracker cattle.
From the 16th through the 19th centuries, early settlers, including Spanish missionaries, began raising cattle. When the U.S. took possession of Florida in 1821, it was described as a "vast, untamed wilderness, plentifully stocked with wild cattle," found foraging in the thick woods and rounded up by anyone with a horse, dogs and determination.
“These hardy creatures survived on native forage, tolerated severe heat, insect pests, and acquired immunity to many diseases,” the Florida Memory Project webpage states.
Native Americans also took their knowledge of ranching from areas in Alabama and Georgia, pushing the wild cattle from North and Central Florida scrublands and prairies to South Florida, where the Seminole tribe hid out from U.S. troops and became major cattle producers — remaining so to this day with one of the largest ranches in the country.
Today, Florida has 15,000 working ranches, according to the Florida Beef Council. The USDA shows the number of ranches increasing from 15,717 in 2002 to almost 18,500 today. But those numbers can include a Future Farmers of America student with a calf to 10,000-acre ranches with hundreds of heads of cattle.
“One of the challenges is defining what a ranch is,” said Jason Scheffler, a meat science and muscle biology professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “The ranches with hundreds, if not thousands, of cattle are easy, but does someone with 20 acres and a handful of cows count as a ranch? The ranch numbers end up being a little fuzzy.”
In fact, acre by acre, Fitzgerald is seeing diminished what his great-grandfather, E.C. Stuart, a founder of Lake Wales, amassed in Lake Wales, Lake Placid, Indiantown, Sumter County, Hardee County and Bartow. His grandfather’s home still exists behind Bartow Regional Medical Center on land that has been approved for a housing development.
He leases the land his family once owned from the county. Following the death of his grandfather in 1991, his mother and her five sisters decided to sell in recent years. The county bought it as a conservation easement and Fitzgerald had to put in a bid “just like anyone else” to lease it back.
“The only time you make any money is when you sell out,” Fitzgerald said.
Costs of raising cattle
Florida is predominantly what’s known as a cow-calf state. Weaned calves that are between 6 to 10 months old and weighing, on average, 450 pounds are shipped to feedlots in the western U.S. Florida ships approximately 450,000 calves each year. The economic impact of cattle ranching in Florida totals $2.1 billion annually, and employs at least 17,000 people, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
“On average, $150 to $200 per animal at the end of the day. It definitely doesn’t go to the cowman — it goes to everyone else.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Florida ranked 12th in beef cows in 2019 with an inventory of 914,000 — 2.88% of the U.S. total. Texas, which was first with an inventory of 4,655,000, had more than five times as many beef cows. Polk County ranked fourth in the state with 94,000 cows. Okeechobee County, where the Seminole Nation has a ranch, ranked first with 185,000 head of cattle followed by Highlands with 125,000 and Osceola with 97,000.
But statistics from the USDA also show that beef cattle and calve production has slowed, although it is currently holding steady. In 1996, there were 1.8 million cows and calves in Florida. In 2019, there were 1.68 million. In Polk County, ranchers have seen their herds drop from a high of 100,000 in 2012 to the current total.
While the costs of everything from insurance, tick and fly treatments, feed and equipment have increased, the money ranchers make selling their calves to feed lots has been on a bit of a roller coaster. In 2011, Florida ranchers made $489 million on the sale of their calves. In 2015, those sales hit an historic high of $870 million. Last year, it dropped to $475 million.
“In 2015 we were enjoying the highest feeder calf prices we’ve ever seen — part of that was simple supply and demand in our cattle cycle,” said Dusty Holley, director of field services at Florida Cattleman’s Association based in Kissimmee. “The numbers (of calves) were low just from the cyclical nature of our industry, but there was also a massive drought. A number of people in the years before had to sell off whole operations. We were at historic lows and demand was strong and so we were selling calves for a pile of money because they needed cattle to be in feed lots and be in processing plants to keep those places going.”
Fitzgerald pays for everything from insurance and feed to tractors and repairs.
“Trying to stay in the cow business, I gotta have a truck and those are $70,000 now. We have to use them ‘til they’re wore slap out,” Fitzgerald said, adding that a tractor to keep the fields mowed can cost $50,000-$70,000 while the mowing deck totals about $20,000. “We have to mow the pastures to keep the weeds out and increase grass production.”
And, he said, farm equipment and trucks have gotten so sophisticated, with computers running so much, that farmers can hardly work on their own equipment any more.
He also has to pay for feed, fertilizer, pesticides and insecticides. One gallon of a pesticide to kill smut grass is $75. To apply it to even half of the 3,800-acre property gets expensive.
"We go through a lot of money," he said.
However, he can take care of a lot of the animals' health issues himself. Fitzgerald, who was raised by his stepfather, went to college at Mississippi State to become a veterinarian. He switched to animal sciences and learned about breeding and reproduction. He often finds himself checking on the health of an unborn calf in his herd by reaching into a cow’s vagina to check her cervix, the uterine artery, and a patch around the nerve sack. He can also check on how far along the calf is by its size, comparing it to a rat, cat or dog. He does this as consulting work on nearby ranches, as well.
As for how much he makes per head of cattle, “it’s hard to say, depending on our feed costs and what mother nature does to us,” he said.
The feed yards out west get about $150 per cow and the packing houses are making, he said, about $350 per cow.
“On average, $150 to $200 per animal at the end of the day,” he said. “It definitely doesn’t go to the cowman — it goes to everyone else.”
Ranchers also stick together. In Polk County, like in other areas of the state, they have a cost-share program that ranchers can join to help offset expenses for big projects. For example, Fitzgerald recently installed two wells, but the cost-share program paid for 75% of it.
Plenty of regulations
While most people think raising cattle involves putting them in a pasture and leaving them there to graze, there is so much more to it. Ranchers have to ensure their fence lines are maintained — for Fitzgerald, that means 40 miles of fence surrounding 3,800 acres on his three pastures. He must also provide feed in the dry winter months when the grass doesn’t grow, use pesticides to keep pastures cleared of invasive species, try to keep flies and ticks off of the cattle through medicinal treatments, and keep the cattle out of wet areas during the summer rainy season as much as possible.
“This cow deal, you gotta halfway be a scientist, weatherman, economist and agronomist,” Fitzgerald said.
And a lot of what he has to do to maintain the land and the cows is regulated by state and federal government rules and laws.
Fitzgerald said the state wants ranchers to use what’s known as best management practices when it comes to all aspects of his ranchland and cattle. He points to soda apple plants, Chinese tallow trees and smut grass, which can take over a pasture of bahiagrass if left alone.
“When I was a kid growing up, we didn’t have,” those plants, he said. “They want to put more regulations on us — not just traceability, but accounting on every single thing we’re doing. They want to know what are you spraying, how much are you spraying, where are you spraying.”
Federal regulations include determining which pesticide and animal waste discharges from his ponds and creeks require permitting by the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System.
In addition to federal laws, the state has dozens of regulations, including everything from branding and vaccinations, inspections, permits to use food garbage to feed animals, requiring livestock transporters to provide food, water and care for trips longer than 28 hours, and prohibits overcrowding when transporting livestock.
Keeping flies and ticks off cows is an age-old problem in the cattle industry. Between 1906 and 1962, the state and private ranchers constructed about 3,400 dipping vats — open-air concrete troughs about seven-feet deep that were filled with water and pesticides and through which each ranch’s cow, calf and bull was herded.
“The vats were generally filled with an Arsenic solution that killed the ticks,” the Florida Health Department website states. “It is now known that the solutions used in these cattle-dipping vats are harmful to humans and areas with the vats may have contaminated ground water in their vicinity. Other possible contaminants are beta-Hexachlorocyclohexane, (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, also known as) DDT, and toxaphene.”
Fitzgerald has at least two of those old vats on his ranchland, one he believes his grandfather built and the other the state constructed. Getting out of the four-wheel drive at one of them, Fitzgerald could see in his mind’s eye his grandfather and ranch hands there after a hard day’s work.
“They probably told some good stories and drank some good whiskey around this thing,” he said.
The vats were outlawed in the 1960s.
Country of origin labeling
Fitzgerald and other Polk County ranchers put part of the blame of low beef prices on cows imported from Mexico and Canada. He says Mexico, in particular, doesn’t regulate its cattle industry like the United States, so they don’t have to adhere to strict guidelines in pesticide and fertilizer use or pay workers at least a minimum wage of $8.56 an hour like ranchers do in Florida.
“They still have dipping vats,” Fitzgerald said.
“There’s nothing against folks labeling voluntarily where their beef was raised. For example, Florida Cattle Ranchers is a branded product — completely born, raised, fed here in Florida. But there’s no mandatory labeling.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling, also known as MCOOL, is a labeling law that requires retailers, such as grocery stores and club warehouse stores, to notify their customers with information regarding the source of certain foods, including beef products. The MCOOL regulations began with the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946. They were amended with the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002, the 2002 Supplemental Appropriations Act, and the Food 2 Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 to require retailers to notify their customers of the country of origin of covered foods.
But the World Trade Organization sued, saying it was unfair to and harming Canadian and Mexican growers. So the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016 amended the law to remove muscle cut beef and pork, and ground beef and pork from MCOOL requirements in order to bring the United States into compliance with its international trade obligations. Holley said the U.S. faced billions of dollars in sanctions if it continued with MCOOL
In June 2018, a U.S. District Court dismissed a lawsuit brought on behalf of ranchers in Washington state. The lawsuit alleged that the USDA was unlawfully allowing imported beef to be both sold to consumers without a country of origin label and sold to consumers with a “Product of USA” label, even if the animal from which the beef was derived was born, raised and slaughtered in a foreign country.
Holley said that at face value, labeling where beef comes from might seem like a good idea, but the issue is complicated. He said grocery stores like Publix and Winn-Dixie could voluntarily include country of origin labels on beef products, but don’t because consumers are not demanding it.
“There’s nothing against folks labeling voluntarily where their beef was raised,” Holley said. “For example, Florida Cattle Ranchers is a branded product — completely born, raised, fed here in Florida. But there’s no mandatory labeling.”
He explained that live calves from Mexico and Canada — the only countries from which live calves can be imported — are shipped to Western feed lots in places like North Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado. The calves are fed corn to increase their muscle weight. Holley said it's cheaper to ship the calves there then ship the feed here. The calves are slaughtered when they are about 18 months to two years old. Beef from the U.S., Canada and Mexico is ground together into hamburger, while a lot of American raised cows have their beef sold to places like Japan and Europe as high-end steaks.
“When beef is processed and getting ground into hamburger, tracking where every animal comes from when pieces of that animal go into the processor ... that adds a whole level of cost at the processing site,” Holley said. “Those type of things are typically driven by the consumer or retail market. They oftentimes don’t because it doesn’t change their bottom line. There’s certainly only certain people who only want to buy certified American beef.”
Trump administration
Ranchers overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2016, hoping the MCOOL issue could be fixed. And, although he has signed executive orders for a multitude of other things, neither the president nor Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue have proposed legislation or regulations to restore MCOOL. There is a resolution in the U.S. Senate, but it has not been passed.
“USDA is really moving toward a labeling product that says grown and processed in the USA, which I think will help. ... So, we cannot go to the total country of origin of labeling, but we are going to a product called label, born, grown and processed in the United States."
In fact, in a recent interview with The Ledger, Perdue said litigation is still pending against the U.S.
“USDA is really moving toward a labeling product that says grown and processed in the USA, which I think will help,” Perdue said during a June 8 stop in Lakeland. “It’s not the total solution, but this has been a frustration for growers ... So, we cannot go to the total country of origin of labeling, but we are going to a product called label, born, grown and processed in the United States. We won’t have as much transparency as we’re legally allowed to have. It’s in the process now. We think the rule will be pretty soon.”
More: Polk City rancher praises Trump for support of agriculture
Others dispute that Perdue or the president can’t do anything about it. Bill Bullard is chief executive officer of Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America based in Montana. R-CALF USA is the largest producer-only membership-based organization that exclusively represents U.S. cattle and sheep producers on domestic and international trade and marketing issues.
“I am not aware of any lawsuits that would now, or before, prevent Secretary Perdue from revising his regulations concerning the labeling of beef,” Bullard said in an email. “There is a COOL case filed in the New Mexico state court that is now on appeal at the 10th circuit, but that case is against the meatpackers who are applying the inaccurate labels, so it would not prevent the Secretary from correcting his unlawful labeling regulations.”
Bullard said that the court, when dismissing R-CALF's case in 2018 because of a statute of limitation issue, stated that U.S. cattle producers were harmed by MCOOL’s repeal and further stated that Congress should be asked to change the statute.
“So that’s what we’re working on,” he said, adding that he is asking ranchers to sign an online petition. “The biggest hurdle is the overreaching World Trade Organization ruling so we have circulated a white paper to Congress on how to restore COOL for beef without running afoul of the WTO ruling. We have some congressional offices interested in this.”
Fitzgerald just shakes his head.
“Everything else you buy has to say where it comes from,” he said.
However, Fitzgerald noted that the Trump administration did create the Corona Food Assistance Program for Livestock to help ranchers during the pandemic who continue to face market disruptions and associated costs because of COVID-19. There is a payment rate of $55 per head of cattle, up to $250,000 or 4,546 head per rancher.
Stewards of the land
As Fitzgerald checked on some of the sprawling 3,800 acres, he spotted a pair of deer along a path. A rabbit zipped in front of his four-wheel drive vehicle in a back pasture. He talked of endangered burrowing owls on his bull pasture near Crooked Lake and lighting fires to clear away underbrush after pine forests are harvested.
“Most cattlemen are conservationists,” he said.
In fact, millions of acres of ranching land throughout Florida are used as conservation easements — land that will always be held in trust by the state or counties in order to maintain the environment while still being used as cattle ranches.
Florida Forever is the state’s conservation and recreation lands acquisition program, with approximately 10 million acres managed for conservation in Florida. More than 2.5 million acres were purchased under the Florida Forever and P2000 programs.
Areas like the Allen David Broussard Catfish Creek Preserve in eastern Polk County, the Lightsey Ranch along U.S. Highway 60 and the Adams Ranch lands in Osceola County are committed to preserving nature.
The Allen David Broussard Catfish Creek Preserve is a state park near Haines City and covers more than 8,000 acres of scrub, sandhill and flatwoods, in addition to 65 acres of submerged land — a lasting tribute created by his parents for the wildlife biologist, who was working on his Ph.D. when he died from complications of treatment for Hodgkin’s Disease.
According to the park’s website, it’s home to rare plants, such as the scrub morning glory, scrub plum, pygmy fringe tree and cutthroat grass, and several protected animal species including Allen Broussard’s favorite bird, the Florida scrub jay, bald eagles, gopher tortoises and Florida scrub lizards. A sister preserve is located next to Forever Florida and the Crescent J Ranch in Osceola County, also owned by the Broussard family.
The Adams family’s Osceola ranch includes more than 6,000 acres of conservation easements to encourage future generations of the family to keep the land as a working ranch. The Lightsey family owns more than 18,000 acres, 80 percent of which are conservation easements.
For Fitzgerald, selling the land to Polk County as a conservation easement means it will never be developed.
“This place has been in the family a long time and even though I lease it, it’s my peace of mind,” he said.
Next generation
Fitzgerald knows his profession is one that's seeing a decline. But Winter Haven High School agriculture teacher Christy Durham McCullough is hoping to help.
Her agriculture class introduces students to all aspects of horsemanship, including handling, training and management, along with riding.
“We’re getting pushed out no matter what. I don’t know that my son will be able to do this.”
“Horses are actually one of Florida’s strongest growth sectors in ag,” Durham McCullough said. “We want to expose them to the wide variety of careers and higher education opportunities in the horse world. It also makes the students practice teamwork and problem-solving skills because they are partnered with other students and with an animal that can weigh anywhere from 250-1,200 pounds. You don’t force them to (do anything), and you can’t just quit.”
She has 161 students, but only 13 on campus in this pandemic year.
Fitzgerald said he has a friend who has retired as a U.S. Navy SEAL and wants to start a ranch.
“I don’t know that you can,” Fitzgerald said. “I’ve spent a lifetime acquiring equipment, but it all makes things work. It’s not just the equipment, it’s the knowledge, too.”
For instance, as he rode across a wet and marshy pasture, Fitzgerald said, "The old timers always said if it rains a lot, you want to fill the mineral box with sulfur because it helps their feet from standing in the water all the time."
Fitzgerald and his wife Stephanie are both also in the real estate business and he has shown his friend a 28-acre property near Fort Green.
“He’s asking me how he can get started and I don’t know.”
Fitzgerald’s hope now lies in his son, 9-year-old Bryce, who has a small herd of seven cows of his own and helps his father with herding, branding and other ranch chores atop a 27-year-old roping horse that once belonged to Fitzgerald.
“He always says he's teaching the horse, but really that horse is teaching him," Fitzgerald said. "I want my son growing up doing this; I don’t want him out in the streets. I want him frog hunting, I want him deer hunting.”
But looking out over the nearly 4,000 acres from atop a cattle tunnel that runs under U.S. Highway 27, Fitzgerald was wistful.
“We’re getting pushed out no matter what. I don’t know that my son will be able to do this.”
Ledger reporter Kimberly C. Moore can be reached at kmoore@theledger.com or 863-802-7514. Follow her on Twitter at @KMooreTheLedger.
By The Numbers
U.S. Cattle Totals
Top 20 States: 2020 Ranking
1. Texas: 13,000,000
2. Nebraska: 6,800,000
3. Kansas: 6,450,000
4. California: 5,200,000
4. Oklahoma: 5,200,000
6. Missouri: 4,350,000
7. Iowa: 3,900,000
7. South Dakota: 3,900,000
9. Wisconsin: 3,450,000
10. Colorado: 2,800,000
11. Montana: 2,500,000
12. Idaho: 2,490,000
13. Minnesota: 2,280,000
14. Kentucky: 2,130,000
15. North Dakota: 1,900,000
16. Tennessee: 1,810,000
17. Arkansas: 1,740,000
18. Florida: 1,680,000
19. Pennsylvania: 1,530,000
20. New York: 1,470,000
Source: National Agriculture Statistics Service/USDA
U.S. Beef Cattle Totals
Top 20 States: 2019 Ranking
1. Texas: 4,655,000
2. Oklahoma: 2,150,000
3. Missouri: 2,059,000
4. Nebraska: 1,941,000
5. South Dakota: 1,818,000
6. Kansas: 1,529,000
7. Montana: 1,448,000
8. Kentucky: 1,017,000
9. North Dakota: 985,000
10. Iowa: 950,000
11. Arkansas: 935,000
12. Florida: 914,000
12. Tennessee: 914,000
14. Colorado: 797,000
15. Wyoming: 714,000
16. Alabama: 705,000
17. California: 650,000
18. Virginia: 631,000
19. Oregon: 545,000
20. Idaho: 506,000
Source: National Agriculture Statistics Service/USDA
Florida Cattle Totals
Leading counties 2019
1. Okeechobee: 185,000
2. Highlands: 125,000
3. Osceola: 97,000
4. Polk: 94,000
5. Hardee: 71,000
Source: UF/IFAS
Florida Cash Receipts for Cattle & Calves
2011: $489 million
2012: $635 million
2013: $647 million
2014: $868 million
2015: $870 million*
2016: $546 million
2017: $586 million
2018: $511 million
2019: $475 million
*-highest on record
Source: National Agriculture Statistics Service/USDA
The Link LonkOctober 24, 2020 at 09:20AM
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