AGRICULTURE
Retrofits | Commercial/Residential | Air Quality/Filtration
8
Packing house workers sort grapefruit as the fruit moves along on a conveyor belt.
That’s largely because of
progress toward overcoming
citrus greening disease that
has been achieved by researchers
from the U.S. Department
of Agriculture and the University
of Florida.
Bournique’s office in Fort
Pierce is now alongside
researchers so he can keep up
with advances to fight citrus
greening. “I talk to the 50 PhDs
and 150 lab techs that are here,
and we live and breathe it,” he
said.
Total fruit sales, dominated
by citrus, accounts for 65
percent of agricultural product
sales in St. Lucie, and makes
up 82 percent of agricultural
product sales in Indian River,
the USDA reports.
USDA figures show that
Martin County’s top crops are
plant nurseries and sod farms
at $45.3 million in 2017, and
sugarcane, with sales of $12.3
million.
While citrus dominates the
agricultural industry in St.
Lucie and Indian River counties,
raising cattle is by far the
leader in Okeechobee County.
Okeechobee tops the Treasure
Coast in sales of agricultural
products at $235.9 million
in 2017, the USDA said. Of that
total, 86 percent comes from
livestock. With a headcount
of 175,000 cattle and calves at
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FLORIDA DEPT. OF CITRUS
the start of 2019, Okeechobee
is the largest cattle county in
Florida, which the industry
publication Beef Market Central
says is 12th in the nation in
the number of beef cattle. In
Okeechobee County, slightly
less than half the cattle, 81,000,
are beef cows and calves.
Matt Pearce is a seventhgeneration
cattle rancher in
Okeechobee, the president of
Pearce Cattle Company and
the president of the Florida
Cattleman’s Association.
Pearce said the peak of the
cattle industry on the Treasure
Coast and Florida was probably
from 2000 to 2008. Mike Adams,
president of Adams Ranch
Inc. based in St. Lucie County,
said the peak may have been
the 1980s as much as the early
2000s.
While tree diseases endanger
orange and grapefruit groves,
cattle ranchers on the Treasure
Coast and across southern and
central Florida often lose their
land to development, Pearce
and Adams each said.
“Some developers tell me
that the area from Palm Beach
County to Fort Myers is all going
to be filled in eventually,”
Pearce said. “And there will be
one solid development from
Orlando to Tampa.”
He said that developers like
the land that has been grazed
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