The land and its owners

Every figure in this section is from the BusinessFlare® GIS Heartland Agricultural Land Module, version 1.0, 12 September 2026, computed on the Florida Department of Revenue 2025 final roll for the six core counties with subsurface rights parcels excluded; the map states the module's figures as authoritative and never recomputes them [MOD][MODX]. The 2025 agricultural base is 2,324,300 acres. The land itself is live at parcel scale on the BusinessFlare® GIS Florida Heartland map at gis.businessflare.net/heartland, with the module layer, parcels by land use and ownership, and the power and water use permit overlays [GISH].

Acres by class

Counties and districts

The district definitions are the module's; the map's hub regions fold the towns into the same districts, with the Palm Beach Glades communities inside the Glades and the Polk extension reported separately [MOD][MODM].

The ownership split

The module resolves the raw owner names of the roll to parent owners and reports the split at thresholds beside the Census farm size boundaries [MOD]. Timber is the most concentrated class at 90.9 percent held by large owners, cropland next at 82.3 percent [MOD].

Everyone else: the small producers

The module's split sheet is titled large versus everyone else, and the second side is stated, not implied: 577,427 acres, 24.8 percent of the base, sit with owners holding fewer than 1,000 agricultural acres [MOD]. The Peace River valley is the least concentrated district, with 33.5 percent of its agricultural land held by everyone else, and the Glades the most concentrated at 16.6 percent; by class, everyone else holds 26.5 percent of the groves, 26.3 percent of the grazing land and 17.7 percent of the cropland [MOD].

On this map the small producers appear by name where a public record carries them, and through the institutions they own together. The grower owned tier is its own layer of the economy: the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida, more than 40 grower owners on about 70,000 acres [WSCGC]; Citrus World and the Florida's Natural brand, the growers' own juice company [FNH]; the Lake Placid Citrus Cooperative and Citrus Marketing Services of Sebring among its members [FNG]; Pioneer Growers and the Florida Celery Exchange in the Glades [PIONEER][WGEO]; Southeast Milk, the dairy marketing cooperative [DHM]; and the Okeechobee Livestock Market, the state's largest cattle auction as reported, where cow calf operations of every size sell into the same ring [OLM]. The named family operations run through every lane: Joshua Citrus, the oldest family grove in DeSoto County per the family record [JCA]; Peace River Packing, a five generation packinghouse [CFAN2]; Bates Sons & Daughters, the caladium growers of Lake Placid [CALH]; Adams Ranch and Williamson Cattle Company on the ranges [WADAMS][WCC]; Larson Dairy and Milking R Dairy in the Okeechobee cluster [FDF][MRD]; Roth Farms, Hundley Farms and the Wedgworth farm on the muck [ROTH][AGHOFH][WEDGH]. The most invisible of them are the rotational vegetable growers of the DeSoto case, whose 1,424 acres of watermelons and 3,762 acres of vegetables surface only in the five year Census [AGC22][DWA]. The tier tables above set the frame the small producers work inside: the module resolves 366 owners at 1,000 acres and above, and every other owner in a six county region farms, grazes or grows on the quarter of the base that remains [MOD]. The Small producers quick view on the interactive map gathers them in one frame.

The top fifteen resolved parent owners

The independent checks

The module carries two check columns beside its parcel figures: parcel groves against the USDA NASS Commercial Citrus Inventory, and agricultural land against the Census of Agriculture land in farms series. The DOR code follows the property appraiser's classification, which lags actual use, so the gap between parcel groves and surveyed commercial citrus is the grove to pasture conversion still carried as groves on the roll [MOD][NASS24][AGC22].

The announced conversions

The module's announced conversions table carries the eighteen FPL solar energy centers of the April 2026 Ten Year Site Plan, about 10,800 estimated acres, none on the 2025 roll; every one is coded announced on this map [MOD][TYSP].

The DeSoto limitation

The module states one limitation as authoritative and this map carries it whole: winter vegetables and melons in the Peace River valley are grown largely on leased grazing land; the parcel stays classified as grazing, summer imagery reads it as pasture, and the crop surfaces only in the five year Census count. The Census layer is the quantity of record for those crops: 1,424 acres of watermelons and 3,762 acres of vegetables in DeSoto County in 2022 [MOD][MODM][AGC22].