Research To Broaden Knowledge About Cattle Ranching At Crucial Time

October 8, 1998

GAINESVILLE — How to make cattle ranching more environmentally friendly without driving ranchers out of business is the subject of a major University of Florida study getting under way this month.

The UF College of Engineering-coordinated study seeks to discover not only how many cows ranches can accommodate before water becomes polluted, but also whether the ranchers can earn a profit if restricted to that number — and how well the cattle co-exist with, or even attract, birds and other wildlife.

“We’re going to try to see if we can fine-tune this ranching operation in a way that it has less impact on water quality while maintaining the operation’s economic value and the ecosystem,” said Ken Campbell, lead investigator and a UF agricultural and biological engineering professor.

Florida ranks among the top 10 states for beef production, but ranchers in the state face mounting pressure because of environmental and economic concerns, Campbell said.

The vast majority of Florida’s more than 1 million cattle are ranched south of Tampa and Orlando, with many on the north side of Lake Okeechobee. Runoff from ranches may increase phosphorus and nitrogen levels in the lake, which drains into the Everglades, hampering Everglades clean up efforts. Some ranchers already have trouble meeting limits for phosphorus, and the state may lower limits further, Campbell said.

Ranchers, meanwhile, typically operate on thin profit margins, so removing cattle from ranches to reduce nutrients can easily put them out of business. That may not be in the state’s best interest, since alternatives to ranching, such as development or citrus groves, may prove more environmentally or ecologically damaging, Campbell said.

The researchers will try to figure out how ranchers can stay in the black while reducing pollution at a 1,040-acre site on Buck Island Ranch.

The 10,300-acre working ranch, northwest of Lake Okeechobee in Highlands County, is owned by the MacArthur Foundation and leased to the Archbold Biological Station, a private, nonprofit research facility devoted to ecological research and conservation.

Gene Lollis, ranch manager, said the ranch would devote 140 of its 3,200 head of cattle to the experiment. The cows will be divided between eight 50-acre summer pastures and eight 80-acre winter pastures, each equipped with water-sampling and weather-monitoring equipment. Pastures will be stocked with either 15, 20 or 35 cows, with researchers testing and comparing the runoff for each pasture.

The results will be useful in pinning down how many cattle pastures can support without polluting runoff, but they are only one piece of a large puzzle.

Animal scientists will track how quickly calves grow in the different pastures and how many cows produce calves. A nematologist will keep track of nematodes, small microbes that feed on roots and organic material in soil, as an indicator of soil ecosystem conditions. Wildlife ecologists will scrutinize how bird populations differ on different pastures. “We’re looking to see if there’s an association between the bird species composition and livestock stocking densities,” said George Tanner, UF professor of wildlife ecology and conservation.

Using data on plant and animal life collected from the same pastures, UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) resource economists will try to provide yet another puzzle piece: the value of the land as forage and habitat for wildlife. The figure is important to ranchers and the state alike because of the state’s efforts to buy environmentally sensitive land, said John Holt, a resource economist at IFAS.

The main contributors to the three-year, roughly $750,000 study are the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the South Florida Water Management District. A representative from the Florida Cattlemen’s Association is providing advice and input.