Parcel based agricultural land and ownership for the Florida Heartland, 2025 baseline.
The Florida Heartland is an agricultural geography. This module classifies every parcel in the six core counties by its Florida Department of Revenue land use code, and answers two questions: how much land is agricultural and where it is changing, and how the agricultural base splits between large owners and everyone else. Every figure is measured on the Department of Revenue 2025 final roll, reported by county and by the four agricultural districts, with subsurface rights (DOR code 93) excluded from all land totals.
The five agricultural classes across the six counties, on the 2025 roll. Grazing and pasture is the dominant use; groves and cropland concentrate in the Ridge and the Glades. Subsurface rights are excluded.
Agricultural acres and the three largest classes, by county and district.
| County | District | Agricultural acres | Groves | Cropland | Grazing & pasture |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highlands | Ridge | 453,416 | 88,663 | 16,627 | 327,287 |
| Hardee | Peace River | 324,182 | 50,238 | 17,439 | 251,757 |
| DeSoto | Peace River | 340,469 | 74,689 | 8,875 | 252,268 |
| Glades | Glades | 400,784 | 4,734 | 44,584 | 291,964 |
| Hendry | Glades | 452,415 | 48,469 | 201,569 | 197,714 |
| Okeechobee | Okeechobee | 353,034 | 12,906 | 5,939 | 310,824 |
The large owner tier is drawn by the data, not a chosen rank. The region's natural break isolates one owner, Lykes Bros, alone at about 337,000 acres. Everyone else is reported at the USDA Census of Agriculture farm size boundaries of 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000 acres. The tables below use the 1,000 acre Census boundary as the large operation threshold.
| Boundary | Large owners | Large acres | Large share | Everyone else | Their share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| at least 1,000 acres | 366 | 1,746,873 | 75.2% | 577,427 | 24.8% |
| at least 2,000 acres | 178 | 1,486,150 | 63.9% | 838,150 | 36.1% |
| at least 5,000 acres | 65 | 1,138,090 | 49.0% | 1,186,210 | 51.0% |
| Class | Region | Large | Share | Else |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Groves | 279,700 | 205,535 | 73.5% | 74,165 |
| Cropland | 295,032 | 242,821 | 82.3% | 52,211 |
| Grazing & pasture | 1,631,813 | 1,202,573 | 73.7% | 429,240 |
| Timber | 63,402 | 57,620 | 90.9% | 5,782 |
| Other agricultural | 54,352 | 38,325 | 70.5% | 16,027 |
| District | Region | Large | Share | Else |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RidgeHighlands | 453,416 | 330,573 | 72.9% | 122,843 |
| Peace RiverHardee + DeSoto | 664,651 | 442,110 | 66.5% | 222,541 |
| OkeechobeeOkeechobee | 353,034 | 262,666 | 74.4% | 90,368 |
| GladesGlades + Hendry | 853,200 | 711,525 | 83.4% | 141,675 |
Largest owners by agricultural acreage. Seven parents are normalized or aggregated here and carry an evidence URL: Lykes Bros, U.S. Sugar (with Southern Gardens), Mosaic (with IMC), Florida Power and Light, Alico, A. Duda and Sons, and Florida Crystals (Fanjul). Every other row is a single owner name taken verbatim from the roll, so no roll up is claimed. Subsidiaries and affiliated entities not yet rolled up appear as separate owners, so the reported concentration is a floor. The full table of sixty is in the workbook.
| Rank | Resolved parent owner | Ag acres | Parcels | % of base | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lykes Bros Inc | 337,036 | 748 | 14.5% | evidence ↗ |
| 2 | U.S. Sugar Corporation | 93,986 | 320 | 4.0% | evidence ↗ |
| 3 | Mosaic / IMC | 81,575 | 326 | 3.5% | evidence ↗ |
| 4 | LLANO RANCHES LP | 42,494 | 190 | 1.8% | as recorded on roll |
| 5 | BLUE HEAD LAND & CATTLE CO LLC | 31,304 | 3 | 1.3% | as recorded on roll |
| 6 | Florida Power & Light | 30,115 | 93 | 1.3% | evidence ↗ |
| 7 | Alico Inc | 27,847 | 212 | 1.2% | evidence ↗ |
| 8 | A. Duda & Sons | 27,432 | 66 | 1.2% | evidence ↗ |
| 9 | BEN HILL GRIFFIN INC | 19,500 | 90 | 0.8% | as recorded on roll |
| 10 | BEXLEY SUMTER INC | 18,596 | 48 | 0.8% | as recorded on roll |
| 11 | 4C'S LAND & CATTLE LLLP | 14,284 | 25 | 0.6% | as recorded on roll |
| 12 | UDDER CATTLE COMPANY INC | 13,101 | 2 | 0.6% | as recorded on roll |
| 13 | SOUTH FT MEADE LAND MGMT INC | 12,061 | 60 | 0.5% | as recorded on roll |
| 14 | CARLTON DOYLE E III LLC | 11,695 | 16 | 0.5% | as recorded on roll |
| 15 | WILLIAMSON CATTLE COMPANY | 11,537 | 23 | 0.5% | as recorded on roll |
Public series placed beside the parcel baseline by county. These are checks, not corrections; differences are reported, not reconciled. Parcel groves exceed the surveyed commercial citrus inventory in every county because the two series measure different things, assessed grove class parcels against surveyed commercial citrus. Census land in farms counts all land operated by farms, including leased rangeland, so it can exceed the assessed agricultural base.
| County | Parcel groves 2025 | USDA citrus 2024 | Difference | Parcel ag 2025 | Land in farms 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highlands | 88,663 | 40,737 | 47,926 | 453,416 | 389,622 |
| Hardee | 50,238 | 36,017 | 14,221 | 324,182 | 290,694 |
| DeSoto | 74,689 | 51,800 | 22,889 | 340,469 | 293,944 |
| Glades | 4,734 | 1,498 | 3,236 | 400,784 | 376,161 |
| Hendry | 48,469 | 27,813 | 20,656 | 452,415 | 586,858 |
| Okeechobee | 12,906 | 1,865 | 11,041 | 353,034 | 325,257 |
Sources: parcel figures, DOR 2025 final NAL. Commercial citrus, USDA NASS Commercial Citrus Inventory, August 2024. Land in farms, USDA Census of Agriculture 2022.
Land committed to a non agricultural use by public filing but still carrying an agricultural DOR code on the 2025 roll. The current entries are the planned solar energy centers named in FPL's 2026 Ten Year Power Plant Site Plan for the six counties. Acreage is estimated at the standard FPL site size (the Sawgrass center in Hendry County is 605 acres at 74.5 megawatts), not measured. Solar cannot be isolated by DOR code alone, so this is the record of the solar pipeline until the parcels reclassify.
| Project | County | District | Status | Est. acres |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blanketflower Solar Energy Center | DeSoto | Peace River | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Dove Solar Energy Center | DeSoto | Peace River | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Ladybug Solar Energy Center | DeSoto | Peace River | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Leafcutter Solar Energy Center | DeSoto | Peace River | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Limpkin Solar Energy Center | DeSoto | Peace River | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Joshua Creek Solar Energy Center | DeSoto | Peace River | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Sand Gully Solar Energy Center | DeSoto | Peace River | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Shell Creek Solar Energy Center | DeSoto / Charlotte | Peace River | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Grapefruit Solar Energy Center | Hendry | Glades | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| LaBelle Solar Energy Center | Hendry | Glades | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Mango Solar Energy Center | Hendry | Glades | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Redroot Solar Energy Center | Hendry | Glades | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Waxweed Solar Energy Center | Hendry | Glades | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Cocoplum Solar Energy Center | Hendry | Glades | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Hendry Solar Energy Center | Hendry | Glades | Potential | ~600 est. |
| Tangelo Solar Energy Center | Okeechobee | Okeechobee | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Catfish Solar Energy Center | Okeechobee | Okeechobee | Preferred | ~600 est. |
| Caladium Solar Energy Center | Highlands | Ridge | Preferred | ~600 est. |
10,800 estimated acres across 18 planned solar centers, none yet on the 2025 parcel roll. Source: FPL 2026 Ten Year Power Plant Site Plan.
Parcels and DOR land use codes come from the 2025 final name address legal file for each county. Acreage is the roll land size recorded by each property appraiser. Groves are DOR code 66, cropland 50 to 53, grazing and pasture 60 to 65, timber 54 to 59, other agricultural 67 to 69. DOR code 93, subsurface rights, is a separate roll record over land that surface parcels already carry, so it is excluded from every land total and reported on its own line in the workbook.
Resolved parent owners are ranked by agricultural acreage. The region's largest proportional gap on a logarithmic scale falls immediately below Lykes Bros at about 337,000 acres, which stands alone above every other owner. A Jenks natural breaks optimization on the same distribution cuts near 149 acres and separates smallholders from the rest rather than large owners from small, so it does not define the large tier. Everyone below that single standout owner is reported at the USDA Census farm size boundaries of 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000 acres, which are external and published rather than a divider chosen here.
The DOR code follows the property appraiser's classification, which lags actual use and is shaped by the agricultural greenbelt classification; a parcel under a solar lease or an approved subdivision can keep its agricultural code for a year or more. Rotational crops are not visible in a single classification: winter vegetables and melons in the Peace River valley are grown largely on leased grazing land that stays classified as pasture, so the Census layer is kept as the quantity of record for those crops. As found on 12 September 2026, the Department of Revenue Map Data folder carries prior year parcel geometry without the use code, while the University of Florida GeoPlan FGDL carries DOR coded statewide parcel layers for 2019 to 2023; the parcel differenced series 2019 to 2025 follows in a later version once those layers are staged. In the meantime the change is carried by the USDA Census land in farms series and the UF IFAS commercial citrus surveys shown above.
Sources: Florida Department of Revenue 2025 final NAL; USDA Census of Agriculture 2022; USDA NASS Commercial Citrus Inventory 2024; FPL 2026 Ten Year Power Plant Site Plan; US Census Bureau county land area. BusinessFlare GIS, Street Economics. Version 1.0.1, prepared 12 September 2026.