This week, Audubon’s Dr. Paul Gray and Jane Graham had the pleasure of touring part of the Lykes Ranch in the company of Joe Collins, Lykes Brothers engineer, and present Chairman of the Governing Board of the South Florida Water Management District. A leader in innovative water storage programs and modern farming practices, the Lykes Ranch spans 337,000 acres in Glades and Highlands counties just north of Lake Okeechobee. The operations at Lykes Ranch include forestry, sugar cane, citrus and cow calf, among others and lands also are leased to vegetable producers.
On the tour, we first saw experimental plots of “energy crops.” University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences is conducting experiments to test biomass production under different nutrient and watering regimes. Invasive potential also is assessed and highly invasive species cannot be used. These crops are still being tested, and it remains to be seen how they are used in the future for alternative energy.
Mr. Collins then showed us fields of cabbage and corn, and explained how certain water-saving irrigation methods work. The fields are specially engineered to slope to allow water to drain down slowly and re-circulate through the field. The water in all fields is contained and can only leave through a large marshy retention area. When it rains enough to overflow from the farm fields, the water retention area helps remove nutrients through natural filtration before flowing out into the canals that flow into Lake Okeechobee. This project is an example of the type of project that would be cost shared through the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Best Management Practices programs. Unfortunately, without cost-shared BMP programs, many farms often lack the money and expertise to install this type of water containment, recycling and filtering systems. Although the cost share programs are essential to improving nutrient control on farms to restore Lake Okeechobee, legislative funding continues to be quite scarce.
Mr. Collins also showed us citrus lands which had been severely harmed by harmful “greening”, a new disease that appears worse than citrus canker.
There was ample wildlife throughout the tour, from a white tailed deer sprinting across the corn fields to alligators and soft shelled turtles in the water retention area. Joe Collins pointed out a bald eagle nest in a longleaf pine tree and Paul tallied 20 species of birds on our tour.
