Polk Ranch, St. Johns River Land and DeSoto Pasture Permanently Protected as Florida Buys Development Rights on Nearly 830 Acres

Three Florida properties, a cattle ranch in Polk County, a riverfront tract in St. Johns County and a pasture in DeSoto County, are now permanently off limits to development after the state bought their development rights. Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson announced the deals on Nov. 10, covering nearly 830 acres through the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services' Rural and Family Lands Protection Program.

The two local headlines this week, one about a Polk County farm and one about the Saturiwa Conservation Area in St. Johns County, describe the same state action. The three easements total $5,189,000, and in each case the owners keep the land and can keep working it, while the state holds a permanent ban on subdividing or developing it.

The three properties

The FDACS release lists each property's size and the price of its easement:

On a per-acre basis, the prices differ widely. The Saturiwa easement works out to roughly $21,000 an acre, compared with about $4,400 an acre for B Bar J and about $4,250 for Outer Limits. The release does not explain the gap, though Saturiwa is the only one of the three on a major river.

B Bar J Ranch in Polk County

B Bar J Ranch is a cattle operation of about 635 acres protected through two separate easements. According to the department, the larger northern site holds several grazing fields and a moderately sized forested wetland, while the southern parcel borders the Lake Buffam Wildlife Refuge to the northwest. The ranch is mostly improved pasture and fallow orchards, with a small area of cropland. A large freshwater forested wetland cuts across the eastern part of the property, and marshes are scattered along its western edge.

The ranch is the third Polk County property the program has announced this fall. On Oct. 1, FDACS announced an easement on Walter Farms, a nearly 375-acre cow and calf operation on the northern shore of Gator Lake, for $3,005,000, with $750,000 of that provided by Polk County. On Sept. 18, the department announced a $6,450,000 easement on the roughly 916-acre G-3 Ranch Addition, with $500,000 from the county.

Saturiwa on the St. Johns River

Saturiwa is a 92-acre tract on the St. Johns River just south of State Road 13 South and west of Elkton, First Coast News reported. The state says the property is bounded on its western side by the mouth of McCullough Creek where it meets the river, and that it holds a mix of upland and wetland habitat, with small cypress domes in pine flatwoods that provide habitat for amphibians and aquatic birds. Much of it is pine and hardwood bottomland forest with cypress and bay, and the land is also home to gopher tortoises, a threatened species protected by the state.

The land is owned by conservation ecologist and educator Mike Adams, who has owned it for more than 37 years and offers educational tours, according to First Coast News. The name comes from a chief of the Timucua, the Native American people who lived in the region.

The state deal follows an earlier attempt to protect the land through the county. Adams offered the property to St. Johns County in late 2025 through its Land Acquisition and Management Program, whose board ranked it second on its 2025 recommendation list, citing its ecological value and recreation potential. The rural lands easement accomplishes permanent protection without the county buying the land.

Outer Limits Ranch in DeSoto County

Outer Limits Ranch is a cattle ranch of about 100 acres, mostly improved pasture with two hardwood areas and five small depression marshes. FDACS says its wetlands drain into the Peace River watershed, which supplies drinking water to parts of Southwest Florida, giving the small easement a water protection role beyond its acreage.

How the program works

The Rural and Family Lands Protection Program, created by the Legislature in 2001, buys conservation easements rather than land. The state pays owners for the right to develop, and the owners keep farming, ranching or growing timber. The department argues the approach avoids the long-term costs of owning and managing state conservation land.

"The Rural and Family Lands Protection Program helps keep farms and ranches in production, protects important natural resources, and does so without putting the long-term costs of state-owned land on taxpayers," Simpson said in the release.

All three properties are enrolled in FDACS best management practices and lie within the Florida Ecological Greenways Network or the Florida Wildlife Corridor, the statewide network of connected habitat that lawmakers wrote into law in 2021 when Simpson was Senate president.

The program has now preserved more than 257,000 acres since it began, more than 192,000 of them during Simpson's tenure, the department says. Since 2022, Simpson has helped secure more than $1.1 billion in state funding for the program, including $425 million in the 2026-27 state budget.

A busy fall for farmland easements

The Nov. 10 announcement is the latest in a run of deals. On Oct. 16, the department announced easements on nearly 1,500 acres: Mossy Island, a 420-acre Manatee County cattle operation next to Myakka River State Park, for $4 million, with $500,000 from Manatee County, and Florida Commission Company Ranch, about 1,046 acres in Highlands County, for $4.7 million. On Oct. 30, it announced more than 3,200 acres across D.T. Davis Ranch in Hardee County ($2.95 million), Micco Bluff Ranch beside the Kissimmee River in Okeechobee County ($2.166 million) and The Flatwoods, a 2,572-acre timber and cattle operation in Levy County ($4.9 million).

What's next

The easements are permanent and run with the land, so future owners of B Bar J, Saturiwa and Outer Limits will be bound by the same limits on development. With $425 million budgeted for the program this fiscal year, more announcements are likely in the coming months. FDACS maintains a public story map of completed projects at FDACS.gov/RFLPPMap.