Neil Mathis still says “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” It’s part of how he was brought up — Southern manners stitched right alongside hard work and a respect for the land. His family has been raising cattle and growing timber on 600-plus acres in eastern Pasco County since the 1860s, after his ancestors “got run out of” Fernandina Beach by Union soldiers.
Today, his property backs up to a 517,220-sq.-ft. Amazon distribution center going up along State Road 52. Bulldozers and mounds of dirt taller than a car surround the giant white warehouse that will open next year, bringing 500 jobs and streams of delivery trucks to the small town of San Antonio. But step through the gates of the Phillips-Mathis ranch, and the hum of construction fades to a whisper. Where Mathis sits, just about all you can hear are grasshoppers ticking in the September heat and the wind swooshing through the flatwood pines and giant oaks.
At one point, there almost wasn’t a Phillips-Mathis ranch. Years ago, when Mathis’ grandmother died, he and his mother faced a hefty inheritance tax bill. “To get by, my mom was working two to three jobs, and I was taking care of the place and also working for other people just to have money,” Mathis recalls. His mother ended up working out a payment plan with the government, and it was worth it to her, he says. “Mom was born on this property. Wanted to die on this property.”
Mathis and his family could have sold the land to developers, like many of his neighbors are doing now. Instead, they worked out a deal with the state’s Rural and Family Lands Protection Program (RFLPP) and Pasco County’s Environmental Lands Acquisition and Management Program, which divided the property into two permanent conservation easements, with the state and county splitting the $6-million tab. Under the 2016 agreement, he can keep raising cattle, growing timber and living on his land, but he can never sell it to be developed. His nephew plans to take over the ranch one day, bound to the same ag-only rules.
Floridians might rightly ask how such a program serves their interests, especially when their tax money is involved. After all, the land is not publicly accessible for recreation. It’s also fair, amid an affordable housing crunch, to ask whether we can afford to keep swaths of rural acreage off limits to development.
But champions of the program say it’s not about locking people out — it’s about keeping Florida’s agricultural economy, environment and quality of life intact.
Dean Saunders, a former state lawmaker and founder of Saunders Real Estate in Lakeland, grew up among the orange groves of Central Florida and pioneered the first state program to buy development rights from landowners through conservation easements 31 years ago. He says the concept came to him 10 years earlier, while driving on State Road 50 west of Orlando, past acres upon acres of dead, “gnarly” orange trees that had been decimated by 1980s freezes. “I said to my wife, ‘This is going to be houses one day — all of this is going to be houses,’” he recalls. “I wondered if we could pay the landowners to not develop their land. When I got elected in 1994, I was able to make it a reality.”
The Greenland Swamp Authority created by his legislation paved the way for other programs such as the RFLPP and put the power of choice back in the hands of landowners by offering them ways to unlock value from their land beyond subdivisions and housing. “It has the ancillary benefits of providing wildlife habitat and protecting agriculture,” Saunders says.
On the Mathis farm, turkeys and deer are a common sight. The farm also provides a habitat for at-risk species such as gopher tortoises, sandhill cranes and fox squirrels. Schoolkids come too, to learn about Florida’s natural environment, as do members of the University of Florida’s Natural Resources Leadership Institute. Kept in private hands, the land is still managed and maintained — often with greater care and efficiency than public ownership allows.
As proponents of the program look to the future, their biggest worry is funding. To date, more than 212,000 acres of working land have been protected and preserved through the program, but more than 400 landowners sit on the current waitlist and land prices keep rising. In the 1990s, the Legislature was spending $300 million a year consistently on such easements, “but today, that same $300 million buys you 20% of what it could in 1997,” Saunders says.
While Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson is requesting $150 million for the program ahead of the 2026 legislative session, Saunders is urging lawmakers to think bigger. “If we want to keep pace with what we were doing in the 1990s, we need to significantly increase our investment,” he says. He suggests $1 billion to $1.5 billion annually as a good target.
For participating ranchers like Mathis, the investment isn’t abstract, it’s peace of mind. “When I pull through my gate, I feel safe. I know that it can never be taken from me. I can’t lose it. It’s home.”
— Amy Keller, Executive Editor, akeller@floridatrend.com
Amy Keller
Amy Keller is executive editor of Florida Trend and oversees the magazine’s editorial department. Keller’s writings have also appeared in Salon, The New Republic, Broadcasting & Cable magazine, REALTOR Magazine, the Atlanta Jewish Times, the Detroit Jewish News and other publications. Keller graduated from The Ohio State University with a degree in journalism.
