LDS Inc. owns .7% of Florida
My brother-in-law came to visit last weekend. As science geeks, we tried to see a shuttle launch while he was here (the launch was canceled 11 minutes before liftoff because of weather – ugh!). On the way to watch the launch we stopped by Deseret Citrus and Cattle Ranch to see the Mormon Church’s ranching operations:
sign by main entrance
Alas, as former Mormons, we failed to consider that they wouldn’t offer tours on Sunday. But we stopped by the Visitor’s Center anyway and drove around a bit. Here’s the Visitor’s Center:
the Visitor's Center
I knew from the Deseret Ranches’ website and this wikipedia page that the ranch was big, but actually driving around the ranch made me wonder just how big it is. So, I spent a good 10 hours or so trying to see if I could map out just how big the ranch is. After all that time, I realized it was simply too big for me to easily map out by myself. But, the research I did do provided me with some fascinating information.
First off, thanks to a corporation registration website in Florida, I was able to track the name changes of the holding companies for the ranch over the years, eventually finding the current name. It used to be Deseret Properties of Florida, Inc., Deseret Farms, Inc., Deseret Farms Inc., Deseret Ranches of Florida, Inc., Deseret Livestock Company, Deseret Properties of Florida, Inc., Deseret Ranches of Florida, Inc. (1), Deseret Ranches of Florida, Inc. (2), but it is now called Farmland Reserve, Inc.. Once I finally found the current holding company, I was able to visit the property tax appraisers’ websites for the three main counties where the ranch is located: Osceola, Orange, and Brevard. On those sites I found all the property listings of Farmland Reserve, Inc. Here’s a summary of what I found after I added them all up:
| County | Acres | Value |
| Osceola | 182,685.50 | $763,252,812.00 |
| Orange | 64,843.57 | $208,286,252.00 |
| Brevard | 41,559.66 | $12,552,680.00 |
| Hillsborough-FRI | 3,952.94 | $30,145,012.00 |
| Total | 293,041.67 | $1,014,236,756.00 |
Yep, you’re eyes do not deceive you – LDS, Inc. has more than $1 billion in for-profit property in Florida. The acres convert to 457 square miles, or .7% of the State of Florida. I can’t say for certain, but my guess is that LDS, Inc. is the largest landholder in the state behind the government. For comparative purposes, Disney owns 25,000 acres (that’s all of their properties, not just Disney World), or about 1/12th of the land owned by the LDS, Inc. holding company.
To tally all of this information, I actually built a spreadsheet that you’re welcome to download and peruse. I also started drawing the land parcels in Google Earth, but once I realized just how many there were, I decided I just didn’t have the time. I did complete all the land in Orange County and started on the land in Osceola County. If you want to see the maps or, better yet, if you’d like to improve/complete the maps, you can download them here: Orange County, Osceola County. If you do download them and improve them, please send me a copy of the updated versions as I’d like to have them.
As I was searching through these listings, on a whim I decided to see if Farmland Reserve, Inc. owned any property in my county, Hillsborough, FL, which is all the way across the state from Osceola and Brevard Counties. Turns out they do (see above table). That’s in addition to the $12 million owned by “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Corporation”, which is the company that holds the churches. This makes me wonder just how much property Farmland Reserve Inc. owns. I checked a couple additional counties in Florida but didn’t find any more property.
One of the reasons I wanted to visit the ranch is because my aunt and uncle recently completed a mission there (I should have gone while they were there, but never made it). The amazing thing about the fact that they served a mission there is that they did zero proselytizing and they paid to serve their mission. So, what did they do? My uncle was a high school shop teacher. He knows how to build and repair homes. So, they put him to work building homes on the ranch. He’s round 70 years old and was working 12 hour days 6 days a week for 18 months. His wife ran some of the tours and did other odd jobs around the ranch. When I found out that my aunt and uncle were paying for the opportunity to work for Farmland Reserve, Inc., a billion dollar for profit company, I was not very happy. Not only did the LDS Church use tithing money to buy the ranch (I’m assuming, maybe it was profit from some other business venture), but now it makes people pay for the opportunity to make one of their subsidiaries money. How is that at all ethical?
To wit, the obvious question is: How does the billion dollar ranching operation of the LDS Church further its religious aims? Why does a religion need a billion dollar ranch? Anyone?
Finally, all this searching around for property owned by LDS, Inc. led me to realize that we, the MSP community, could probably put together a pretty good estimate of the property holdings of LDS, Inc. (in the US at least) fairly easily if we distributed the work among us. If each person looked up the holdings of LDS, Inc. in their county and put them in a spreadsheet, we could aggregate them and keep a running total of known property value of the LDS religion. It would make a cool little widget for MSP to display. Thoughts?
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Hey Guys,
Thanks for the replying.
@China Blanco I’d be glad to Latter Day Main Streeters a discount from my safety warehouse, but our pricing is a bit difficult. I own another business that sells all kinds of casual clothing, like sweatshirts, t-shirts, etc.: http://sweatshirtstation.com. I just created a discount code for people who visit this page to use: mormonsareflippinawesome (Yes, the coupon code says “Mormons are flippin’ awesome”, and it’s a joke)
@Kuri I’m sure there are all kinds of arguments that could be made about how General Authorities of the Church are supported, and we’d have just as many rebuttals to any attempts to smear the Brethren. The simple answer to all of the criticisms is this: anyone who knows anything about the good men and women who lead the LDS Church also knows that they could never be seriously accused of glutting themselves upon the labors of us common members. That simply doesn’t happen.
A suggestion I have for profxm and his buddies is this, instead of rallying the troops to try to figure out how to make the Church’s good works look like they’re evil, why don’t you guys get out there and help with the next stake assignment to pick oranges, bottle peanut butter, or can food for those who need help? Your energy would be much better spent and you’d have a way better time helping instead of chucking stuff at us from the peanut gallery. I’ve helped load beef onto conveyors and packaged hot dogs at one of our meat packing plants, canned all kinds of stuff at the bishop’s storehouses, picked oranges, peaches, and other fruit at our vineyards, and thoroughly loved every minute of being able to give back after having been financially blessed myself. The only qualm I might have about all of those activities is that they always make me wear a hair net even though I’m bald, but I can easily get over that. Give it a try folks. See what it means to serve: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzjvE0ehnEI
Dude, did you call me a girl? It’s C-h-i-n-O, with an O. But the discount is much appreciated. Thanks. Weirdly enough, though, when I tried that discount code, it added 15% to the total. What’s up with that? (just jokin’)
You know, I worked on welfare farms all the time growing up. And my dad has continued to volunteer many spare hours to one church project or the other.
Here’s my question to the church leadership: Why don’t you run things so I don’t feel like my dad’s being treated like a chump? I don’t like how there are two classes of Mormons: those who give, give, give and those who profit, profit, profit. Or is there some other reason that LDS finances are stamped Top Secret?
It’s a racket.
Rich, I don’t care if GAs get paid by the church; I think they probably should. After all, “the laborer is worthy of his hire,” as some guy once said. But you’re the one who quoted scripture as if they don’t. I guess you didn’t get the memo: Now that GAs get paid directly from church funds, an unpaid clergy is no longer a sign of the One True Church.
I have a strong feeling that Kuri and Chino (Sorry about calling you China, but my fingers seem to be trained to type those letters in that sequence. I lived there for a year and I have a lot of friends over there.) won’t change your minds no matter what arguments are made or what evidence is given. You’re pretty set on calling the LDS Church’s finances black regardless of what color they really are.
Regarding the “unpaid clergy is no longer” comment, my brother (a bishop) gets no compensation for the 30+ hours he puts into his calling. I’d call that unpaid. I get nothing for playing the organ on Sunday. I also don’t get paid to head up the scout committee. I’ve never been paid for any of my church callings, although I’ve had ones that required a lot of time and energy. In short, we do in fact have an unpaid clergy.
The essence of this conversation is the accusation made here that somehow there are fat cats at the head of the Church who are living lives of luxury and oppressing members of the Church to finance their lifestyles. There’s simply no evidence anywhere that supports that claim. I’ve seen the schedules of some of the Brethren. I certainly don’t envy the work load they carry. Frankly, the accusations I’ve seen by anti-Mormons against the leaders of the LDS Church come from a purposeful, agenda-based ignorance about who they are and what their callings mean. If your anti-Mormon sentiment isn’t based in a bedrock of unjustified contempt for the Church, I invite you to educate yourselves:
Elder Bednar describes an apostles role:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBtE5QbcDbU
Conversations with LDS Church leaders: http://feeds.lds.org/LDSConversations
Rich, you’re the one who quoted Alma saying he never received a penny from the church. It’s not my fault if GAs don’t live that way.
I can’t say that I have read all 155 of the previous comments, but I read the first 50 and also the last few, and I can say that one thing is clear.
Those of you that are questioning the ethics of the Church want to appear to be sincere, objective observers. You want to put yourselves out there as not feeling any hostility toward the Church and not being prejudiced in any way, but just sincerely asking questions that you think need to be asked.
The problem is that when your questions are answered in logicial and concise ways that clearly put to rest any concerns you might have, you refuse to follow logic and reason. You twist words, you change your arguments, you cling to logical fallacies, or even to positions that have no basis.
The Lord has asked us to pay tithing. He has clarified this policy through his living Prophets. If you know this, then you also know that the blessings you receive for obeying this commandment far exceed the difficulties you encounter as a result of paying your tithing. If you don’t believe this, then fine, don’t pay tithing. Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. In fact, your continued obsession that people that are struggling should be given an exception and not required to pay tithing, would injure those parties and take from them the blessings that they receive when they pay their tithing. How about you just leave it up to them to decide for themselves?
Chino, as to your question, “Why don’t you run things so I don’t feel like my dad’s being treated like a chump?”
If you feel that way, that’s your problem. Your dad is probably understands that the blessings he receives now and in the hereafter are far greater than the time and effort he is providing. That’s the way it works. We are always indebted to the Lord. When we sacrifice of ourselves for his cause, he immediately blesses us to an even greater extent. The more we try to pay off our debt, the more it accumulates as he always provides us with more than we have given. You may not know that, but you could.
There is a saying in the church…. ” Member who can’t live the gospel can leave the church but they can’t leave it alone.”
Hi Don. If that makes you feel better about your religion, feel free to believe it.
I know a saying too: “De Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt.”
I don’t like this post at all. I’m not sure what the issue is. Is there something morally wrong about a religious group holding a certain amount of property? To the extent that this post argues for that position, it is basically a rehashing of economic antimsemitism with a different target group. I find it shocking that such an attitude would be seen as acceptable in this day and age.
Plus having practiced corporate law and dabbled in tax law, I don’t see why the big hullabaloo about the profit/non-profit divide. Just because an organization is non-profit, it does not follow that its senior executives and directors are not well-paid or that they are recipients of vast benefits. Just because an organization is “for-profit” does not mean that it’s a big, bad entity that squeezes its customers for every last ounce of cash that it can. If the ranch holdings were non-profit, the money it made would have to go back into the ranch itself because of innurement laws. Because it is run as a “for-profit” organization, the Mormon church (as the sole shareholder, presumably) can declare dividends and reinvest that money elsewhere, possibly for humanitarian goals.
dpc,
The questions that make this practice sketchy in my opinion are:
1) Why does a religion need a for-profit ranch?
2) Why is it okay for people to volunteer for a for-profit ranch owned by a religion but not okay for people to volunteer for, say, McDonald’s?
3) Why are religions that run for-profit subsidiaries not required to report the profits and expenses from those?
4) Why doesn’t the LDS Church voluntarily report how much money it makes from this and where the money goes?
Maybe this ranch is run purely for humanitarian reasons, but neither your nor I know that to be the case.
1) Every single religion and/or non-profit and/or charity requires money to fund their religious and/or non-profit activities and/or charitable activities. One way to fund those is to take donations and simply spend the money. Another way is to take donations, invest the money, and generate a perpetual stream that can be used for those purposes. Sounds like an incredibly wise way to do it.
2) It is perfectly ok for people to volunteer at, say McDonald’s. Why would you possibly think it’s not?
3) Why would they be? What business is it of yours? You are not required to report your profits and expenses to the public. Why should they be? Why should anyone be?
4) Because it’s none of the public’s business. It’s none of your business. Why do you even care? Is anyone asking you to report where your money goes?
It’s none of your busienss whether “this ranch is run purely for humanitarian reasons”. It has nothing to do with you. Why do you even care?
This post has nothing to do with you, JJL9. Why is it your business that we’re discussing it? Why do you care? Why are you wasting your time reading this post and writing comments on it if the topic is so uninteresting?
JJL9, I think we’ve had this discussion before, but I can’t find where. It is my business if religions get tax breaks. You agreed. You said we should cut the tax breaks for religions. I agreed. So, until religions lose their tax exemption status, this is my business.
As far as your other points go, for-profit corporations are not allowed to have people volunteer for them in ways that will generate profit, or they have to pay them. Internships are highly regulated by the government. The same does not hold for LDS Inc., even though the ranch is for-profit. Another case of religions being treated differently.
As far as #1 goes, well, if they are making money to give to the poor, I’d be fine with it. But you don’t know where the money is going any better than I do. So, I don’t know that that is what they are doing.
profxm- For points 1 and 2, don’t get all wrapped up in the profit/non-profit divide. It’s a way to comply with tax/corporate law in a way to maximize the money the Mormon church can get to spend on what it wants.
As for number 3, private organizations (including for-profit corporations) have no obligation to disclose their finances. Non-religious charities are required to disclose how much they spend on overhead and how much they use to benefit the targets of their charities. The only reason that big corporation disclose finances is because of securities law. It makes the financial system transparent so that corporations can raise more capital while the investors can more appropriately allocate risk.
As for number 4, even if the church disclosed its financial statements, I doubt that anyone without a finance background would really know what they were looking at. I’ve looked at lots of finance statements and they are usually pretty staid. When was the last time you looked at a 10-Q or a 10-K? Plus I can see a lot of disaffected ex-Mormons complaining (although, I admit, most likely with good intentions) about the amount spent on office furniture or vehicles or printing costs when that money “could have gone to the poor” or “tsunami victims” as though a church were just some kind of glorified disaster relief organization or wealth-redistribution scheme.
@163
Chanson, this is a blog. It is, by its very nature, an open invitation to seek opinions, and to foster debate. It may not be “my business” that you’re discussing this, but it is a public forum, that theoretically seeks public input. I’m interested in the most basic principles of freedom and liberty. That’s why I care. I believe that adherence to these princples brings about the greatest amount of wellbeing and even prosperity in any society. That’s why I care.
I also have an interest in what the LDS church does because I am a member, I pay tithing, fast offerings, etc… So, I’m interested. But that hardly means that the LDS Church has a duty (fiduciary or otherwise) to disclose anything to me about those ranching operations. They can disclose as much or as little as they please and I can decide for myself if I want to participate or donate to the Church.
The difference between my interest in this discussion, and your interest in the ranch’s financial operations is that this is a public forum that seeks public input. Private individuals, and private businesses, both for-profit and non-profit, are, wait for it….. wait for it… Private.
They are private, which means NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.
@164
I do agree that all special tax breaks should be done away with. But two wrongs don’t make a right. I will focus on promoting more freedom and liberty, which includes removing special tax breaks, and which excludes making private information public. You can’t promote a principle by violating it.
Also, McDonald’s can organize a charitable effort and recruit volunteers. The LDS Church can recruit volunteers (missionaries or otherwise) to aid in their charitable and other non-profit endeavors. If part of those efforts include oversight of their for-profit businesses, so be it. Non-profit corporations can own for-profit corporations. I served on the board of a non-profit organization that owned a for-profit corporation. The profits from the for-profit corporation were used to bolster our non-profit activities. I was a “volunteer” board member, working for free for the non-profit. Part of my responsibility included oversight of hte for-profit business.
Again, you don’t know “where the money is going” and that’s ok. It’s not your money. Not your business.
dpc is basically right about the laws regulating corporations in the US, but I think this discussion is not about what the regulations are, but what they should be.
His point about reading 10-Qs and 10-Ks is completely beside the point. Either it makes sense to require disclosure or it does not. In my opinion, it does not. He also mentions securities laws and says that “it makes the financial system transparent so that corporations can raise more capital while the investors can more appropriately allocate risk.” If this were the case, you wouldn’t need a law to enforce it. Congress should not care if a company can raise capital. The company does care. The company should do whatever they think potential investors require to attract investment. Investors should invest in whatever companies they are comfortable investing in. If Company A discloses everything, that naturally reduces the risk of the investment. If Company B does not, that’s Company B’s problem, not mine, and not the US Government’s. If an investor does not want to invest because the potential risk is deemed too high because of the lack of disclosure, then he/she does not have to invest. Pretty simple.
Exactly. I’m glad to see you’ve figured out the answers to the questions you posed in the end of @162.
As long as there are other churches that keep open books, it ought to come as no big surprise when some folks wonder why tscc doesn’t.
So what? Is there ap oint to this information. The LDS Church owns lots of land and produces product on this land. It also feeds people from this land.
It has owned this land for decades and decades. It like other land owners ahd maintained th land and taken cre of the land. Whether theLDS Church is a church or other organization, it has properly used the land and not let it run down. It is not doing anything illegal. Is there a purpose to slamming the LDS church here. Would you be doing the same if it was Disney or an individual or the Catholic church? I doubt it!
Your comment that the place was closed on Sunday for tours was telling in itself. As if this was wrong, so what if the LDS ranch is closed on Sunday. My hair dresser is closed on Sunday and Monday big deal. My fabric store is closed on Saturday to observe Sabbbath. Are you going after them for that?
Is there a point to reading and commenting on blog entries you personally find pointless?