But despite its size and its stature in the nation's cattle industry, most Floridians have never heard of Deseret Ranch. "We like to keep a low profile," says general manager Ferren Squires. Posted on 01/08/2002 11:27:24 AM PST by Rubber Duckie
One cowboy prods calves quickly through a gate. As each calf thunders down a narrow alley, another cowboy calls out a number, one through five. This tells the next cowboy, positioned atop a turnaround, which of five doors to swing open to direct the calf into the right pen. From the pens, the calves will be run through another alley onto a huge scale for weighing. Then they will be rushed along again onto 18-wheel cattle trucks idling nearby that will haul them to feedlots or pastures in Texas, Oklahoma or Kansas.
By 9 a.m., the men have sorted 500 calves. By the end of the day, they'll have moved a total of 1,944 calves weighing 963,710 pounds onto 20 trucks. "This is payday," says Kevin Mann, the cowboy atop the turnaround. "This is what we work toward all year long."
The ranch won't disclose financial information, but last year it moved more than 16 million pounds of calves -- they are sold by weight, not by the animal-- which translated into about $16 million in revenues. For a cattle ranch, those numbers are huge, and not just by the standards of central Florida or even the cattle industry statewide. Deseret Ranch is the largest cow-calf operation in the U.S., with 44,000 head of cattle on 300,000 acres. Seen on a map of Florida, the sprawling ranch dwarfs neighboring metro Orlando, stretching 50 miles long and 30 miles wide over parts of three counties: Orange, Osceola and Brevard. Its northwestern tip is 10 miles from Orlando International Airport. Its southeastern tip stretches almost to Palm Bay.
But despite its size and its stature in the nation's cattle industry, most Floridians have never heard of Deseret Ranch. "We like to keep a low profile," says general manager Ferren Squires.
That profile is in keeping with the business style of the ranch's owner, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Church. The fastest-growing church in the U.S., with a 4.7% annual growth rate, the church is also by far the richest per capita. While its media guide states innocuously that the church has a limited number of commercial properties and investments, a Time magazine financial analysis of the church in 1997 pegged its assets at a minimum of $30 billion. If it were a corporation, the magazine found, the church would fall in the middle of the Fortune 500, below Union Carbide and PaineWebber, but bigger than Nike and the Gap. Among others, the church runs media, insurance, travel and real estate companies along with agribusiness operations. In Florida, besides Deseret Ranch, the church also operates tomato and citrus farms in Ruskin, Naples and Clewiston.
The church's success in business is very much rooted in its history, scholars of Mormonism say. Members faced extreme ostracism and poverty before they made their trek from Illinois to Salt Lake City in 1847, the same year Brigham Young wrote that "the kingdom of God cannot rise independent of Gentile nations until we produce, manufacture and make every article of use, convenience or necessity among our people." Once in Utah, the Mormons' isolation forced them to build their own farms, factories and railroads. As they struggled through the Great Depression, they also began to build their famous welfare system, the largest non-public venture of its kind in the nation.
The church will not reveal precisely how it spends the money it takes in from its businesses and from members tithing contributions-- 10% of their incomes. But it says it uses the greatest portion to build churches. The rest is spent on worldwide humanitarian aid for which the church is well-known; its vast educational system, which includes Brigham Young University, and long-term investments in its private ventures.
Like its grain and other food-manufacturing operations, the church's agribusinesses, including Deseret Ranch, have another ecclesiastical role. Mormons believe that years of turmoil will precede the return of Jesus and that church members must prepare for self-reliance, storing long-term supplies, including food. In the future, Squires says, beef from the ranch could help feed people in case of a catastrophe. The church teaches its parishioners to always have on hand one year's salary and one year's food supply, so this is basically practicing what we preach, he says.
Church-going cowboy
Deeply tanned and covered in a fine layer of dust, Squires, 47, wears Wrangler jeans on skinny hips and drives his Ford F-250 at breakneck speed along the graded roads of the ranch. Down-to-earth and quick to smile, Squires seems like the prototypical cowboy. But he wears many other hats: A father of six, Squires speaks Japanese, a result of a proselytizing mission to Japan as a young man. He holds a masterfs degree in agricultural business from BYU, is a former official with the Mormons massive welfare headquarters in Salt Lake City and serves on the presidential council of the church's Cocoa stake, a Mormon organizational unit similar to a diocese.
Granting a rare tour, Squires drives along mile after mile of sprawling pastureland dotted with stands of palm trees and thick oaks. Only a sliver of the ranch, the eastern edge along the St. Johns River, is still densely wooded. Deseret is divided into 14 units, each with a couple of thousand cows and its own complex of pens, a barn and a cowboy office. The cowboys spend time on laptop computers as well as on horseback, entering every detail of their calves lives: The calves are born in January, February and March; summer is spent fattening them up and keeping them healthy; fall is the payday that Mann describes.
In the middle of the property, Squires pulls up to an old cracker house with hardwood floors, a stone fireplace and a wrap-around screened-in porch where ceiling fans turn lazily in the afternoon heat. The house serves as Deseret's history center and as temporary home to one of the five retired Mormon couples that volunteer on the ranch. The living room is furnished with brown leather couches, along with a stuffed Osceola turkey, wild boar and white-tailed deer. The book Florida Cowman shares the coffee table with The Book of Mormon. A stand in one corner of the room holds a handsome old saddle and whip; a stand in the other holds a guitar and songbook open to Mormon hymns. On the walls hang photos of famous Mormons, including a number of cattlemen.
After a visit to the Sunshine State in 1949, western cattleman and church leader Henry D. Moyle became convinced that Floridafs climate would make it an ideal place to raise cattle. (The key to the industry, as uncomplicated as it may seem, is growing grass.) Moyle pitched his idea for a Florida ranch to fellow members of the church's first presidency, the Mormons worldwide leadership council. The council bought the original 54,000-acre tract in 1950. In 1952, a dozen Mormon families sold their homes out west and moved to the property to help the church turn wetlands and tangled forests into roads and pasturelands.
It took nearly 50 years, but Deseret's managers eventually proved Moyle right. By cross-breeding cows for speedy growth, good reproduction and climate tolerance and by developing and perfecting grasses for central Florida, they have achieved some of the highest weights, and therefore some of the highest profits, in the industry. Deseret Ranchfs average weaning weight, a calf's weight at nine months, when it can be weaned and sold, has increased from 300 pounds in 1981 to 546 pounds last year. Statewide, the average is closer to 450 pounds, says Jim Handley, executive vice president of the Florida Cattlemen's Association.
Today's going market price is around 85 cents a pound, down from about $1 a pound earlier this year but up from 65 cents during an industry slump three years ago. According to Squires, Deseret spends about 62 cents to produce each pound it sells.
At the University of Florida in Gainesville, animal science professor emeritus Alvin C. Warnick says the church has achieved some of the highest profits in the industry because of its long-term commitment to the ranch . . .and its deep pockets. The ranch's heavy, healthy calves are a result of lots of years and lots of money spent on ultra-sensitive genetics and breeding work, he says. They have earned a reputation for calves that turn out good carcasses, grade well and do well in the feedlots, Warnick says. Their buyers are repeat buyers from all over the country.
The ranch's size and success help it attract some of the top animal-scientist graduates in the nation, Warnick says. Several of the cowboys hold bachelors or masters degrees. The church puts a premium on its workforce and manages with an employee-centered philosophy. Most of Deseret's 80 employees live on the ranch, which has 65 tidy homes scattered over its acreage. Pay is at or higher than the industry average, and the ranch offers profit-sharing as well as professional-development programs.
The Mormons, big on big families, are also big on family perks: The ranch hires employees children in a work program each summer and sponsors a pay-for-grades program that gives cash to employees kids on the A-B honor role. Other family amenities include horseback riding and an elaborate swimming hole with wooden docks, diving platforms, slides and rope swings.
Squires says while a good portion of Deseret's employees are Mormon, the ranch is an equal-opportunity employer. Still, non-Mormon employees clearly have to accept a work culture dominated by Mormons. There isn't a coffee machine to be found in ranch offices. No alcohol is allowed in common areas. Single employees canft have overnight guests of the opposite sex. And the swimming hole is closed on Sundays.
Back at the cattle drive, Kevin Mann, a non-Mormon cowboy who lives on the ranch, says Deseret's religious underpinnings made him leery of working there, but its reputation persuaded him to give it a try. Five years later, he says, he is glad he did, as much for the career opportunities as for the community that his wife and two young daughters enjoy. "You wonder if they're going to hound you, but they never have," Mann says of the Mormons reputation for proselytizing. The best side to it is that they're very family-oriented, so it's a great place to raise your kids even if you're not Mormon.
The ranch's neighbors, too, give it high marks. The ranch is among the biggest taxpayers in Osceola County. (The church pays taxes on all its private businesses and in fact has a policy of not accepting government subsidies, including farm subsidies. The policy is related to the church's welfare program, whose basis is individual self-reliance, not a handout that might rob the receiver of self-respect.
Osceola County Commissioner Chuck Dunnick describes Deseret as benevolent to the surrounding community, professional in its dealings with local government and a good steward of the environment. The ranch has its own staff of wildlife biologists and has worked with state and local agencies on a progressive wildlife-management plan, Dunnick says. "They've been very quiet over the years, but if they do want to talk about an issue, you know they're going to be highly professional and well-prepared," he says. They're great neighbors. If you could pick your own neighbors, I'd definitely pick them."
Ecclesiastical entrepreneurism
While the church is committed to stewardship of the land, it is just as committed to squeezing profits out of its private companies. And eventually, those two missions are sure to clash on this prime central Florida property. Real estate sources estimate Deseret's spread is worth some $900 million, though the assessed agricultural value is far lower than that. For decades, the family cattle ranches that once made up Osceola and outlying Orange counties have been gobbled up by housing developments, a pattern that is repeating itself throughout Florida and the nation. But because the church is so rich, it has not yet buckled to pressure to sell any of its Florida land to developers. Ten years ago, the church backed off a plan to develop 7,000 acres near the Bee Line Expressway under sharp criticism from environmentalists.
Often at odds in other parts of the country over issues such as animal waste and grazing, the tree-huggers and the cowpokes in central Florida have for now become allies. For example, environmentalists helped Deseret fight a huge landfill Brevard County wanted to put adjacent to the ranch. That area is also home to one of the largest bird rookeries in the state.
Squires says the church's long-term plans for the majority of Deseret Ranch are to keep it agricultural. But he acknowledges the business-savvy church will develop the fringes, particularly its property outside Orlando, as the land becomes more valuable. "The pressure is here," Squires says. "But we want to be responsible and be good neighbors." It is in his church's ecclesiastical and entrepreneurial missions to do so, he says.
Lets say that I started my own church and taught that Jesus was Satan's literal brother, that God was once just a man like you or me on a distant planet and that eventually every good member of my church would someday become a god and have dominion over their own world just like God does over ours. And let's say I named my church the "Church of Jesus Christ for Ordinary People."
Would my church qualify as a "Christian" Church in your book?
Yes, they do. I had the Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door when I lived in Provo, UT. Take care, and God bless.
Mormons, unlike most Protestant denominations and Catholicism, practice personal accountability for the 10% tithe. Church members who want to keep their Temple Recommends must demonstrate faithful tithing.
Also, the Mormon Church plans and locates its neighborhood wards (churches) efficiently, not putting them too far apart or too close together. Finally, the church doesn't start paying salaries to its servants until they reach district-level authority. It would be as if all Protestant pastors, assistant pastors, church business managers, secretaries, janitors, musicians, techs, and teachers volunteered their time. Also, there are fewer churches with more members per square foot of church property compared to Protestant churches.
All told, the Mormons are just plain more efficient in their church operations, so I would expect they would get a lot more bang for their donated buck.
Rather than issue fatwahs against other faiths, I always come back to the basics: the Bible + "something else" (traditions, new revelations, radical reinterpretations, etc.) is simply problematic. Mormons run the risk of having accepted "a gospel other than the one [Paul] preached," and therefore risk being "anathema."
I don't feel qualified to draw conclusions about what the fallout is for non-Biblical beliefs that may end up on top of Mere Christianity, but whatever they are, they can't be good, in this life or the next.
Actually, in Amish fellowships and more conservative Mennonite churches, no pastors, bishops, board members, etc. are paid, and members do the cleaning as volunteers.
Also, among groups that have meeting houses (as opposed to meeting in members' homes), it is generally considered poor planning to build anything that requires a mortgage.
I do not know about the rather far-out teachings mentioned by one poster, but if tithing, and having an unpaid ministry, and owning one's own buildings is somehow unChristian, I guess we could start an Amish-bashing thread.
I should mention that I do have difficulty with the non-resistant teachings...so, go ahead, make my day.
I think you're defending what was never attacked. Except for their monitoring of tithing, which I think is a matter of accountability to God, not man, none of those things I would characterize as unChristian.
Consider this excerpt from the CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS & RESEARCH MINISTRY web site:
"Christians are saved from their sins and judgment by putting their trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins. But, faith is only as good as the object in which it is placed. The Mormon Jesus is not the one of the Bible, even though they call him Jesus, say he died for sins, and was born in Bethlehem. The Mormon Jesus does not exist. It is the nature of Jesus that is the issue. Jesus must be God in flesh, (second person of the Trinity) not "a" god in flesh who is the brother of the devil. He must be uncreated, not created. He must be the creator (Col. 1:16-17). This is who the true Jesus really is: God, creator, uncreated, not the brother of the devil. Mormon theology teaches that god used to be a man on another planet, that he became a god by following the laws and ordinances of that god on that world, and that he brought one of his wives to this world with whom he produces spirit children who then inhabit human bodies at birth...."
For the full text re: http://www.carm.org/lds/lds_christian.htm
That's bad, but the bigger theological problem (IMO) is the believe in "eternal progression". Since the LDS "Heavenly Father" was once a man, he is not God at all, as Christians, Jews, and Muslims would define the term. All three of those monotheistic faiths would insist that God is uncreated and eternally existent, absolute Being, whose existence neither depends nor has depended on anything else. The LDS "Heavenly Father" no more meets that definition than I do.
[[[BTW, please allow me to interject the following: We believe that all who live, have lived, and are yet to be born are spirit children (i.e., sons and daughters) of our Father in Heaven and that Jesus Christ likewise is a Son as well (and therefore our elder brother), albeit the Only Begotten Son of God. We also believe Satan also was a spirit child of God who ultimately rebelled, fell, and was cast out. That makes him, by definition only, a brother of us all and of Jesus Christ, but such reference to the Adversary is by no means an honorific title. He is as far from us and the Savior and the will of our Heavely father as one could be and certainly is infinitely below the Savior and even us in favor and closeness to God the Father.
The Church is constantly bashed by those who wish it ill or who do not understand this eternal familial relationship and claim it to be evidence that we kindly regard or even revere Satan. Nothing could be further from the truth. We revere Jesus Christ as the Only Begotten Son of God and, to my knowledge, are the only Christian faith that also recognizes the Savior as Jehovah, even the God of the Old Testament who in fact created the earth as a physical venue for our mortal schooling and testing.]]] It is important to note that, as we believe, our Heavenly Father always will be God the Father to all of His children and will never become subordinate and redundant.
We as Church members, as do many others, have as our primary goal and purpose in life is to live worthily in obedience to our Heavenly Fathers plan and His commandments. We also believe that a complete knowledge of all things that are as yet unrevealed are "not essential to our salvation."
We do believe that our salvation and exaltation are made possible by the Atonement of our Savior, Jesus Christ and depends on our utilizing this great gift via righteous living, good works, appreciation, study of the Scriptures, worship, obedience, and repentance.
This very concept is humbling to me, and I am sure that I have demonstrated in this forum that I certainly am far less than perfect and must constantly repent (this includes recognition and sorrow for sins, confession before God and possibly Church leaders, abandonment of the sin in question, asking forgiveness of the Lord and the person(s) I have wronged, and restitution where appropriate and possible. When such restitution is not possible, one must depend on the Atonement to fill in the gap. That is the much of the beauty, wisdom, and the hope of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God.
Such, we believe, is our Heavenly Father's plan for us all, whether "Mormon" or not in this earthly life. A vital part of His Plan of Salvation is eternal progression, so you might say that we do not believe that one "is at rest" when he/she leaves this brief period of mortal probation! We believe that families are eternal (i.e., "forever") and that if we have live worthily we will be united forever with our forebearers, our posterity, and our beloved dead (friends and pets included, I hope).
Thanks for your honest question and lack of a contentious spirit. I hope that I have cleared up a few points for you and for others on this thread......
I only have one comment....... PING!
You're welcome...and thanks for answering so thoroughly. You have helped clear some things up. As for the lack of a contentious spirit...I'm Catholic and have been bashed more than enough on anti-Catholic threads...didn't want to do the same. Anyone who declares that Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God is ok in my book.
The Fundies which denounce Mormons, Catholics, JWs, Quakers and anyone else who doesn't meet their own narrowly-defined concept of God and Christ remind me of the "sit-on-your-ass" evangelicals who don't bother to vote for an otherwise qualified candidate because (take your pick) he hasn't outlawed abortion completely, is only 88% conservative, favors faith-based welfare or whatever.
Meanwhile the ignoramuses turn out 110% to vote for a Marxist Democrat . . . and society recedes further into the toilet.
It is time you start realizing those who share most of our values can hardly afford the luxury of fighting each other while those who share none or few of them remake society in its own third world image.
Every thread that mentions Mormons in whatever light can't handle even 20 posts before one of you narrow-minded bigots show up to spout your "not Christian" malarkey. I remember some of you yard-birds saying the same about Ronald Reagan, greatest president of the 20th century, because Nancy engaged in some of that astrology tarsus.
I once thought seriously about working in Utah because it has great values and a great climate. I had friends send me announcements-- $24K offers for people with advanced degrees and they get floods of applicants! Meanwhile, the housing is only slightly less expensive than California. Hell, I thought, if I want to work for slave wages, I'd stay in North Dakota where at least the cost of living is cheap . . . or if I want to pay for expensive housing, I'd work in California where at least the wages are decent. In time, I ended up doing both for awhile.
Now, I'm in position to hire Mormons-- preferably the kind straight out of Utah because the others are quicker to figure out what their real worth is.
The really sad thing was these young families moving cross country (usually from out west) and once they got there and found out what the real deal was, couldn't afford to go back home. The even charged the missionaries rent and they were working for FREE. ha!
The MORMONs better watch out!
The Feds are going to be after THEM again!!!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3109862/posts?page=1
Temples?
Only 15% or so of ALL Mormons are 'worthy' enough to even ENTER one of their 'temples' that THEIR tithes PAID for!
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