“Pete” Clemons is a famed former rodeo star, a successful citrus grower and rancher, and the owner/operator of Florida’s premier cattle market, the Okeechobee Livestock Market. Highly regarded for his friendliness, honesty, and genuine desire to help people, Clemons is considered by many to be the best-known and best-loved cattleman in the state.
Clemons was born in 1927 and grew up working on cattle ranches in Osceola and Highlands counties. His parents, Oscar and Theressa Bronson Clemons, were both members of pioneer Florida cattle families. Clemons paid his own way through the University of Florida by working as a rodeo performer, and in 1950 he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture.
Clemons’ professional rodeo career began when he was in high school and continued until he was well into his forties. He won a record nine All Around titles at the annual Silver Spurs Rodeo in Kissimmee. In 1949 Clemons was the Kissimmee Jaycees’ representative at the National Jaycees Rodeo in Colorado Springs, and he stunned the western competition by entering all six events and coming away once again with the All Around title. As a rodeo cowboy, Clemons served as an unofficial ambassador for the Florida cattle industry both nationally and internationally. He appeared in televised professional rodeos on a regular basis and still raises championship rodeo bulls on his ranch in Okeechobee.
In 1961 with the help of his father and another partner, Clemons purchased the Okeechobee Livestock Market. Under Clemons’ leadership the market became Florida’s largest cattle market and one of the largest volume dealers east of the Mississippi. Today, the market provides a variety of special services, including locating buyers and sellers of cattle herds and bringing bull sales from out of state to local buyers. Clemons expanded cattle marketing to include video and internet marketing venues and helped start one of the first internet cattle auctions in the United States.
“If it’s buying or selling cattle in Florida, Pete is the man to go to,” says rancher Sonny Williamson of Okeechobee. “Ranchers know that he will help smooth out the problems for them and get a sale or purchase of cattle done fair and honest.”
Clemons has always been a strong supporter of the Florida beef industry and has worked hard promoting beef cattle ranching. In the early 1980s he served as chairman of the Florida Beef Council and helped guide the use of Beef Check-off dollars to raise consumer awareness about the healthfulness of beef and to build beef demand.
For the last 40 years Clemons has served as a board member or an officer of the Okeechobee County Cattlemen’s Association. He was president of the organization in 1979, and today he coordinates the group’s fundraising rodeos, which pay for beef promotion and college scholarships. In recognition of his many years of service, the Okeechobee County Cattlemen’s Association recently named him an honorary director.
Clemons is a strong proponent of property rights, fair trade, and reasonable business and land-use regulations. He is a past president of the Florida Association of Livestock Markets and was active for many years in the Animal Industry Technical Council, which works with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services on animal health and disease eradication issues.
Pete Clemons and his wife, Susanne, live in Okeechobee. Their sons, Jeff and Todd, have assumed management roles at the Okeechobee Livestock Market, but Pete remains active in the business.
“Pete’s most valuable trait as a leader might be a very simple one,” says his friend John Williams, executive vice president of Riverside National Bank in Okeechobee. “He always has time for every single person.”
Hugh English spent 35 years working for A. Duda and Sons, Inc., one of Florida’s agricultural giants. He started with the company as a citrus grove manager and retired as a corporate vice president. Through his work at Duda in the 1960s, English helped launch southwest Florida’s fledgling citrus industry. He conducted pioneering research and helped develop production methods now commonly in use. English was born in 1936 in the small town of Alva in Lee County, where his grandfather settled in 1876. English grew up on the family farm, which encompassed about 500 acres and produced citrus, beef cattle, and vegetables. He began working in his family’s citrus groves as a boy. English studied animal science at the University of Florida. During his student years he was active in the Block and Bridle Club and was a member of the Livestock Judging Team.
In 1965 he went to work at Duda’s new citrus grove in Felda in Hendry County. In those days there was little information or research to support production of citrus on the flatwoods soils of southwest Florida, so English immediately initiated numerous research demonstrations in cooperation with UF/IFAS research staff and Extension agents. He ran variety and spacing trials and experimented with seepage irrigation and water control techniques. As low-volume irrigation technology was developed, English quickly recognized the savings in water use and began converting to this more efficient system. Just four years into his career with Duda, English was named manager of the company’s groves in LaBelle. In 1976 he was promoted to general manager of all Duda citrus grove operations, and in 1991 he assumed responsibility for the company’s fresh fruit packinghouse and frozen concentrate plant. At the time of his retirement in 2001, English was corporate vice president in charge of the company’s entire Citrus Division. He was responsible for all citrus production, packing, and processing. His career was demanding, but he still found time to give back to his community and his industry. For many years English has provided leadership to Florida agriculture on environmental, technical, and policy issues. He was chairman of the Big Cypress Basin Board and a member of the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District. While serving on the Southwest Florida Ag Council, he helped build legislative support to construct and staff the University of Florida’s Southwest Florida Research and Education Center near Immokalee. English has always been active in the promotion of the citrus industry. When Central Florida’s citrus industry was nearly destroyed by the freezes of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the industry began a rapid expansion in the southwestern part of the state. English helped organize the Gulf Citrus Growers Association to advance the citrus industry in this new location. In the early 1990s English was appointed by Governor Lawton Chiles to a three-year term on the Florida Citrus Commission. He was vice chairman of the commission in 1992 and chairman in 1993. During his term he traveled to Europe and Asia to enhance export opportunities for Florida citrus growers.
English was a member of the Making American Agriculture Productive and Profitable (MAAPP) Committee, created by the American Farm Bureau’s board of directors in 2003 as a two-year agricultural study group. The group worked together to come up with a vision for the future of American agriculture and to develop policy recommendations that would help make it productive and profitable. The MAAPP Committee Report was published by the American Farm Bureau in 2006.
In 1979 English’s family was named Farm Family of the Year by the Hendry County Farm Bureau, and in 1988 English won the University of Florida’s Citrus Club Man of the Year Award. In 2000 he received the University of Florida’s Alumni of Distinction Award and was elected to the Citrus Hall of Fame.
Hugh English and his wife, Beverly, live in LaBelle. They have two grown daughters, Katherine and Caroline, and one grandson.
Fritz Stein owns and operates a 3,300-acre cattle ranch in Highlands County and a 750-acre sugarcane farm in Palm Beach County’s Everglades Agricultural Area. That would be enough to keep most people busy, but for Stein it is just the tip of the iceberg. A mind-boggling array of industry groups and civic organizations benefit from his leadership skills. Through his unselfish dedication to family, farm, and community, Stein represents the finest tradition of the Florida farmer.
Stein is a third-generation Floridian and a lifelong resident of Belle Glade. His grandfather, an Everglades pioneer, raised cattle and winter vegetables and instilled a love of farming in his children and grandchildren. In 1954 Stein earned a degree in agriculture from the University of Florida and returned to the Belle Glade to join the family farming business. In the 1960s he turned his attention away from winter vegetables and began growing sugarcane. Stein knew that if he and his neighboring growers worked together and pooled their resources they could build a state-of-the-art sugar-processing facility. With that goal in mind, he helped organize the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida. The Cooperative is made up of small and medium-sized farmers in the Everglades Agricultural Area who work together to harvest and process their sugarcane and market the raw sugar. As a founding member of the Cooperative, Stein helped maximize the agricultural potential of the region and bring financial stability to many growers.
Stein has been a tireless supporter of agriculture his entire life. He is a past chairman of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, past president of the Florida Sugar Cane League, and past director of the Palm Beach County Soil and Water Conservation District. He currently serves as a director of the Florida Molasses Exchange and the Florida Sugar Marketing and Terminal Association. He has been a member of the Western Palm Beach County Farm Bureau for over 50 years.
Stein is an advocate for Florida’s farm workers, campaigning for improved housing, education and healthcare. For 41 years he has been an active member of the board of the Belle Glade Housing Authority, which provides clean, affordable, safe housing to this disadvantaged population. As chairman of the board, he helped procure millions of dollars in federal grants and oversaw five major construction projects, growing Belle Glade’s inventory of homes for agricultural workers to 700 units. Under his direction the Housing Authority has improved the living conditions of thousands of families in the Glades.
Stein leads by example. As a governing board member of the South Florida Water Management District, he was one of the first farmers in the Everglades Agricultural Area to begin voluntarily testing his own water quality, and he encouraged other farmers to do the same.
Stein’s civic contributions are many. He is a founding trustee of Glades Day School, a past president of the Belle Glade Rotary Club, a Glades area fundraising committee member and chairman of the Boy Scouts of America, and a team sponsor for Belle Glade Little League.
Stein’s leadership in his community and his industry has won him numerous accolades. In 1982 he received the Belle Glade Citizen of the Year Award from the Belle Glade Chamber of Commerce; in 1988 the Chamber of Commerce named him the Agri-Industrial Man of the Year; and in 1990 his family was honored as Farm Family of the Year by the Western Palm Beach County Farm Bureau.
Fritz Stein and his wife, Lois, live in Belle Glade. They have six grown children, Sonny, Julie, Robert, Stewart, Michael, and Tim, and eight grandchildren.
Dr. Alto Straughn’s career in agricultural research, education, and commercial farming spans more than 50 years and has benefited both Florida agriculture and consumers. He is among Florida’s most progressive watermelon farmers, and his work with southern highbush blueberries helped launch a $40 million-a-year industry. Born in 1934 in Walton County, Straughn grew up farming, hunting and fishing. He was active in 4-H and Future Farmers of America. During his student years at the University of Florida, he was well known for his strong work ethic and his keen interest in research and learning. He lived in a room at the Livestock Pavilion, worked for the Department of Animal Sciences, was a member of the Livestock Judging Team, and did sheep research on the weekends. He graduated with a master’s degree in animal science. In 1959 Straughn began working as a UF/IFAS Extension agent in Marion County. Three years later, with the aid of a Kellogg Fellowship, he went to the University of Wisconsin, where he completed a doctoral degree in Extension administration in 1963. Returning to Florida and the Extension Service, Straughn rose rapidly through the administrative ranks. After serving as assistant director, he became director of program evaluation and organizational development in 1971. As one of the agency’s key administrative leaders, he helped develop statewide planning and reporting systems and implement the county program review system. He pioneered the use of computers to enhance Extension’s response to client needs.
At the same time he was working for the Extension Service, Straughn was developing successful beef cattle, blueberry, watermelon, and timber farming operations—enterprises that now cover over 2,000 acres around Gainesville. He quickly gained a reputation as one of Florida’s most innovative growers, demonstrating again and again his ability to adjust to rapidly changing markets.
Straughn’s leadership and innovation in blueberry production have been crucial to the success of Florida’s blueberry industry. He now produces about one-third of all the blueberries in Florida, and he has worked closely with UF/IFAS researchers to conduct blueberry variety trials and demonstrate new production technologies at his farms. Leading blueberry researcher Paul Lyrene says Straughn has been indispensable to the UF/IFAS blueberry research program and estimates the value of Straughn’s support over the past 15 years at almost a million dollars.
In the 1980s Straughn initiated the Florida blueberry industry’s move away from rabbiteye varieties toward the more-productive southern highbush varieties and showed that these varieties could be grown profitably on a large scale. He helped build markets for Florida blueberries where none had existed. Straughn has been an innovator in freeze protection methods, pollination techniques, harvesting methods, and packing and distributing He pioneered growing blueberries in pine-bark beds under plastic mulch and tunnels, using drip irrigation and fertigation. Many of the practices now commonly used by growers in Florida were first shown to be superior on Straughn’s blueberry farms. Straughn has been an innovator for the Florida watermelon industry, too. Twenty years ago he was the first in North Florida to grow and market seedless watermelons on a large scale. In addition, he was an early adopter of new watermelon production technologies, including polyethylene mulch and drip irrigation. UF/IFAS research results on new technologies were more readily transferred to the Florida watermelon industry because Straughn adopted these technologies and assisted the Extension Service in educating his fellow watermelon producers about their benefits. Straughn is a strong supporter of the annual UF Extension Watermelon Institute, where the latest research results and recommendations are presented to watermelon producers from all over the Southeast.
Straughn is generous with his knowledge and his time, selflessly sharing his expertise with other growers. He is an active member of the Florida Farm Bureau, the Michigan Blueberry Growers Association, the National Watermelon Promotion Board, the North American Blueberry Council, and the Florida Blueberry Growers Association. He has provided financial support for more than a dozen graduate students in the University of Florida’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and has initiated endowment programs to provide financial support for Extension 4-H faculty and for the professional improvement of other Extension faculty.
His leadership in the agriculture industry has earned him honors, including the 2005 Gamma Sigma Delta Distinguished Service to Agriculture Award and the 1997 Cooperator of the Year Award from the Michigan Blueberry Growers Association.
Alto Straughn and his wife, Patrecia, live in Waldo. They have two grown daughters, Lynn and Rita, and eight grandchildren.
