King Ranch Exec Surprises Guests at NLC22

King Ranch Exec Surprises Guests at NLC22

The famed King Ranch adds a Texas-sized touch to a special celebration

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When the awards dinner ended, a number of guests began to make their way toward the front of the ballroom for greetings and photos with the night’s special guest. The smiles on the faces of RLI members and friends in pictures snapped would beam extra brightly—and that was no surprise.

In a visit kept close to the vest until the evening of Thursday, March 24, Jamey Clement, Retired Chairman of the Board of Texas’ King Ranch—the nation’s largest ranch at 825,000 acres—sat down for a conversation with Eric O’Keefe, Cofounder of The Land Report, an RLI partner and the sponsor of our annual APEX Awards Program, at the 2022 National Land Conference in San Antonio, TX.

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About the artwork: The paintings on these pages depicting The Main House and a group of kineños (or King's men) and ranch staff are by artist Noe Perez, whose work is featured in the beautiful book King Ranch: A Legacy of Art. They are reprinted here by permission of the artist.

In case you skimmed over that, no, it’s not a typo: The ranch spans 825,000 acres, which is only 163,000 short of the acreage of Rhode Island.

For many, one of the highlights of NLC22 was the wide-ranging, eyeopening conversation shared by Clement and O’Keefe on the APEX Awards stage.

A fifth-generation descendant of Captain Richard King, Clement regaled the audience with anecdotes about the storied history of Texas’ renowned ranch, from its founding in the Wild Horse Desert in 1853 to its current national footprint with agribusiness holdings from coast to coast.

Reflecting on the evening, O’Keefe said, “Even the Texans in the audience were awed by the array of stories [Clement] shared, which ranged from the development of America’s first breed of cattle, the Santa Gertrudis, to King Ranch’s decades-long marketing partnership with Ford Motor Company.”

Renee Harvey, one of those proud Texans and RLI’s 2022 Immediate Past President, called it a distinct honor for RLI that Clement joined us for the APEX Awards.

“Mr. Clement took what was already a great celebration of land real estate achievement for RLI members and made it even more special,” she said. “King Ranch has a cherished place in Texas and American history, and welcoming a family member who has played such an important role in the ranch for an intimate conversation was a true joy for all of us as land specialists.”

Hearing about the booming King Ranch at NLC deep in the heart of Texas was also fitting in light of the growth of RLI’s APEX Awards program itself. In 2021, the program celebrated its fifth year by continuing to boom, with 203 applicants (+45% over 2020) totaling a combined $8.4 billion in qualifying production volume (+240%) representing 8,696 sides. All land professionals recognized as part of the RLI APEX Awards are active members of RLI and had at least $5M of qualifying production volume in closed land sales in 2021.

The aforementioned Captain King is rightly revered in Texas and beyond. “The boy who started as an impoverished, indentured jeweler’s apprentice became an adventuresome, hardworking and visionary businessman who, by the time of his death in 1885, had made his indelible mark on the landscape and taken his place as a titan among the ranks of the tamers of the Texas range,” wrote Thomas C. Lea III, a Texas muralist, illustrator, artist, war correspondent, novelist, and historian.

As noted on the King Ranch website, “the ranching business remains a vital component” of contemporary operations “and is an ongoing, living link with the legendary past of Captain King’s domain. From state-of-the-art scientific breeding programs to Santa Gertrudis, Santa Cruz, and American Red bull sales, to top-flight feedlot operations, the Birthplace of American ranching is a vertically integrated cattle enterprise that continues to thrive as a vanguard of the cattle business on the 825,000 acres of its home ranches in South Texas.”

King Ranch is about much more than cattle and horses, of course. Among its priorities is a commitment to stewardship of the ecosystem, which is “the primary focus of all King Ranch management programs.”

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The ranch seeks to balance responsible stewardship with “innovative vision and management techniques, which makes the land simultaneously productive for livestock, wildlife, other fauna and the native range.”

Land real estate professionals are well familiar with branding—both the strategic kind that helps a brokerage or agent stand out to prospective buyers and sellers, and the literal kind that identifies an animal’s home ranch. In the case of King Ranch, both kinds of branding come into play; its long-recognized Running W brand “stands for uncompromising quality, ruggedness, innovation, self-reliance, and authenticity.”

At the heart of the ranch is a set of clear objectives that help such a large operation remain focused on its mission. They include:

» “Produce Quarter Horses at a competitive cost and of a class and quality that honor the name and reputation of King Ranch while providing our cowboys with a working horse having the athletic ability to perform in our harsh South Texas environment.

» Focus on producing horses and maintaining a herd size that meets the needs of the Kineño [King’s people] vaquero. King Ranch is the number-one customer.

» Manage costs effectively and manage the Quarter Horse Unit as a standalone operation consistent with the overall profit objectives of Ranching and Wildlife.

» Use and appropriately reward cowboys who are effective trainers. » Adhere to strict treatment, vaccination, and breeding protocols. » Protect the historic genetic legacy of King Ranch Quarter horses. » Hire and train competent stockmen and caretakers.”

As a part of building and maintaining strong relationships with many other business, civic and educational organizations across Texas and the nation, King Ranch has “worked with Cornell, Texas A&M, and other agricultural schools to study diseases like fever tick and to improve management.”

Two recent examples of academic partnerships are programs directly linked to King Ranch through Texas A&M Kingsville: King Ranch Institute for Ranch Management (the only master’s degree for Ranch Management in the world) and Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute (one of the premier wildlife schools across the globe).

The ranch is a multifaceted operation that touches on a wide range of industry sectors, including its Consolidated Citrus Limited Partnership (CCLP), Almendra almonds and pistachios, gin and cotton, John Deere and turf (in Texas and Florida), sugar, milo and other row crops, real estate, environmental land stewardship, ecotourism, and energy.

A Texas institution, King Ranch is renowned not only for its rich history but for its vibrant present, reflecting an astounding blend of vast scope and staying power.

Long after the photos wrapped up and the hugs and handshakes drew to a close the APEX Awards dinner, RLI will remain deeply grateful for the inspiring presence of Jamey Clement and King Ranch, and for The Land Report, not only for its role as an RLI partner but also for working to make such a special part of the evening possible.

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