Even longtime rancher Clarence Bear, who has depended on South Florida developers for pasture, calls the agricultural tax law "a hoax." He has seen dead cattle lying in untended fields and cows left to graze on barren lots.

"That's the problem with the ag exemption, " Bear said. "If it's got ears and a tail and four legs, that's all they care about." State-certified agricultural expert Gaylon Parton scoffed at a half-dozen properties assessed as farmland that he visited with Herald reporters.

"Just a normal person with no experience can see it's not a pasture, " he said of a northwest Miami-Dade lot, gesturing toward a wall of melaleuca on land owned last year by Lancaster Homes. The developer's ad valorem tax bill on 59 acres was $1,722. Without the agricultural tax break, the bill would have come to $170,900.

"There's no grass here, " Parton said of a Miramar lot covered with weeds, rocks and trash. "I wouldn't put one cow and one calf on this." About 40 cows roamed on the afternoon he visited.

The family of the late landowner Harold Dubner has already invested more than $1.5 million in utilities and roads to serve development in the area. Contractor Donald Buchanan, who excavated the land and spread the fill several years ago, said he called the property appraiser's office to complain.

"I was disgusted that they would allow this guy to do the site work so it could be marketed as a filled commercial site, and then put cows on it and feed them hay, " he said. "As a Broward County taxpayer, I am making up those taxes that he's not paying."

The Dubners saved nearly $340,000 in taxes on about 90 acres of pasture last year. Attorney Richard Coker said they have been operating a cattle business on the land for years. The utilities are on property surrounding the pasture, he said, adding that the law does not require grazing land to be pristine.

VAGUE PROVISION

Florida's greenbelt law does limit tax relief to land that is used primarily for "good faith commercial agriculture" as of Jan. 1 each year. But the law only vaguely defines what that means, and appraisers don't push it. That leaves the door wide open for corporate landowners to claim the discounts:

• Florida gave up as much as $745 million in tax revenue last year on agricultural tax breaks. Broward and Miami-Dade forfeited about $60 million. Much of that money goes to legitimate farmers, from the tomato growers of the Redland to the nursery owners of Davie.

  But of the top 60 tax break recipients in South Florida last year, more than two-thirds are not farmers. Lennar Homes, Shoma Homes and billionaire media magnate Edmund Ansin are among the largest owners of local farmland. Another is The Graham Companies, the Miami Lakes developer that owns a Central Florida dairy.

• A few cows can be all it takes to get the tax break. State law requires proof of a "bona fide" farming business, but developers often focus the debate on a narrower question: Is there livestock on the land? During one tax appeal last year, a Miami-Dade magistrate classified a developer's land as pasture after spotting a single horse in a murky photograph.
• Since the law does not require farms to turn a profit, some pastures are poorly tended. The Herald found skinny cows eating garbage from a nearby construction site at a northwest Miami-Dade lot owned by the Genet Family Limited Partners. They owed $659.74 last year on 29 acres filled with rocks, dense brush and downed trees. The Genets declined to comment.