MYAKKA CITY: By the end of the year, Myakka City rancher Renee Strickland expects to be selling cattle to Pakistan.
If so, it would be one of the cattle exporter’s biggest successes since jumping into the business full time when her title business went downhill during the Great Recession.
Strickland’s appetite for exporting cattle was whetted about a decade ago when she sold 40 head to Cuba.
“I went to Cuba a few times hoping to drum up more business there. It’s only 90 miles away, but I saw pretty quick that it wasn’t going anywhere,” she said.
She applied herself to studying the detail-oriented work of international exports, including health protocols that are often exhaustive, as well as threading political mine fields between countries.
Working a deal with Pakistan, for instance, has taken about four years.
Strickland served four years as secretary for the Livestock Exporters Association, and this year serves as president, the first time a woman has led the trade organization.
When she sold a load of cattle to the sultan of Oman in 2012, it was a turning point. Like all of her international exports, the cattle were flown to Oman in a cargo plane. The dairy cattle that went to Oman now produce the main ingredient for yogurt and ice cream made in that desert country.
Strickland would also like to export cattle to Iraq, but pilots are understandably nervous about landing in the war-torn country.
Most recently, Strickland delivered plane loads of cattle to Trinidad and Barbados. She has also sold cattle in Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama, all in Central America, and in South America to Guyana and Ecuador. She is hopeful about opening markets in Brazil, Peru and Colombia as well.
Her quest for new business has taken her to far-flung parts of the globe, including Uzbekistan, China, Korea and Vietnam.
Shipments can be as small as five or six head of cattle, to a full 747 load of 200.
The cattle, none of which come from Strickland Ranch, but which are from deals that she brokers, so far have a 100 percent survival rate upon delivery.
Strickland Ranch is primarily a cow-calf operation, and sales its stock to other ranches.
Each time Strickland delivers a plane load of cattle to an international market, she accompanies her cargo, loaded five to six head per crate.
An MD-11 plane that she has chartered for a delivery to Ecuador this month, will have 32 crates of beef and dairy cattle.
“If I am chartering a whole airplane, I am definitely going with them. We just delivered 42 head of Jersey cattle to Trinidad,” she said.
“It’s a very detail oriented business and I can manage the small details,” she said.
Cattle deliveries to South America and Central America typically fly out of Miami, while flights elsewhere might fly out of JFK in New York, or O’Hare in Chicago.
Her partner and husband, Jim Strickland, has nothing but admiration for her success.
“Renee loves the animals, the travel, and the challenge,” he said.
“She has succeeded in a very challenging world. She’s been able to make things happen,” he said. “She’s a cowgirl with a global perspective.”
