In Kingsville, Texas, near the Mexico border, the only thing thicker than the accents is the ranching culture.
Natives call it the birthplace of American ranching.
“This is where European immigrants from Scotland, England and Ireland combined with a lot of the native peoples and the Spanish-descended settlers,” says James Clement.
Kingsville is his home, and he knows that heritage well.
“This is where the Catholic mission system and the Western European farming systems collided to create what is known as ranching,” he says.
Much of today’s ranching terminology and practices originated in this South Texas region, and Clement is quick to note that the tradition endures.
“You still see a lot of commitment by the people that own land in this part of the world to maintain large-scale ranches,” he says. “We call this region the last great habitat.”
With his well-worn and scuffed cowboy hat, Clement not only has ranching culture in his heart, it flows through his veins.
At the King Ranch Museum in downtown Kingsville, Clement traces his family’s lineage on a massive, framed portrait that hangs above a stone fireplace. Capt. Richard King and his wife, Henrietta, were Clement’s triple-great-grandparents. His family has all matriculated from the famed King Ranch, a major corporation of modern ranching that has expanded to include farming, luxury retail, recreational hunting and more.
Land of His Own
Though Clement maintains ties to King Ranch, he also now manages his own operation, Bloody Buckets Cattle Co., a ranch deeply steeped in family tradition.
“Our Clement family has been in American military service since the War of 1812, beginning with Sgt. Maj. Kay Clement and his son, Gen. John Clement,” he says. “Four of those generations (from 1812 to 1945), served in the 28th Division of Pennsylvania.”
During World War II, Clement’s grandfather, Capt. James “Jim” Clement, fought with the division dubbed the Bloody Buckets Division by German forces due to its red keystone insignia
“My grandfather wore the bloody buckets patch on his left shoulder, and we still brand our cattle on the left hip with a brand that is modeled after that patch,” he says.
His grandfather, wounded in France, returned to South Texas as the recipient of a Purple Heart Medal and began a long career with King Ranch, ultimately serving as CEO from 1974 to 1988.
While living in South Texas, he founded Los Hermanos Ranch in 1967, which Clement now operates under the Bloody Buckets Cattle Co. brand. In the 1970s, his father, James “Jamey” Clement Jr., and his uncle, Martin “Martín” Clement II, assumed ownership and day-to-day responsibilities for Los Hermanos. Together, all three men shaped the ranch’s history while each spent his full-time career working for King Ranch.
Clement and his family have been exposed to 400 years of ranching in three operations. Clement’s mother came from the historic Beggs Cattle Company, established in 1876. They, along with their partners, have put that knowledge together and found a way to manage their land and cattle.
“We used the lessons learned from Beggs, King, the experience of our partners and the King Ranch Institute of paying attention to the land, natural resources and wildlife,” he says.
“As we were continuing to grow our operation, we were seeing that we were surviving droughts better, our wildlife quality and quantity was increasing, our water retention was improving and our business lines were growing,” he adds.
A New Approach
Now supporting those heritage practices on-ranch is a host of ag tech advancements. Certainly, they were not seen on his grandfather’s ranch, but Clement knows they are the way of the future, making practices more efficient and easier to accomplish with less labor and fewer man-hours.
He uses Ranchbot Monitoring Systems to keep an eye on his watering systems. Frontiers Market Artificial Intelligence gathers animal health data. On-vehicle cameras are helping to map his land and resources through Enriched Ag.
But his greatest passion lies below the surface in soil carbon capture, so much so that he works as senior vice president and general manager of grass and rangeland for EarthOptics, a company that uses the study of soil biology to predict agronomic outcomes and measure soil carbon. In the role, he helps landowners measure and monetize soil carbon through data-driven insights.
For Clement, it’s a business model that he likens to one he knows well.
“Using an oil and gas analogy, EarthOptics is the drilling company; other people sell the crude (soil carbon in this sense), but we find it.” he says. “What we’re trying to do is help people make more efficient decisions on their land, reduce cost and then potentially also look at additional cash flow streams through the sale of carbon credits.”
Clement calls himself “bullish on carbon” for one particular reason.
“This is really the first opportunity in ranching — first of the growing ecosystem markets — where large companies are paying people to make good stewardship decisions,” he says. “Historically, how did you judge other ranches against each other? Who was selling the most cattle for the most money, selling the most expensive hunts or had the most pump jacks? Now we can pay for taking care of the land and making long-term decisions.”
EarthOptics not only finds a way to quantify and qualify good land and soil stewardship, they validate the data in such a way that farmers and ranchers can capitalize on them.
“We’re at the crossroads of the industry,” Clement says. “EarthOptics is not selling the credits. We’re just advising the ranchers on how to partake in these markets and then also making the introductions and building the industry.”
New Land Equals an Accelerated Approach
Clement is broadening the scope of Bloody Buckets Cattle Co., buying additional land and leasing land with his partners, “Poncho” Ortega Sr. and “Poncho” Ortega Jr. They are currently ranching on six ranches in four different South Texas counties. Acquiring new ranches and leases means the work on some of the new land is just beginning.
“On the west side, we acquired some ranches in the last 20 years that had previously been farmed,” he says. “We spend most of our time and resources in the pastures with the worst conditions to build back soil health.”
By applying the same technology he’s helped develop and test elsewhere, Clement is accelerating the restoration process. Their ranching operation has become a testing ground for many of the new ag tech companies in the industry, seeing if these concepts can work in rough country and be beneficial to the operation.
“We’re on a mission to get each of these newer owned or leased properties back in better shape,” he says. “As we expand, we want to make sure that acre is productive.”
Trust In Beef™ works to secure the future of American ranching by providing the information ranchers need to make the decisions that impact the resiliency, profitability and resource management of their working lands. Learn more about Trust In Beef and their Sustainable Ranchers Tour by visiting www.trustinbeef.com
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