Here’s a Florida paradox:  while the Sunshine State has more than a million head of cattle at any given time, there isn’t much Florida beef.

That’s because the majority of ranchers here are in the cow/calf business, which means they truck between 700,000 and 800,000 calves a year to Kansas, Texas, Nebraska and other large cattle centers soon after they are weaned. There they are fattened at industrial feed lots, slaughtered, and distributed far and wide. Florida has only one commercial slaughterhouse, Central Beef Industries, which processes several thousand cows a year in Sumter County.

A diverse group of people are working to change that.

Ranchers, food purveyors, academics, state Department of Agriculture representatives and local food advocates gathered at the Breakers in Palm Beach Tuesday to talk about ways to keep Florida cattle in Florida.

Hosted by the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association, the meeting featured a panel discussion organized by Rick Hawkins of Localecopia, a non-profit group working to reduce carbon footprints by increasing consumption of locally produced food.

This wasn’t the place for a discussion about the livestock industry’s contributions to greenhouse gas emissions.  Some evidence indicates that, between methane release and deforestation to create pastures and arable land for feed crops, the meat business is a bigger player in climate change than transportation.

The focus instead was on the economic and environmental costs of shipping thousands of cows thousands of miles away, and the possibility of building a large-scale processing plant here, enabling Floridians to get locally-produced beef and ranchers to cut their transportation costs.

”Right now we have an unsustainable food system,” said Hawkins. ”We still transport our cattle thousands of miles for feeding and processing…It makes sense that if we start the cattle here, to finish the cattle here.”

That is no simple task.

There is the estimated $30 million cost of building a facility, and the political and environmental challenges of siting, permitting and monitoring it.  Figuring out how to feed cows here that are now fed elsewhere is also a challenge, as is finding markets for beef by-products, which are used in chemical, medical, cosmetic and textile and other industries.

But Hawkins and others are optimistic.  Florida’s cattle business ranks 18th in the U.S., and arguably, the largest ranch in the nation is located here.

”This is probably going to take a long time, but we feel with yesterday’s meeting that we started the process,” Hawkins said.