Narco ranching: How organized crime is targeting agriculture 

When New World screwworm re-emerged in Mexico in 2024, the United States cattle industry saw it primarily as an animal health threat that needed to be contained. But the outbreak also highlighted a broader, often unseen concern. This parasitic fly’s spread exposed vulnerabilities of the livestock industry that organized crime has long manipulated. 

Across Mexico and parts of Central America, cartels or criminal organizations are using cattle operations to launder money, traffic contraband, seize land, and undermine livestock traceability in a practice known as narco ranching.  

While much of the activity occurs south of the border, the consequences increasingly affect all U.S. producers through disease risks, supply chain challenges and food security concerns. Narco ranching is no longer solely a law enforcement problem—it has become an agricultural issue as well. 

“Cartels and illegal crime organizations exploit the vulnerabilities of the agricultural market for their own gain,” said Lora Bledsoe, DVM, and policy adviser with the Office of Health Security at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “It’s important that the average producer understands that this is out there. It’s good to be educated about this topic because food security is national security.” 

Beyond drugs 

Ammon Blair, a former U.S. Border Patrol agent, Army officer and senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said he became aware of the cartel’s use of agriculture while working the border.  

“When we’re only focused on two commodities (narcotics and human trafficking), they’re just going to double down on the commodities that we have zero oversight on, and that’s agriculture,” Blair explained. 

That realization changed the focus of his work from narcotics alone to the broader relationship between agriculture and national security. He is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to consult the department on narco ranching and the impacts it has on agriculture.  

Although the term narco ranching was not coined until around 2015, Blair said criminal organizations have exploited agriculture for decades. He traces their origins back to Mexico’s 1982 financial crisis, when many producers struggled to secure financing and criminal organizations stepped in with loans.  

This started the cartel’s agriculture interests, and they eventually took over most of the avocado industry and later started their illicit cattle operation. Blair said the agriculture industry has given the cartels something invaluable to hide behind: Legitimacy. He said authorities have even raided agriculture operations in the U.S. that have cartel ties. 

“They’re not just trafficking narcotics anymore,” Blair said. “They’re controlling pieces of the agricultural economy.” 

A sophisticated criminal enterprise 

An extensive 2022 investigation by InSight Crime documented how illegal cattle trafficking has developed into an advanced network reaching from Nicaragua to Honduras and Guatemala into Mexico. This research explains how narco ranching has morphed into one of the region’s largest organized criminal enterprises. 

According to InSight Crime, approximately 800,000 head of cattle are illegally trafficked into Mexico each year, creating an illicit market worth roughly $320 million annually. These cattle are usually raised on ranches seized by the cartels through intimidation and threats or by illegally establishing ranches within protected forests. 

“They use corruption, coercion and co-option,” Blair said. 

He said those tactics allow criminal organizations to influence landowners and local officials while moving cattle with black-market ear tags and fraudulent health papers into legitimate markets. 

InSight Crime reports that cartels clear thousands of acres of rainforest, convert the land into pasture to raise the livestock and legitimize their land claims. This is known as narco deforestation and contributes to environmental destruction. 

Investigators estimate roughly 70% of deforested land inside several protected reserves in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala has been converted into cattle pastures by the cartels. 

Crime organizations also use the remoteness of these ranches as bases of operation, clandestine airstrips and smuggling routes for their illegal goods.  

Why livestock? 

Bledsoe said animal agriculture is a perfect industry for these criminal enterprises to shield their illegal activity because cattle are living commodities, and their values vary widely. 

“You can fudge the numbers very easily in animal agriculture,” she said. “They can use this ambiguity to their advantage in the money laundering sense. An animal can go from not very valuable to extremely valuable based on genetics or different things that happen during its life.” 

The transportation involved with animal agriculture is also an attractive element for criminal organizations to take advantage of, not only because cattle with fraudulent identification can be difficult to trace, but because the trailers they are hauled in do not draw attention and can double as smuggling vehicles for other contraband.  

Blair said law enforcement has documented cases of criminal organizations hiding millions of dollars in narcotics within living animals, using them as smuggling vessels.  

Disease: The greatest risk to producers 

For producers, the greatest concern is not that the cartel has joined the cattle industry—it is that the illegal movement of these cattle circumvents the safeguards designed to prevent animal disease from spreading. 

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has cited narco ranching as the primary reason for the rapid spread of New World screwworm in Mexico, which led to its migration to the U.S. for the first time in 60 years.  

Although Mexico issued movement restrictions to keep infected cattle from entering unaffected states, Bledsoe said corruption allowed for the illicit transportation these animals, which led to the commingling of infected cattle into legitimate shipments. 

“Animals that clearly were infested with screwworm were moved into areas where there was no screwworm, and it facilitated the continual spread as it moved north to the border,” Bledsoe explained. 

Bledsoe said illegal livestock movement undermines one of agriculture’s most important safeguards: Traceability. When cattle bypass inspections and official movement requirements, diseases can spread rapidly before authorities know infected animals exist. 

Food security starts at home 

Over the years, the U.S. has shifted toward relying on more cheap imported commodities and relying less on domestic agriculture production. The shortcomings of that strategy have become apparent over recent years. 

Bledsoe said the shutdown of the U.S.-Mexico border for livestock in the summer of 2025, exposed how much the U.S. relies on foreign markets. She said the situation calls for a restructuring to make the U.S. more self-sufficient. 

“We have feedlots on the Texas side that were very dependent on their inputs from Mexico to maintain their business models,” she said. “It was far cheaper and less regulated to produce those cattle on the Mexican side and then bring them over to U.S. side. Now the border has been closed, and it solidifies that any time you’re reliant on a foreign country as part of your supply chain, it puts a potential weakness into your system.”  

Blair agreed and said the cartels’ access to agriculture, and our supply chains have built the “Silk Road into America.” 

“We are feeding ourselves with the fruits of terror,” Blair said. “We are so dependent upon imports to feed us, and as so long as our regulations and policies inside the United States favor imported cheap goods, and refuse to acknowledge where our food comes from, as we focus on the price of that food, it incentivizes the cheap products that the cartels control to come into the United States, which then completely destabilizes and destroys our own domestic supply chain on our farms and ranches.” 

What needs to change? 

Blair believes agriculture deserves greater attention within national security discussions. For decades, government agencies primarily viewed cartels through the lens of narcotics trafficking. Today, he argues that their influence extends into food production, transportation networks and rural economies. 

“The cartels don’t just control the drugs,” Blair said. “They work to control transportation, distribution and the economic systems around agriculture. You don’t have to be addicted to narcotics to be impacted by Mexican cartels. The impact every facet of our society.”  

Bledsoe said the rise of narco ranching highlights the need to strengthen U.S. food security by supporting domestic agriculture and reducing fragility within the nation’s food supply chain. 

“Anything that we can do to support the domestic production of these agricultural sources so that they can be wholly within the United States further solidifies our food security,” she said. “I don’t relish the idea of an America that’s reliant on other countries for our food.” 

Neither Blair nor Bledsoe expects cattle producers to confront organized crime directly. Instead, they encourage producers to maintain strong biosecurity practices, comply with livestock movement requirements, support policies that strengthen domestic agriculture, and stay informed about emerging threats. 

Bledsoe hopes this spotlight on organized crime within agriculture encourages policymakers to prioritize agriculture before another crisis occurs. 

“Agriculture is always a very niche issue until it’s not,” she said. “It’s an industry that, especially within the government, seems to always get pushed to the back of the line unless it’s a dire problem.” 

Lacey Vilhauer can be reached at 620-227-1871 or [email protected].