I have lived in northeast Florida all my life and never saw these until we moved 60 miles to the southeast. Just that little bit of distance and they’re everywhere. Really enjoy watching and hearing them.
In the NW, from the lake down to the Kankakee River, there are a number of state park, national park, and private nature reserve properties that host huge numbers of them. Essentially, what you need is preserved wetlands and they will land. But yeah, that is not the kind of land farmers want to keep around.