Comments about ‘Ranchers struggle to pass on way of life’

Environmentalists strike again. you would wonder what they think will happen to the cattle industry, but since their goal is vegetarianism for everyone, they'd like to end it.

This is a story that continues to play out across the West. Interestingly, renewable energy is actually boosting ranchers' fortunes and rural communities in Texas and Iowa. It could benefit Utah as well. Wind energy, specifically, has made West Texas an economic powerhouse, something that the Milford Wind Project has begun to show in Beaver County.

Specifically, the land leases paid to rural landowners help diversify income from property without contaminating land/water resources or hampering cattle and farming (unlike fossil fuel development).

Imagine as America transitions away from foreign oil for our transportation system and switches to plug-in cars that run off electricity, we'll be pouring our energy dollars into America's rural communities instead of to the Mideast or Venezuela, and America will reap the economic rewards in terms of local rural jobs, leases, and tax revenues. In essence, wind power can become a viable substitute for oil.

I hear a lot of people say wind turbines are ugly. But check out the Gulf oil spill or Wyoming's strip coal mines -- we as a society have to choose our poison. Wind turbines could benefit ranchers and preserve rural quality of life.

What is happening across the West is that ranchers are becoming increasingly dependent on taxpayer support and subsidies to survive.

"A mostly self-sufficient bunch, the ranchers...". Nonsense! I've known and worked with ranchers for 35 years. They typically have inherited their properties from someone in the 1800's. They rely on Federal public lands to graze and fatten their livestock (cows or sheep). They get Federal subsidies and often State subsidies. They are indeed "welfare ranching", as their detractors refer to them.

If the Federal lands they graze are in better shape now than in the past, it is because Federal range managers have fought them tooth and nail to get them to reduce overgrazing.

Ranchers have a strong political base here in the West. Much like the welfare families in cities. Just trying to reduce their subsidies or increase their rock-bottom fees ($1.35 per cow per month, Federal managers are cast as evil raisders of the lost ark.

In summation: "Most have recently refinanced their long-term debt, and many have moved to federal loans after banks dropped them. Despite vast land holdings and other assets, their cash flow is a trickle. They're millionaires..."

Now the real truth's. Ranchers struggle to pass on way of life?. They treasure their trade, but are barely hanging on as profit margins shrink, thanks to the BEEF Union's and the illegal's they employ. Are people in Utah really like this? . Your house moves but your twelve cars don't. You take your dog for a walk and you both use the same tree. You can entertain yourself for more than 15 minutes with a fly swatter. Your boat has not left the driveway in 15 years. You burn your yard rather than mow it. The Salvation Army declines your furniture. You offer to give someone the shirt off your back and they don't want it. You have the local taxidermist on speed dial. You come back from the dump with more than you took. Your wife can climb a tree faster than your cat. Your grandmother has "ammo" on her Christmas list. You keep flea and tick soap in the shower. You've been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog. You go to the stock car races and don't need a program.

I have respect for anyone that ranches. When I was a kid growing up in Rich county I went out with one of my friends a couple of times with his dad. That is tough work. This article doesn't even mention the hundreds of other things that are done on a ranch. Branding, calving, cutting hay, etc. are all very hard jobs. I have never been so sore than when I went calving one year. Wrestling down calves while they are kicking is tough (at least as a teenager).

Anyway it is a tough business and it is good to bring it to light in this article. Its too bad ranches cannot turn incomes. This is also true for dairy farmers from previous articles I've read. Retailers want to keep prices low so either the rancher is not able to sell the cattle or he sells them at the same price as he always has.

Open grazing is another issue - there is nothing worse to me than hiking or hunting and running into cattle or cow pies. Not sure there is a solution where recreationalist and ranchers can get along in that way.

It's refreshing to read a coherent post for a change from brother Chuck, even if he had to plagarize a well known comedian to produce it.

Too many in pursuit of the ranching lifestyle means too much beef on the market commanding too little money. And government subsidies only make that situation worse.

I am a "Weston-rancher's wife" who by the way can't climb trees faster than a cat because I have better things to do with my time. I would like to defend ranchers and our lifestyle. Name one other occupation where a father can take their kids to work with them? The relationships that are built on ranchers between kids and their parents are worth more than any businessman's wage in my opinion. My husband works harder than any other man I know. It's not a 9-5 job with weekends/holidays off and paid vacation. It is sun up to sun down physical labor. So go ahead and say what you want about the ranching community but until you have lived this life, you have no right to judge.

I was in Sanpete County the other day and in a range area on the right side of the highway 89, I saw a herd of about 150 cows and calves who were just tearing up the range. They were eating the grass and drinking from the streams and doing what cattle do.

Also in that same area were three large pickups and trailers waiting for their four wheeler drivers who were tearing up the hillside leaving their tire marks.

People do not like the Rancher but he has, for more years than I can remember tried to improve the Range. I don't recall any city slicker helping do anything.

The Ranchers have more right to the range than any other. I feel we should begin to charge people to even step on any public land. What have the people ever done to improve it. They just tear it up and go back to their city.

Emily, your post about the hardest working man sounds a little arrogant. You apparently don't know how hard working people work. My guess is you've inherited your property, your permit to graze on Federal land, your attitude about non-ranchers and you think of yourselves as better than others.

Morgan, ranchers aren't in the business of improving the land. They are there to use the resources (forage, water). The cows frequently diminish the natural resources. They often cause creekside damage, stomp and compact soils and compete with wildlife for the natural vegetation.

In the last 100 years, livestock have caused serious and in some cases irreparable harm to western public lands. The ranchers have bullet-proof, permanent grazing permits that they almost always inherited from their parents. They only do the minimum work and management the Feds require of them while the cows or sheep graze 5 months a tear.

@fauxConservative,

Arrogant? The pot calling the kettle black. You've never farmed nor ranched. People who speak, not from experience, but from ivory towers only, are woefully unprepared to discuss the issues.

That is not the only issue: "The ancients call it rhetoric. What it amounts to is the acceptance, for the sake of power and profits, of certain acknowledged standards of lying."

"...the highest achievement of the art, the ancients tell us, is that skill which convinces
patron, customer, or victim that no rhetoric at all is being used."

"In the dialogue named after him, Gorgias is
flatly charged by Socrates with propagating a mock
philosophy whose aim is not knowledge but the appearance of knowledge."

"It is the training and skill by which one can make unimportant things seem important, according to
Plato, or, to quote Clement again, 'make false opinions seem true by means of words.'" Hugh Nibley, "Victoriosa Loquacitas".

Some people amass their wealth off the proceeds of the parasitical lawsuits they file. Let's discuss this for a while. Whence the income?

Having grown up on a farm and having used our own land to graze sheep I can tell you that we selling what we produced has not made any farmer or rancher rich. Yes cost have risen drastically over the years while the farmer and rancher receive the same amount for what they sell today that our parents and grandparents have received for years. It the the marketing middlemen that are getting rich.
@Conservative. You grip and complain because when you are out on public lands with your four-wheeler you step in the best fuel nature has made to burn and grow crops with. All you see is what you call damage to the land when the wildlife and ranchers stock co-exist with no trouble and both do the same things to the land. Go eat your vegetables and forget about the meat you cuss. But remember that a farmer grew those vegetables for you as well. Get off your soapbox and try to understand others instead of condemn them.

Since beef is a resource heavy product it only makes sense that the future will take one of two paths. Either you can eat meat and limit family size, or you can have unlimited family size and eat veggies.

@Lowonoil: wow, checked cattle prices lately? Perhaps you should as they are higher than they ever have been because of DEMAND.

@Lowonoil: Checked cattle prices lately? Apparently not. They are higher than they have been in years because of DEMAND.

@Conservative: tell me, how much do you know about range/soil and water conservation? Do you "live of the land?"
I would bet the very people you criticize know more about the LAND and respect it much more than you do becuase of their knowledge be it expereince related and regardless of if they purchased it or inherited it.
Be not fooled by "inheriting land" there are a lot of sacrifice involved with family ranches and eeking out a living on the land.

The question becomes can we tie up so much land to support an industry that only provides 11% of American's beef?

Why is the ranchers job more important than boiler makers, riveters, wheelwrights or button makers? See any brakemen working the Ogden Rail Yards?

@mo29: I don't follow the cattle market. But whatever the price, if efficient producers are going bankrupt, then it must not be high enough. And it's probably not high enough because too much is being produced.

Cole, just be glad you were not on "Bone Crusher" aka, O.J.! Oh, and I bet Burt was getting ready to rub salt in your wounds. I'm glad you were not "paralyzed" though! And Scrawny, that picture of you, well lets just say, The Man On The Bear River! Oh, and Bro. Chuck and Consevative, I hope your not too full from eating the beef and vegetables the ranchers and farmers produce for you and yours, because I know "arrogant" Emily could probably give you both a 50 yard head start and she, being fast as a cat, would catch you both before you ran another 25 yards, chew you down to her size and spit you out. I've seen these young men, most of them fathers now, put in a full days work and then some when they were 8yrs old with their fathers. They all have great parents who taught them RESPECT and the value of hard work in all kinds of conditions! And if you were to show up they would be more than glad to take you around to see for yourself instead of watching it on the Discovery Channel.

To Emily: I appologize for calling you arrogant. That was over the top and uncalled for. I may disagree with some of your point of view, but not all of it. Ranchers are very hard working and good role models. Please accept my appology.

@ Crusader: What in the bleep does eating meat and veggies have to do with the size of families? @ Not_ Scared: Where in the article did it say that ranching is more important than any other job? I bet that if you asked anyone in agriculture they would agree that without the trains, trucking, and a wide range of other jobs, theirs, the agriculture providers job would be much harder, but not impossible. If the grocery stores were ever to become empty, God forbid, and you and your family are hungry, I hope that your wind driven or plug in electric car has enough juice left in the batteries so you can drive to the country for food and a dose of reality.

Cattle Ranchers will need to diversify.

Ranching can be wonderful lifestyle, and some ranchers love the land enough to take good care of it. But grazing cows is not the best use for the land. People are becoming more health-conscious, and don’t want the high cholesterol, hormones and antibiotics in beef. Also, slaughtering practices are unnecessarily cruel at some plants, and educated people are aware of that.

Some alternatives:

Raising other species such as alpacas
Guiding hunters and fishers
Guest ranches with horseback tours, mountain biking, canoeing, painting and photography, kids’ camps, etc.
Movie locations
And as the second poster, Baron Scarpia said, leasing land for renewable energy production

There are more ideas out there.