Cash-strapped ranchers. Drought
with no end in sight. An occupation that accounts for less than 1 percent of
all income and employment in the West.
Public lands ranching is a dying business. Ranchers in the West know it, and
more and more of them are admitting it.
That’s why hundreds of them have put aside mythology, looked reality square
in the mirror and formed a coalition with conservationists in support of federal
legislation that would end their financial plight and restore public lands in
the process.
The Voluntary Grazing Permit Buyout Act (HR 3324) would allow federal public
lands ranchers to waive their interest in grazing permits in exchange for compensation
in the amount of $175/animal unit month (or AUM, the amount of forage to sustain
one cow and calf for one month).
The bill authorizes $100 million in federal funds for the program. This figure
is one-fifth the amount of money taxpayers pay every year to administer the
current federal livestock grazing program.
Lest there be any confusion, the buyout program is voluntary. The rancher, not
the government, makes the choice.
Lest there be any misrepresentation, listen to what John Whitney III, a fourth-generation
rancher and the largest U.S. Forest Service grazing permittee in Arizona, has
to say about a voluntary grazing buyout program.
“It’s a relief that Congress is finally seeing past all the theories
and paying attention to the reality on the ground,” says Whitney, whose
158,000-acre Sunflower allotment in Tonto National Forest has been closed for
three years because of drought.
Or listen to his son, John Whitney IV, on the matter of ranching on private
lands. “A voluntary buyout would give us the option of continuing to ranch
livestock on private lands or other, more viable grazing allotments,”
he says. “Ranching on some public lands is just not feasible anymore for
a lot of folks. It’s too complex and inefficient in a time of fierce competition
in the industry.”
And listen to the general public, who share ownership of these federal lands.
The voluntary buyout plan is endorsed by nearly 200 conservation groups, including
the Sierra Club.
Domestic livestock graze more than 257 million acres of public lands, predominately
in the unsuitable, arid West. It takes an average of 16 acres per month to sustain
a cow on Bureau of Land Management lands in the West. It takes an average of
2 acres per year on private lands in the East. Public lands yield only 2 percent
of the nation’s total livestock feed. The average return on investment
in public lands ranching is less than 1 percent, a figure that doesn’t
even keep pace with inflation.
Yet, the federal grazing program costs taxpayers $500 million annually to administer
while returning a scant $7 million per year. Add to this balance sheet two equally
sobering footnotes: Foreign beef continues to undercut domestic beef at market,
and so-called “hobby” ranchers, for whom ranching is a second occupation,
now constitute a majority of the public lands ranching industry.
We no longer live in the Old West. Time magazine estimates that 328,000 ranchers
and farmers will lose their jobs in this decade alone. The scenario facing public
lands ranchers in the 21st century is bleak and getting bleaker.
The buyout plan is a way to stanch the economic bleeding and help public lands
ranchers in the process.
Ranchers who opt for the buyout would be free to use their compensation to buy
more private lands, pay off debts, retire from ranching or leave a monetary
gift to their heirs, most of whom have other plans than ranching in their future.
Kash Winn, a public lands rancher in Ferron, Utah, calls the voluntary buyout
program “a win-win situation.” “It would be the cheapest end
to a lot of problems in a lot of cases,” he says.
Another rancher who runs 3,000-plus head of cattle in southern Utah concurs.
The voluntary buyout is “a humane way of taking care of a tough situation,”
he says, adding that “most people I know in this business would relish
getting out if they could do it with dignity and some cash in hand.”
As the cost of ranching continues to increase, the capital value of federal
grazing permits continues to decline. The Voluntary Grazing Permit Buyout Act
would pay federal permittees several times market value to relinquish their
grazing permits. Under the plan, a permittee with 300 cow/calf pairs that graze
public lands for five months of the year would receive $262,000.
In a editorial endorsing the voluntary buyout program, the Arizona Republic
called the plan “a good, reasonable and fair proposal.” The paper
also asked a fair question of the ranching industry:
“Is it heresy if ranchers, rocked by four years of drought, by endless
and growing environmental pressures and by competition with other uses for the
public land they lease, seek an honorable end to their tradition?”
Similarly, the Los Angeles Times declared: “Reform of the vast grazing
program is long overdue.”
Adoption of the voluntary buyout bill would curb decades of environmental destruction
caused by livestock grazing. In its Global 2000 report, the Council on Environmental
Quality noted that “improvident grazing . . . has been the most potent
desertification force, in terms of total acreage within the United States.”
Less livestock on public lands means more elk, pronghorn, bighorn sheep and
sage grouse.
The buyout legislation was conceived by the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign.The
goal of the NPLGC is to provide a solution to the largest environmental harm
in the West – livestock grazing - and a financial alternative for public
lands ranchers with investments stranded in grazing permits.
“We know this is just the tip of the iceberg,” says John Whitney
IV of the ranchers’ interest in the new buyout offer. “A lot of
permittees have told us they support a buyout, but they just couldn’t
believe it would ever happen. Well, now it is happening.”
A voluntary federal grazing permit buyout is ecologically imperative, economically
rational, fiscally prudent, socially just and politically pragmatic. It is a
win-win-win solution for permittees, taxpayers and the environment as the sun
sets on public lands ranching in the West.