Cows grazing in the Pioneer Mountains (Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest) Photo courtesy one of our Grass-fed Party members: Roundup.

Preserving traditional ranching in the West is something that the Grass-fed Party is whole-heartedly committed to. We really feel that grass-fed farming can not only help to keep family-run and independent ranches profitable and alive, it can also help to preserve rural communities.   In the West, rising land prices have threatened to end  family-run ranching, and this is something that is bigger than grass-fed farming vs. feedlots; it is really about the rural character of the West and our country.

Franny shared with me a fabulous Paul Starr quote that speaks to the importance of protecting family ranchers: "If we cannot make the ranch work in the 21st century, then I would say we will have proved we cannot have a rural future in the urban West."  Without ranches, the backbone of rural communities are gone, also gone are the businesses that cater to ranchers.   This has already happened in the high plains where communities have been abandoned because family’s have stopped farming their land: when the farmer’s leave there is nothing to sustain small towns, and they fail.

One large impediment to the family ranching tradition is the estate tax; ranching is a land rich enterprise, most if not all the monetary wealth of a ranching family is in their land. Land prices have gone up so dramatically in the past decades that many farmers find themselves millionaires but it is the classic case of land rich but cash poor. This becomes an issue when the next generation inherits the ranch because they have to pay a pretty sizable percentage of the worth of the land in taxes.  This becomes a painful decision for all ranching families: they cannot afford to keep the land they have grew up on because it is worth so much and they must sell. Franny interviewed Bill Donald a few months back, who is a lifelong, 3rd generation Montana rancher and he spoke about the challenge the estate tax represents to ranchers:  “Successful multigenerational ranch families utilize every possible tool to accomplish the generational transfer; trusts, wills, gifting, insurance, and purchase by the incoming generation. First and foremost it requires effective communication, coupled with a solid plan formulated with the advice of accountants and lawyers. The inheritance tax is a hurdle that many ranch families cannot clear. In many instances paying that tax requires the sale of some or the entire ranch, ending the ranch legacy.”  What would be a solution? As a farmer’s daughter I would hope to see some sort of exemption set up for farmers, so that families can stay ranching, but I would imagine that this would create a big loophole that could be abused by investors.  It is a pretty complex issue but the fact it is hurting the western ranching legacy can not be ignored.

Rising land prices can also threaten family-run ranches because selling land becomes so enticing, especially now that ranching has become so financially difficult.   Many ranchers are barely hanging on, and need to sell part of their ranch just to get by.  Sadly, we learned at our Montana Cowcus how difficult it has become for ranchers to keep going. Many ranchers have sold their land to developers, leading to less open land, and a decrease in working ranches which has pretty severe repercussions on local communities. One of our members named Roundup wrote an excellent blog entry about a movement in Montana that wants to preserve open working land, in fact, public dollars are being used to buy development rights from ranchers so that they can benefit from the value of their land and continue to ranch it. I really recommend that you take a look at the blog entry.

With rising land prices and decreased profits it becomes more and more attractive for ranchers to sell, especially for younger generations, who do not want to enter into a lifestyle that cannot sustain them. This is why grass-fed farming practices represent a solution because they can help to make ranching more profitable which in turn, makes the pressures of rising land prices not as acute.

There has been a lot of attention given to the preservation of different breeds of farm animals lately. Some pigs are so rare that there are clubs to help protect and breed them---I just purchased a large black boar. This is true too for cattle and there are many ranchers and farmers who keep rare breeds on small independently run farms and ranches throughout the country, there are also custumers who seek out heritage breed meats as a way to support small farmers and endangered breeds.  This trend is really about reclaiming what has been lost with the industrialization of our food production. Commercial production of eggs and milk leave little room for diversity, instead there are just a few breeds that are used and have been breed(usually using science) with extreme production in mind. This is true in the pork industry where pigs have been breed to excel in factory farms; they gain weight rapidly, are extremely high strung and require prestigious amounts of feed.

However with grass-fed farming, it is the older more traditional breeds that excel on a grass-fed diet because they were breed for centuries to turn grass into food. Out on the La Cense Ranch they raise the rugged Black Angus and on my parent’s farm we cross Scottish Highland Cows with Black Angus and Hereford cattle. In Texas, our region this week, they have a native breed of cattle that is excels in its arid environment: the Texas Long Horn. The Texas long horn is prized for its beauty, intelligence and ruggedness it is also native to the US, its ancestors coming from Spain almost 500 years ago.  Running wild in Texas’s native grasslands they breed with some northern European breeds becoming extremely well adapted to Texas’s vast rangeland and they excel on grass and can even thrive on weeds, cactus and brush. The Texas long horn fell out of favor because it is an extremely lean breed when tallow was highly prized and in 1927 it was so endangered the breed had to be brought back by a group of dedicated preservationists.  Ironically enough, what made the long horn unpopular in the 19th century makes it valuable today. A Texas long horn cow can forage land that other breeds cannot and its meat is low in fat, something that custumer’s prize--- it truly is the ultimate grass-fed cow for the southwest!