Economics don't pan out for grazing buyout

By Crosby Allen
Fremont County, Wyo., commissioner

In case you have not yet seen this bill, here is a little insight on HR 3324, the "Voluntary Grazing Buyout Act."

This act would cause the appropriation of your tax dollars, by the federal government, to buy grazing permits from ranchers. These grazing areas would then be placed in non-grazing status and would no longer be used for grazing of any livestock.

The appropriation would be for $100 million, which would take approximately 571,000 animal unit months (AUMs) of grazing off BLM and national forestland.

If one rancher in the western states has a permit for 300 cow/calf pairs, for four months of summer grazing, this would equate to about 1,200 AUMs. Using this example, this taxpayer-funded buyout would remove about 475 ranchers from the ranges in the western states in one year.

Without public land grazing, these ranches will not be able to support the same number of cattle that they can with the public land grazing. The ranches that sell their grazing permits will be forced to do the following: 1) cease cattle production; 2) drastically reduce the number of cattle they are currently running; or, 3) subdivide their privately owned ranchlands to replace the income lost from their annual cattle sales (unless they are already wealthy).

Here's what this means to you. You are going to pay the cost of your own community's economic funeral.

As an example, let's say we have a typical rancher who runs 300 head of mother cows. Using central Wyoming as the location for the operation, the rancher would run about four months on BLM-managed land. While the cattle were summering on the BLM, the rancher would be irrigating and haying his base property (privately owned) in preparation for keeping the cattle on the private property for the remaining eight months of the year.

At first the cattle would graze the pasture when they come home; then, when the pasture snows under or runs out, the hay would be fed to the animals until the next grazing season, when the cattle would be turned back out on the BLM managed land and the annual cycle would begin anew.

Now, let's say this same rancher takes the buyout and sells his BLM grazing permit. He would sell his 1,200 AUMs (300 pair x 4 months) for $175 per AUM, which would equal $210,000.

Most of this amount would most likely go to pay off his bills and maybe buy a new pickup, which would be a short-term injection into the local economy. However, the long-term effect will be devastating to the local economy.

You see, while the public ground under the BLM grazing permit supported 1200 AUMs, the base property (privately owned by the rancher) would have to support about 2400 AUMs which would require at least 100 head of mother cows be sold, as the remaining operation would not longer be able to support 300 pairs without the public grazing permit.

When the rancher was fully stocked at 300 pair, he would sell about 285 calves weighing 475 lbs each at a price of $425 totaling $121,125. Now that he has sold his grazing permit, he can only run about 200 pair (actually less than that, but for simplification of math we'll use 200). Now, after the buyout, he will sell about 190 calves at 475 lbs each at a price of $425 totaling $80,750. This is a difference of $40,375.

Now let's use University of Wyoming figures that estimate that one dollar will turn over in a community six times before it falls out of local circulation. When we multiply the $40,375 by six, we see that $242,250, approximately one-quarter of a million dollars, is lost from the local economy each and every year thereafter.

This example illustrates the negative economic impact to a local economy from just one rancher selling his grazing permit back to the government. The total effect from HR 3324, the "Voluntary Grazing Buyout Act," would be over $115 million that would come out of local western economies in just one year, and these economies would suffer this loss directly every year after that.

In other words, the feds will use $100 million (of your tax dollars) to cause your local western economies to suffer an approximate loss of $115 million this year and every year after.

If you know someone who works at a bank, sells gasoline or diesel, sells clothing, sells ranch and cattle supplies or equipment, works in or owns a restaurant or a grocery store, is or works for a veterinarian, drives a cattle truck or works at the livestock auction barn, then you know someone who is going to take a direct economic hit from this "buyout."

You, as a citizen making your living in one of the western states, your family and your friends, will suffer the indirect economic hit resulting from the lack of this economic activity occurring from the grazing of livestock on public lands.

This buyout is an agenda being driven by people who want all cattle off all public land. Guess what, Phase Two of their agenda is to drive all cattle off all private land.

I hope this sheds some light on this simple but critically important issue. If you feel it's important, maybe you ought to share your thoughts with your friends, neighbors, and elected officials. This example uses conservative, average numbers and is simplified for the purposes of illustration. An exact accounting and use of actual costs of production and actual market values would show the actual negative economic impact to local economies to be significantly higher.