Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Friday, March 08, 2013
Ranch Tradition: Hanging On
The tools of a rancher’s trade are scattered around the office in
Saginaw. Leather chaps, spurs, dusters, bridles, and sweat-stained
cowboy hats hang on hooks and racks. They’re utilitarian, not décor.
Still, they give the office a rustic appeal. Old black-and-white photos
depict men roping calves and sitting astride horses. The room’s
centerpiece is a big oak desk cluttered with papers and knickknacks but
clearly marked by a wooden plaque inscribed “John M. (Pete) Bonds.” Bonds loads Copenhagen in his bot-tom lip, pets one of several dogs
roaming around, and takes a break from his most important tool of all —
the computer. Missy, one of his three daughters, shares office space with her dad
and helps manage the ranch. They study crop reports, weather patterns,
spreadsheets, and feed and cattle prices from around the world. Thinking
ahead is crucial in ranching, particularly when the industry is reeling
from a myriad of problems due mostly to one sad fact — Texas is mired
in a record-setting drought. “I don’t know if we’ve been smart or lucky,” Bonds said, trying to
explain how his ranch has grown from a 5,000-acre spread north of Fort
Worth to one of the country’s largest cattle operations, with land and
stock scattered across a dozen states and Canada. Bonds is a burly, raspy-voiced cattleman who wears scuffed boots and
denim clothes and lives in the same house where he was born more than 60
years ago. Cuss words and country expressions sprinkle his speech, his
hair is disheveled, and he’d look more at home on a horse or a tractor
than hunched over a computer with “Argentina Crop Report” glowing
onscreen. But the fact that Bonds is surfing the ’net and can talk with
precise insight about every facet of the cattle industry proves he’s
smarter than he is lucky. Even so, he’s not immune to the mounting pressures that have put Texas ranchers in a vise in recent years. “We’ve had to cut our cow numbers down by about half since 2010,” he said...Ranchers like to say that Texas is in perpetual drought broken only
by occasional floods. Even the worst drought, they figure, will break
eventually. “Five years from now we’re going to be talking about an expanding
cattle herd in the United States and increased beef production because I
assume the drought will be over,” said David Anderson, a Texas A&M
University livestock economist. But many hydrologists and climate scientists no longer think that
assumption is a safe one. Some believe that the current arid conditions
are going to become the new normal for much of Texas and the Southwest,
as global warming advances. In that case, the wait for rain and grass
and, therefore, cattle herds to come back to past levels could be a long
one indeed. John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist, said much of Texas is
in a long-term drought that could last another 15 or 20 years with only
intermittent wet spells. “What we’ve seen so far may continue: a few dry years and a wet
year, a few dry years and a wet year,” he said. “We will get rain sooner
or later, but it is likely that there will be another drought to
follow.”...more
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1 comment:
If folks don't take care of the land during drought, no amount of rainfall or snow will bring back the grass in their life times!
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