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

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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!