Grazing fees, the economics of elk and cattle

[BigHornRam]

Your saying lands grazed by cattle vs no grazing will have a higher forage yield per acre and hold more wild ungulates?

Done properly, yes. Idaho ranch family I follow for their stewardship practices. They care about the public lands they lease and are good resource for all public land stewards.

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Wild certified organic grass fed beef, straight from our Idaho family ranch and delivered right to your door. Raised on some of the cleanest mountain pastures, this is some of the cleanest and wildest certified organic, grass fed beef in the world.

www.alderspring.com

 

[sclancy27]

I have yet to see it.

I can give you a ranch to contact and they can go through all the metrics they track with you (species diversity, forage production, stocking rates, etc etc.)

 

[Trial153]

Picking fly shit out of chili, for every micro example. There is 100 times the amount grazed to dirt for profits.

 

[sclancy27]

Picking fly shit out of chili, for every micro example. There is 100 times the amount grazed to dirt for profits.

The guys that graze to dirt do not make as much money as the people who do it right. How do I know that, you may ask. Well, the people who graze to dirt were always coming into NRCS for cost share opportunities ($$$) to help them. The ranches that "did it right" never came in asking for money, but rather were looking for technical advice, usually engineering, which we provided.

 

[brymoore]

Done properly, yes. Idaho ranch family I follow for their stewardship practices. They care about the public lands they lease and are good resource for all public land stewards.

Why Alderspring - Alderspring Ranch Organic Grass Fed Beef

Wild certified organic grass fed beef, straight from our Idaho family ranch and delivered right to your door. Raised on some of the cleanest mountain pastures, this is some of the cleanest and wildest certified organic, grass fed beef in the world.

www.alderspring.com

Very nice. I’ll look into becoming a customer to help support their efforts.

 

[kwyeewyk]

This is how it’s supposed to work, but you and I both know that it doesn’t. At least not in my neck of the woods. 100% of even slightly controversial grazing allotments are renewed via 402 authority with no NEPA. Zero opportunity to engage.

That was partly my point, if you've actually engaged in these issues you understand what you're fighting against, it's not a matter of saying how you think it should be and waiving a magic wand, it takes years of often fruitless engagement to even have a chance to effect changes.

402 is a problem, enacted by congress. Grazing fees are set by congress. So to effectively engage in these issues requires advocating for congressional change. But at the same time, engagement at the allotment level can result in positive impact, difficult though it may be.

Accurate. Why is that?

Politics is probably the simplest answer, most groups that oppose grazing have somewhat extreme viewpoints. Hunters are often in a strange spot that is kind of in the middle.

“Grazing is better than the ranchers going out of business and selling to developers” is a big red fish. It’s not a binary decision, as shown by the link you posted above where you tagged me.

I'll defer to @Ben Lamb post for this one, he said it more eloquently than I could. Development is certainly a threat to habitat, wildlife populations, and access. You are right, it's not a binary decision, but it takes great advocates like yourself to help guide that, and at this point it's not the norm.

 

[jmcd]

Picking fly shit out of chili, for every micro example. There is 100 times the amount grazed to dirt for profits.

More fly shit for you…. google “Fred King Wall Creek grazing”
Articles talk about a small area that benefit one or two ungulates

 

[Forkyfinder]

I can give you a ranch to contact and they can go through all the metrics they track with you (species diversity, forage production, stocking rates, etc etc.)

Thats awesome to hear. Do you mind sharing some of what you know they track?

 

[Ben Lamb]

I'll defer to @Ben Lamb post for this one, he said it more eloquently than I could. Development is certainly a threat to habitat, wildlife populations, and access. You are right, it's not a binary decision, but it takes great advocates like yourself to help guide that, and at this point it's not the norm.

Agree that it's not binary. It's profit margin. When an industry operates on a margin of 1-2%, you're pinching every penny.

The example in the midwest that's playing out right now is fruit farming - the traditional ag operations that grew cherries are being turned into Condo parks and gold courses because of imported cherries from Turkey.

If your business operates at a significant loss, you don't stay in business. @Oak deals with a different set of folks and I wouldn't pretend to know the issues of CO public land grazing and I certainly am not up to speed on the domestic/wild sheep conflicts.

 

[BuzzH]

Your saying lands grazed by cattle vs no grazing will have a higher forage yield per acre and hold more wild ungulates?

It's very possible, yes.

 

[sclancy27]

Thats awesome to hear. Do you mind sharing some of what you know they track?

They track a ton of stuff, forage production annually (they have to do this all the time to track their grazing), species diversity, relative abundance of desired vs undesired species, I believe they track forage production as a function of annual precipitation (they have interesting data here), wildlife and types of wildlife, etc. I don't know all of the metric they are following. I know in their area they have tracked annual precipitation and have seen a noticeably decrease over the last 20 yrs. It was interesting to hear how their stocking rates changed in comparison to neighbors with the droughts of 2021 and 2022.

 

[Forkyfinder]

One thing that frustrates me about the conversation.

If we apply the same logic (raising this fee hurts/burns/risks profitability) of this to something else, everyone is in a different tribe. And in principle, most dont agree with the subsidy outside of their tribe

If i started another thread about renewable energy, oil and gas, mining, logging, etc almost any other private enterprise on a public resource - everyone on the inside of their respective tribe feels that they are entitled to a discount piece of public pie because they are more beneficial in their own eyes for one reason or anothed.

 

[jmcd]

One thing that frustrates me about the conversation.

If we apply the same logic (raising this fee hurts/burns/risks profitability) of this to something else, everyone is in a different tribe. And in principle, most dont agree with the subsidy outside of their tribe

If i started another thread about renewable energy, oil and gas, mining, logging, etc almost any other private enterprise on a public resource - everyone on the inside of their respective tribe feels that they are entitled to a discount piece of public pie because they are more beneficial in their own eyes for one reason or anothed.

Very true

 

[Trial153]

If that’s the case then these practices need to implemented as part of the contract for leases. If you not willing to or you don’t meet the goals that are in the contact then take the leases away.

I don’t understand why we are forced to subsidize poor choices. If and area isn’t conducive to raising cattle profitably without subsidies then they shouldn’t have settled their business there.

 

[BuzzH]

One thing that frustrates me about the conversation.

If we apply the same logic (raising this fee hurts/burns/risks profitability) of this to something else, everyone is in a different tribe. And in principle, most dont agree with the subsidy outside of their tribe

If i started another thread about renewable energy, oil and gas, mining, logging, etc almost any other private enterprise on a public resource - everyone on the inside of their respective tribe feels that they are entitled to a discount piece of public pie because they are more beneficial in their own eyes for one reason or anothed.

Are you saying that miners, loggers, oil and gas, etc. are paying "fair market value" for extracting resources off public land?

Laffin'...

 

[Forkyfinder]

Are you saying that miners, loggers, oil and gas, etc. are paying "fair market value" for extracting resources off public land?

Laffin'...

Absolutely not. My points the opposite.

 

[antlerradar]

Your saying lands grazed by cattle vs no grazing will have a higher forage yield per acre and hold more wild ungulates?

One of the first things you learn in range science class is that if grass is not grazed it produces less and less new growth every year. To make matters even worse, the grazing animal will have to pick through all the old dried up grass with little feed value to get at the meager amount of new growth. Unless forced to animals will refuse to eat the old growth and will just continue to re-graze the plants that have already been chewed on. The result is the most desirable plant spices take a beating and are replaced by the less desirable. This is why the grazing systems that @sclancy27 describes are the best. I am sure he can describe it better than I. There are down sides to these systdems though. They require a lot of fencing and water development and many places in the west simply do not have this, especially on public land. We simply do not want the amount of fencing that would be required on public land. The water development required would be nice, all the new roads that would be required to maintain that water development. not so much. A very large ranch tried to implement one of these systems near me, if any one had the man power and money to do this it was them. I wouldn't call it a total failure, but I would say that they were successful ether.

 

[Salmonchaser]

Hell of a deal. Folks actually having an intelligent conversation. Gotta love it.
Side note: $ cwt was about 40.00 in 1950 today when I checked $184 and change.

$40.00 US adjusted for inflation from 1950 equals $520.00 just in case you think ranchers are getting rich of the steak you buy.

 

[Dougfirtree]

The model is already there and it's APR...whom everyone (it seems) hates.

I'm not one of the haters. I think APR is wicked cool. Just not sure we're ready to count on APR, or other similar models to be the safety net on a really large scale.

 

[kwyeewyk]

Another interesting point is that grazing fees have been reduced and then essentially maintained at current rates, regardless of who controls both congress and presidency, for decades, which shows that there is zero political appetite to change it from either side.


Bureau of Land Management and USDA Forest Service Announce 2023 Grazing Fees

Organization
Bureau of Land Management
Media Contact:
Jan 31, 2023

The federal grazing fee for 2023 remains at $1.35 per animal unit month for public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management and $1.35 per head month for lands managed by the USDA Forest Service.

An animal unit month or head month—treated as equivalent measures for fee purposes—is the use of public lands by one cow and her calf, one horse, or five sheep or goats for a month. The newly calculated grazing fee was determined by a congressionally mandated formula and takes effect March 1, 2023. The fee will apply to nearly 18,000 grazing permits and leases administered by the BLM and nearly 6,250 permits administered by the Forest Service.

The formula used for calculating the grazing fee was established by Congress in the 1978 Public Rangelands Improvement Act and has remained in use under a 1986 presidential Executive Order. Under that order, the grazing fee cannot fall below $1.35 per animal unit month / head month, and any increase or decrease cannot exceed 25 percent of the previous year’s level.

The annually determined grazing fee is established using a 1966 base value of $1.23 per animal unit month / head month for livestock grazing on public lands in Western states. The figure is then calculated according to three factors: current private grazing land lease rates, beef cattle prices, and the cost of livestock production. In effect, the fee rises, falls, or stays the same based on market conditions.

The BLM and Forest Service are committed to strong relationships with the ranching community and work closely with permittees to ensure public rangelands remain healthy, productive working landscapes. The grazing fee applies in 16 Western states on public lands administered by the BLM and the Forest Service. The states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Permit holders and lessees may contact their local BLM or Forest Service office for additional information.