$1.35/Month For Public Grazing For Cattle - Yep, & That's Where Obama's Gov. Is Going To Leave It

[hatrack]

The Obama administration yesterday rejected a proposal to raise grazing fees on public lands, a decision that suggests ranchers will continue to be charged below-market prices to graze cattle on federal rangelands. The Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service in separate letters yesterday to environmental groups said other priorities prevent them from pursuing new rules to revise the current grazing fee.

Both agencies also said they disagreed with the groups' legal arguments in a 2005 petition (pdf) challenging the legality of the current fee structure. Joel Holtrop, deputy chief of the National Forest System, said the agency is pursuing separate rulemakings to revise its forest planning rule and respond to Colorado's roadless proposal, each of which have drained agency resources.

Moreover, roughly 4,000 grazing allotments on Forest Service property are in need of environmental analyses that will help determine the best management of rangeland resources, Holtrop said in the letter (pdf). "This major effort will require focused agency range management technical expertise and funding and is not expected to be completed for several years," he said.

A recent order from a U.S. District Court in Montana also requires the Forest Service to prepare an environmental impact statement in order to continue applying aerial chemical fire retardants to fight wildfires, Holtrop said. "Given these and other significant agency priorities, I am reluctant to burden the agency's limited resources by initiating an additional major rulemaking endeavor at the present time," he said.

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/01/19/19greenwire-obama-admin-denies-petition-to-raise-grazing-f-43764.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[Boudica the Lyoness]

1. This is terrible.

$1.35 for a cow/calf pair per month is ridiculous. Here we have to irrigate our pastures and it's a lot more than $1.35/pair every month.

These same welfare cattleman want to kill off all the wild horses as well. This is a shit thing Obama is doing! Does he think that these cowboys, sucking at the government teat, are going to vote for a Democrat? lol. Does he think this is a good thing for the environment?

:mad:

[howaboutme]

2. Corporatist or populist?

We sorely needed an FDR populist government that is willing to reverse the years of redistribution of wealth to banks and corporations and wealthy farmers, but instead we still have a corporationist only this time with a D instead of an R. We had onre with Clinton too. There is no longer that much difference between the 2 Parties believe it or not.

[Gman]

3. Good. Keeps the price of beef down

and that's a good thing.

[hatrack]

4. Thanks for playing, but FAIL

EDIT

The forage provided, and the beef produced from federal public lands is insignificant…
• Percentage of total feed for livestock (cattle and sheep) in the United States supplied from federal lands: 2%.11
• Percentage of American beef produced from federal rangelands: less than 3%.12
Grazing livestock on western federal public lands grazing is a remarkably inefficient means
to produce food and fiber given the generally arid nature of these landscapes…
• Forage consumed by one cow each month: 800-1000 pounds.13
• Forage consumed by each cow/calf unit each day: 26 pounds.14
• Average number of acres required to feed one cow and calf for one month on all Bureau of Land
Management rangelands: 13.7 acres.15
• Number of acres required to feed one cow/calf for one year on farmlands in the East: 2 acres.16
11 USDI-

EDIT

Few western communities are economically dependent on public lands livestock grazing,18
while most public lands ranchers must rely on off-ranch income to support their ranch.19
Local communities are not dependent on public lands ranching, rather public lands ranching
is dependent on the employment, infrastructure, and services in local communities to persist.
• “Bureau of Leisure and Motorhomes” - October 2004: for the first time in the history of the
agency, the Bureau of Land Management collected more revenue from recreational fees
than annual grazing fees. This despite the fact that recreational fees are often collected
through voluntary pay stations, while grazing fees are mandatory and enforced, and BLM
does not charge fees for many recreational offerings on BLM lands.20
• In Nevada (the state with more federal land than any other outside of Alaska), federal public
lands grazing provides 1,228 jobs.21 By comparison, one casino in Las Vegas employs
37,000 people.22
• In Wyoming, agriculture, including ranching, is “largely a ceremonial occupation.”23 Florida
raises more beef cattle than Wyoming.24

EDIT

http://www.sagebrushsea.org/pdf/factsheet_Grazing_Economic_Contributions.pdf

[Gman]

9. Save it for someone that gives a damn

because I don't.

[hatrack]

10. Ooh, you've just cut me to the QUICK, you rogue, you!

:eyes:

Have a nice day!

[Nihil]

12. Yeah, we noticed that in your previous post ...

... but rather than simply calling you a fuckwit, Hatrack tried to point
out the errors in your approach in the hope that you had misunderstood
(rather than being wilfully ignorant).

So much for the polite approach ...
:shrug:

[Kali]

13. um a few things left out there

In the west the land is a mixed bag of private, state, and various forms of federal. Many ranches can't make it on the private land - so what do they do with out the leases? In Arizona a lot of them go to stucco boxes and if that ain't environmentally destructive and unsustainable I sure don't know what is. TNC and the states/feds can't afford that many "parks" and wilderness areas - they can barely manage what they have now (in AZ for example a bunch of state parks are slated for closure)

Ranchers provide a hell of a lot of unmeasured services for the agencies and public that go unmentioned. Cleaning up after the public, "search and rescue", law enforcement, security, soil management, wildlife water and habitat, open space, to name just a few.

The figures for feed and beef produced are a little misleading too. That is processed beef by weight, the fact is more than 20% of conventionally fed beef animals spend the first part of their lives on public lands. And if the trend to local production and free range/grass fed continues then again in the west, public land will play an even more important role than it does now.

Livestock convert sunlight and plant matter that is indigestible to humans to high quality, delicious protein. They can be managed to enhance and improve conditions just as mismanaging them can cause deterioration (again, rarely the kind of degradation housing developments cause!)

Most federal grazing land is waterless and in general not the quality of privately held lands (that is why it never got homesteaded in the first place) so while there is quibble room on the rates paid, there is really no comparison quality and services-wise between the two types of leases. Private leases often provide guarantees on production, and may include all kinds of infrastructure and even caretaking services.

I bet the ratio of costs vs income for recreation programs looks a lot worse.

[jwirr]

5. Just curious. How much of that public land is Indian land administered

by the BIA? Their contracts were negotiated around 100 years ago and they get paid very little for the use of their land.

[udbcrzy2]

6. Wow can hardly believe that

For horses in the Midwest we pay at least $100 per month just for pasture - no barn - no care - just grazing.

[msongs]

7. welfare subsidies for the cow crowd and the beef eaters nt

[enough]

8. It's basically free grazing. $1.35 doesn't even begin to cover the expense to the taxpayers.

snip>

The GAO report found that if the purpose of the grazing fee were to recover expenditures, BLM and the Forest Service would have to charge $7.64 and $12.26 per "animal unit month," several times higher than the current $1.35.

snap>


Looks like the whole grazing program could be scrapped as a waste of taxpayer money.

[joshcryer]

11. Yep, and it hurts the BLM and Forest Service in the long run.