Don't you just love it when the good guys win???
Posted on 02/12/2006 10:42:48 AM PST by SandRat
NOGALES, Ariz. ¡ª Rancher Sonny Clarke's job these days isn't just barreling around in his pickup truck to shore up aging dirt watering tanks. It's also fixing up fences knocked down by illegal immigrants and keeping an eye out for drug smugglers.
That's one reason he agrees with a new federal decision to lower public land ranchers' grazing fees by 23 cents per animal-unit month. An animal-unit month is the amount of forage a cow and her calf eat in a month. The fee drop starts March 1, and stems from sharply higher gasoline prices.
Critics say the fee decrease is wrong, since it comes less than five months after a congressional watchdog office warned that the fees don't come close to paying the cost of running the grazing program. The Government Accountability Office report was the second one from that agency since 1991 to suggest that the grazing fee structure is out of whack.
But federal officials have no choice, legally, but to lower the fee right now. The official formula requires the cut to reflect increases in the costs of being a rancher, U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokesman Tom Gorey said. The formula is based partly on the rancher's ability to pay, as a way of keeping the livestock industry healthy, said Linda Hutton, of the National Agricultural Statistics Service in Washington, D.C.
"Unless and until Congress changes the formula, we'll calculate the fee according to the formula," Gorey said.
Only two weeks after the federal decrease takes effect, however, the grazing fee will rise for ranchers whose cattle chow down on Arizona state land. That's because the state fee is based on a different formula, more closely tied to the rising price of calves on the open market.
"We don't use production costs to set our fees," said Richard Hubbard, a deputy state land commissioner. "We're a trust. We're mandated to get the highest and best use on our land. Our mission is different."
Specifically:
*On March 1, the federal fee charged for grazing Forest Service and BLM land will drop from $1.79 to $1.56.
*On March 15, the state fee rises from $2.38 to $2.52. The grazing fee has long been a contentious issue in the West, particularly since then-Interior Secretary and former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt tried and failed to raise ranchers' tabs back in 1994.
Arivaca rancher Bruce Buchanan acknowledged that 15- to 20-cent differences in fees either way won't affect him much. But he said he is affected heavily by high gasoline prices because he must make three to four trips into Tucson each week, at 120 to 150 miles each, to shop or attend meetings. He also drives the ranch's 10,000 federally owned acres and 11,000 state-owned acres almost daily in a pickup to check windmills. "You should check every windmill at least once a week," Buchanan said. "They're pumping water for the cattle." A Tucson-based environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity, recently petitioned the federal government to change the 28-year-old formula that triggered the recent fee cut. The center has long criticized public-lands ranching on environmental grounds.
"We say it makes the community more unstable, this disparity between what public land ranchers pay compared to those on state trust lands and private leased lands," said Greta Anderson, the center's range-restoration director. "Nationally, 23,000 public-lands ranchers benefit from this subsidy, while ranchers on Department of Defense, National Park Service and national grasslands lands pay more. What's that worth to taxpayers?"
Rancher Clarke is familiar with such arguments. At his house, three miles north of the Mexican border on Ruby Road, Clarke opened a scrapbook last week, to reveal a a 1983 newspaper interview with then-Forest Service chief John Crowell, saying that grazing on the national forests is a drain on the treasury.
"Some guy locked up in an office, what does he know about what's happening out here?" said Clarke, whose family has ranched this land for four generations. "We don't deal with opinions. We've learned with experience."
When oil prices rise, it costs him more to drive out to repair battered fences, to maintain wells, to round up cattle and to fix up water tanks. Last week, driving around his federal grazing allotment of nearly 10,000 acres, Clarke stopped numerous times to point out downed fences, gates and support posts.
He blamed the damage on what he called the continued incursion of illegal entrants onto this land from Mexico.
"I'm going to have to fix this and get an army of guys to help me," he said. "It's amazing, these drug guys. They know this country so well. That's what makes this so difficult."
But the Government Accountability Office reported last fall that the Forest Service and the BLM recovered less than one-sixth of the costs of running their grazing programs with fees from ranchers. All federal grazing programs cost taxpayers at least $144 million annually, the agency said.
A 1991 GAO report found that the fee formula double-counts the rancher's ability to pay compared with other factors used in setting the tab.
In 2003, a New Mexico State University economist concluded that the federal grazing fee formula has, over the years, vastly widened the gap between federal-land grazing fees and private-land grazing fees. The difference between the two was $1.23 in 1966, and it's $13 today, said Professor Allen Torell, because the federal formula gives too much weight to production costs and cattle prices.
Torell says it should rely only on the value of forage that cattle eat, and his study suggested competitive bidding for federal grazing leases. He acknowledged in an interview that both public- and private-land ranchers aren't making a fair return on their investment and can justifiably argue they can't afford higher fees.
"But if you ask the question would they pay higher fees, the answer is yes," Torell said. "The state-land fee in New Mexico is five times higher than the federal fee, and less than 1 percent of the state land is not leased."
The fee differences in federal and state lands compared with private land aren't relevant because the private landowners provide fences, water sources and other infrastructure but ranchers must provide it themselves on public lands, said Doc Lane, director of the Arizona Cattle Growers Association. The difference is like renting a furnished house versus paying a fee to use a vacant lot, ranchers say.
As for the Center for Biological Diversity's petition to change the fee formula, Lane said, "It doesn't matter to them what it is. If we're not gone, it ain't good."
Don't you just love it when the good guys win???
Ranchers win one and the Watermelons lose one. I like that arrangement.
Absolutely-100%-of-NOTHING.
This reads more like a pork issue than an environmental one. Another $125 million a year towards the largest federal government in history. Great news.
" This reads more like a pork issue than an environmental one. "
Actually, it's beef...
Happy BTTT
PING
Would you prefer to eat foreign beef?
I'd prefer to pay for beef on my grocery bill instead of my tax bill. More specifically, I'd prefer to not help pay for beef for the 33% and climbing of Americans who don't pay income taxes at all.
If maintaining the domestic cattle industry is that important, put a tariff on beef imports.
With this free trade administration, tarrifs are unheard of.
I favor a feedlot in Central Park.
I don't care how much it went down, I want to know what the federal parasites do with it.
Do they plant more grasslands, remodel Senators' offices or send it to the Palestinian terrorists?
I favor selling the land outright to the highest bidder and letting the free market sort it out.
L
Then get used to eating ToFu Turkeys and Wheat Grass. Right now the Watermelons have the money from folks like Ted Turner and the like who'd buy up the land the meat you eat grazes on.
Ranchers shouldn't be subsidized any more than PBS should be subsidized. And just for the record, I seriously doubt ranchers having to pay market prices to feed their cattle would lead to any thing remotely resembling a shortage of beef in this country.
And also, just for the record, even Ted Turner and Bill Gates combined wouldn't have the money to buy up all the grazing land in the West.
I say get the Government out of the farming and ranching businesses. There's no Constitutional authorization for them to be there anyway. Ranching subsidies don't make any more sense than dairy subsidies.
Western ranchers are just another constituency with their hands out as far as I'm concerned.
L
You should see just how much land is owned by the feds out west you'd be very surprised. As for Ted he has a Ranch in NM that is bigger than the biggest Spanish Land-Grant Ranch. He's his own "Don."
These subsidies for western farmers and ranchers are bleeding money my friend. I'm sorry to disagree with you, but I don't like them any more than I like Federal subsidies for the arts, public tv, dairy farmers, car makers, mohair growers, bee keepers, sugar makers, etc. etc. etc.
I'm sure the vast majority of western ranchers would find a way to keep their businesses running if the free market were allowed to work.
If the Feds just sold off the land and got the hell out of the way I'm sure most of these ranchers would be just fine.
L
If we can't kill giveaway programs that we like, how can we justify killing any other giveaway program that somebody else likes?
It's a trap, bro.
L
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