AGRICULTURE A

Agriculture is South Dakota’s number one industry and in Butte County, it’s a way of life.

“It’s handed down from generation to generation around here,” said TJ Swan, formerly with the Butte County Cooperative Extension Service. “If you’ve got the land to do it and the gumption to fight the markets, it’s just what you do.”

“South Dakota has always been and will continue to be an agricultural state,” said Bill Evan, with the South Dakota Department of Agriculture. He noted that the economic impact of agriculture in South Dakota exceeds $20.9 billion and employs more than 173,000 people, directly and indirectly.

According to an agricultural census, there are a total of 659 farms in Butte County, making up a total of approximately 1.2 million acres. Of that, a total amount of 163,375 acres is used for cropland.

The largest agriculture operations are mostly cattle production and farming.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Butte County inventoried 68,000 head of cattle in 2022.

And, he said, because of the open prairie land, it makes for excellent crop production, which in turn, provides feed for cattle producers.

“When the rains are heavy in the spring around here, it can make for a healthy amount of forage for cattle,” Swan said.

“Western wheatgrass is one of the best forage for cattle and we certainly have a lot of that around here.”

Corn is among the most produced crop in Butte County; alfalfa and soybean production come in right after.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Butte County ranks number one in sheep production, with at least 42,000 head. Statewide, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports there are approximately

235,000 head of sheep and approximately 5.2 million head nationwide.

And when it comes time for ranchers to earn their payday for the year, they ship their livestock to auctions. Both the Belle Fourche Livestock Auction and St. Onge Livestock Auction are major players for selling cattle.

The Belle Fourche Livestock Auction was originally built in 1935, with a rich history and a staple for economic development in Butte County.

The stockyards exist because one man had a vision of building a town around a railroad. Though the train system is no longer utilized to transport the cattle, the location of the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad was the reason it exists.

According to history records, the Belle Fourche area was first settled in 1876 after gold was discovered in the Black Hills. Shortly thereafter, Seth Bullock came to the Black Hills and settled around the Belle Fourche River. Bullock, a frontier marshal and rancher, offered a free right of way and offered to build the terminal to the proposed railroad company looking to build a new rail system through the Black Hills. That location at the Old Middle Creek shipping yards is where the present day Belle Fourche Livestock Auction sits. By 1895, Belle Fourche was shipping 2,500 carloads of cattle east every month during the busy seasons, making it the world’s largest livestock shipping point at that time. Most of the cattle were shipped to markets in Chicago and Omaha, Neb.

To the south is St. Onge Livestock. Since 1981, the facility has been home to the beef, sheep, and goat auction market.

Just to the northeast, in Newell, thousands of sheep are sold at the St. Onge Livestock’s sheep yards.

Just like cattle, sheep has long been raised on the grassland around Belle Fourche. While the sheep yards serve as the sale point for the live animals, their shorn wool is run through another Belle Fourche company.

Center of the Nation Wool, Inc., markets between 4.5-5 million pounds of wool per year. Considering the ideal sheep rearing conditions the region provides, the future looks bright for the wool-marketing corporation.

Larry Prager, CEO and general manager since 1993, said that South Dakota was settled and homesteaded with sheep, and the producer-owned wool corporation has been an integral part of that history since the development of the area.

The corporation serves a diverse group of 1,500 producers from South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Nebraska and runs the gamut from people with a few sheep in their backyard to the large production sheep ranches.

“We handle some of the highest quality wool in the United States,” he said. “We have better color, higher yielding, and really a tradition of quality wool in Belle Fourche.”

Since the start of COVID-19, Center of the Nation Wool, Inc. has experienced some of the affects of international delays. These complications drove the company to build a 10,500 square feet addition, which was completed in the summer of 2022 for around $600,000.

The addition is mainly used for inventory and can store up to 1.5 million pounds of wool. Prager said it has also helped with storage during their busiest season — spring. “We can sell wool a lot faster than we can deliver it to our customers. In the springtime, it’s probably coming in twice as fast,” said Prager. “We’ve been leasing storage here in Belle Fourche for quite a while, like the old airplane hanger for the past three years. The warehouse is an investment.”