LMD May 2019

Riding Herd “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”

– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

May 15, 2019 • www.aaalivestock.com

Volume 61 • No. 5

Even When We Win, We Lose

BY LEE PITTS

T

here had been two huge lawsuits in my long career in the cattle business dating back to 1973 that I thought, at the time, had the potential to put real price discovery into the cattle valuation equation. Twice I thought that ranchers would finally prevail in court and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the big monopolist packers and retailers were using their market power to reduce the prices paid to ranchers for their cattle. And twice the ranchers did prevail in front of juries.

Now you can add a third historic lawsuit to that short list of lawsuits. And once again I’m optimistic that, just as happened the past two times, ranchers will win once again.

But, as happened with the others, will some judge then snatch our victory ruthlessly away?

Strike Three Or Grand Slam?

NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING

On April 23rd R-CALF announced they had launched a lawsuit against the BIG FOUR beef packers, Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef Packing Company, who collectively purchase and process over 80 percent of the America’s fed cattle.

R-CALF just didn’t go down the street and hire the first and cheapest lawyer they ran into.

They engaged the services of two antitrust and securities litigation heavyweights, Scott and Scott Attorneys at Law has significant experience in prosecuting antitrust actions throughout the United States and Europe..

The other firm R-CALF hired is Cafferty Clobes Meriwether & Sprengel and they’ve had lots of experience representing trading firms, brokers and investors in complex antitrust, commodities and securities litigation

Some cowboys have too much tumbleweed in their blood to settle down. throughout the country from its offices in Chicago, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

These two legal heavyweights filed their class action lawsuit in federal district court in Chicago on behalf of R-CALF and four cattle-feeding ranchers from Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Wyoming. R-CALF’s lawsuit alleges that the BIG FOUR violated antitrust laws, the Packers and Stockyards Act, and the Commodity Exchange Act by unlawfully depressing the prices paid to U.S. ranchers. The lawsuit alleges they inflated their own margins and profits illegally from at least January 1, 2015 through the present and the class action lawsuit seeks to recover the losses suffered by two classes believed harmed by the BIG FOUR’S alleged conduct during this period. The first class includes cattle producers who sold fed cattle to any one of the BIG FOUR from Janu-

ary 2015 to the present. The second class consists of traders who transacted live cattle futures or options contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange from January 2015 to the present.

Naughty, Naughty R-CALF’s lawsuit, which is supported by witness accounts, including a former employee of one of the BIG FOUR, trade records, and economic evidence, alleges the BIG FOUR conspired to artificially depress fed cattle prices through various means, including: • collectively reducing their slaughter volumes and purchases of cattle sold on the cash market in order to create a glut of slaughter-weight fed cattle; • manipulating the cash cattle trade to reduce price competition amongst themselves, including by enforcing an antiquated queuing convention

through threats of boycott and agreeing to conduct substantially all their weekly cash market purchases during a narrow 30-minute window on Fridays; • transporting cattle over uneconomically long distances, including from Canada and Mexico, in order to depress U.S. fed cattle prices; and • deliberating closing slaughter plants to ensure the underutilization of available U.S. beef packing capacity.

These alleged practices are estimated to have depressed fed cattle prices by an average of 7.9% since January 2015, causing significant harm to American ranchers.

“R-CALF USA is taking this historic action to fulfill its promise to its members to prevent the BIG FOUR packers from capturing the U.S. cattle market from independent U.S. cattle producers,” said R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard. He added “We have exhausted all other remedies but now, with the expert help of Scott and Scott and Cafferty Clobes, our members’ concerns will be addressed and we hope U.S. cattle ranchers can be compensated for years of significant losses.”

The impact of the packers’ conduct on American cattle ranchers has been catastrophcontinued on page two

The Missing

BY CANDICE NORWOOD /GOVERNING.COM

“N

una, I’ll be back. I love you.”

Those words are etched in Cissy Strong’s mind when she recalls the last day she saw her younger sister, Rosenda.

Cissy and Rosenda are Native American women who live in southern Washington on the Yakama Indian Reservation. On Oct. 2, 2018, the sisters spoke briefly as Rosenda, 31, got ready to head out with a group of friends. One of those friends picked her up around 7 p.m., and they headed to Legends Casino on the reservation.

Cissy has not heard from her sister since.

“She would never not tell me where she is,” Cissy says. Rosenda is loud and social. She likes to go out with friends, but her four children -- two boys and two girls -- are her world. “They had all her attention,” Cissy says. “She is just a joyful, proud mom.”

After four days of calling hospitals, jails, friends and family, Cissy filed a report with tribal police on the Yakama Reservation. At first there was pushback from the officers. “She’s probably still partying,” Cissy recalls them saying. Several days later, the Yakama police and then the FBI launched a search for Rosenda, yielding many questions but few answers. Cissy still hears whispers around town. Rosenda supposedly left the casino with a friend, but no one knows for sure where she might have gone.

Rosenda’s photo now circulates on webpag-

es and social media groups for other missing Native Americans. In one widely shared post, 13-year-old Marisa Ellison poses for what looks like a school portrait. Her dark brown hair cascades over her shoulders, and a dimple pierces her left cheek. Ellison vanished from her home in Oklahoma last year, a few weeks after Rosenda Strong. Ellison was found several months later and returned to her family. But the list of other missing women and girls goes on, highlighting a reality that has plagued native communities for generations.

Native American women living on reservations are murdered at alarmingly high rates.

In some counties, the number is more than 10 times the national average, according to the Department of Justice. Nationwide, murder is the third-leading cause of death for indigenous women. Thousands more face the threat of violence and assault. “I hear these stories almost every day where native mothers are preparing their daughters for when they’re raped,” says Sarah Deer, a lawyer, activist and professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas. “Not ‘if,’ but ‘when.’”

Eighty-four percent of American Native and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, according to a 2016 report from the National Institute of Justice.

Of that group, more than half experienced sexual violence. Nearly all of these women were continued on page three

by LEE PITTS

I Can Explain Everything

A

ny day now I expect to get an e mail from one of the many editors of the magazines and newspapers who run this column informing me they no longer want my essays because I can’t relate to the millennial generation. To which I say, “Their parents can’t even relate to them and they’ve been living in the same house with them for 26 years, so how do they expect me to?”

They say this because of...

• My continuing reference to things or people that only old geezers like myself have heard of, such as Pall Mall cigarettes, Rexall Drug, soda fountains and the two Andys, Andy Griffith and Andy Williams.

• The fact they are unable to reach me on my cell phone, find me on Facebook or “tweet” to me. Maybe that’s because I’m not on Facebook, I don’t twitter tweets and all the phones in our house have something called “cords”.

I continue to refer to countries that no longer exist, like Yugoslavia, and sports teams that haven’t been around for decades such as the Seattle Seahawks and New Orleans Jazz.

• The handful of millenials who do read my column don’t like it when I make fun of their lip jewelry, colorful tattoos or that they are struggling to repay their $200,000 college loan while writing an advice column on their blog while living in their parent’s basement.

• I continue to use words that are no longer used by the general public such as cattywampus, chucklehead, dance hall, varmints, lunch bucket, cooties, gallivanting, persnickety and pipsqueaks.

• I also use too many phrases that the majority of Americans have never heard, such as twiddle your thumbs, hubba hubba, jumping Jehosaphat, and tan your hide. When I refer to “eenie meenie mo” my readers confuse them with some hip hop group from New Jersey.

• Quite often I refer to breeds or diseases of farm animals that haven’t been around since Hector was a pup. Oops, there I go again, using phrases that no one has ever heard before.

continued on page five

Page 2

Livestock Market Digest

May 15, 2019

WIN ic,” said David Scott, managing partner of Scott and Scott.

“The health and integrity of the American cattle industry is being permanently and irrevocably damaged, independent ranchers are systematically being driven out of business, and consumers are losing the ability to buy high-quality American beef with confidence.”

“The packers’ alleged conduct has had a direct and significant impact on the commodities underlying CME live cattle futures and options contracts,” said Anthony Fata, partner, Cafferty Clobes. “It is imperative for investors to maintain confidence in this vital financial market, relied upon by ranchers, traders and others to manage the risks associated with their businesses.”

Losing Victories Old timers may remember another lawsuit by a friend of mine, Irving Bray of King City, California, and others who sued Safeway Stores and others for price fixing in a 1975 lawsuit that made big headlines almost weekly in livestock newspaper across the country for years.

Against great odds the ranchers won their case and were awarded millions upon millions of dollars.

According to my friend Irving, the ranchers never saw a dime of it and neither did his heirs.

Then in 1990 another group of friends of mine sought relief in the courts by accusing IBP of trying to depress cattle prices thus swindling them, and 30,000 other cattlemen, out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

It was called “the cattle industry’s biggest court case in more than a century” when the group of influential cattlemen sued IBP for price fixing. The case came to be known as Pickett v. IBP, Inc. and was filed the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Alabama.

To give their lawsuit a better

continued from page one

chance for success those bringing the suit had to be active in all phases of the cattle business and that they were! They included some of the biggest heavyweights in the industry including Henry Pickett who was a backgrounder and stocker operator who sometimes retained title to the cattle in the feedlot and then sold them to IBP, which was later gobbled up by Tyson. Mike Callicrate was a feed yard operator at the time who is perhaps best known today as the owner of the Callicrate Bander and for retailing beef directly to consumers.

Sam Britt is a friend of mine who was cow/calf producer and a stocker operator at the time as was Johnny Smith, who was a vital cog at the Fort Pierre Livestock Auction and was one of the founders of R-CALF. Of course, Pat Goggins was one of the most important and respected cattlemen who ever lived who has his portrait hung at the Saddle and Sirloin club along with other important cattlemen of their time. And these were just some of the plaintiffs.

This group of brave cattlemen filed their case on July 11, 1996. The suit was brought under the Packers and Stockyards Act and claimed IBP used unfair and anticompetitive marketing agreements to deflate cash fed-cattle prices. The jury in the case originally found that IBP’s procurement methods did indeed damage nationwide cash cattle prices over an eight-year period.

The Plaintiffs alleged, and the jury agreed, that the packers as­sembled large supplies of captive cattle for slaugh­ ter which allowed them to stay out of the cash cattle market thus depressing prices for feedlot ready cattle. As the Plaintiffs proved, IBP and the other packers set an unfair and unreasonably low price for cattle and when the Plaintiffs rejected the low price, IBP and the other three packers slaughtered cattle from their

own captive supply and/or exclusive marketing agreements, which left the Plain­tiffs without a buyer for their cattle. In the end the Plaintiffs had to settle for lower prices.

The Plaintiffs also proved that cattle pro­ducers who supplied cattle to IBP through exclusive marketing/purchaser contracts received preferential treatment because they received a higher price for their cattle and also provided a constant, ready market for their own cattle. The Plaintiffs also proved that the price paid for beef cattle decreased due to IBP’s and the other packers’ practices, at the same time IBP was making record high profits.

Eight years after the case was filed on February 17, 2004, an Alabama jury found IBP, now owned by Tyson, did indeed violate the law causing nearly $1.3 billion in producer market losses.

I remember the decision well and recall feeling giddy at the thought that the BIG FOUR would finally be brought to heel. I had no doubt that when presented with the facts any group of 12 jurors in the country couldn’t help but find IBP guilty. This reporter felt vindicated for all the stories I’d written about the monopolistic power of the BIG FOUR. Just as high as I was on February 17, that was as low as I felt on April 23, when the judge presiding over the case overturned the verdict, claiming the jury was required to find Tyson “had a legitimate business justification for its conduct.”

Are you kidding? IBP/Tyson’s legitimate business justification was to make more money! What was the judge thinking? Surely, I thought, the Supreme Court would uphold the original jury verdict and overturn the judge’s decision. But the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Twice American ranchers had won a major victory, and twice we had lost in doing so.

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Thus It Has Always Been One of the most definitive works on the illegal behavior of the monopolist’s marketing behavior in the food industry was written by Leo Polopolus and James S. Wershow. According to them, there’s a lot more price fixing going on than the average farmer or rancher is aware of.

For example, “During the time period between 1935-1974 there were 8,427 private antitrust cases filed in federal courts for price fixing. For the much shorter 1966-1977 period, there were 56 food price-fixing cases and 44 price discrimination cases which involved appellate actions filed by the U.S. Justice Department, private parties, and the Federal Trade Commission. Because most price-fixing cases are settled out of court, or never reach the appellate court level, the actual number of such cases involving food firms is not readily known for the United States at any particular point in time.”

We just know there’s a lot of it and roughly 20 percent of all price fixing cases in the U.S involve food products.

“It is well known that the federal policy to curb price-fixing agreements was central to the enactment of the Sherman Act of 1890,” wrote Polopolus and Wershow. The authors use the word “cartel” when they refer to the monopolists of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Back then the big corporations used tools like exclusive sales agencies, price-fixing committees, and customer and geographic sales allocations to achieve monopoly powers. The authors say these arcane practices have mostly been eliminated from the contemporary scene and now they use much more complicated practices, like captive supplies and the futures markets and derivatives to achieve even better results.

“Despite the disappearance of United States based formal cartels, there has been considerable litigation in recent years over pricing behavior of individual firms,” say Polopolus and Wershow. “A wide array of agricultural and food industries have been involved in these actions. Most of it involved price fixing.”

“The term “price fixing” is meant to refer primarily to price agreements among rival sellers,” say the authors. “Depending on the nature of a par-

ticular case, litigation involving rigged prices, exchange of price information, and/or price discrimination also may be closely related to price fixing. The aim and result of every price-fixing agreement, if it is effective, is the elimination of one form or another of competition. The power to fix prices, whether reasonably exercised or not, involves power to control the market and to set arbitrary and unreasonable prices.”

Upsetting The Apple Cart One of the problems that judges have with these types of cases is coming up with a dollar amount the producers got cheated out of. “If price fixing occurs at one stage of a complicated agricultural marketing system,” say Polopolus and Wershow, “it is extremely difficult to estimate the impact of the violation on prices in all subsequent stages, particularly if a raw agricultural product is used in several different processed products and sold in disparate markets.”

There is also the matter of treble damages being awarded in antitrust litigation which the judges know might very well put some of the monopolistic companies out of business, thus upsetting the apple cart. Or in this case, the meat counter. That’s when judges play God and either reduce damages due, or totally dismiss the jury verdict all together.

As R-CALF is about to find out, litigation costs in antitrust cases can be huge without any guarantee of recouping those costs. But R-CALF is taking this action because they promised their members they would do so. We wouldn’t be in this predicament if other industry organizations kept their promises like R-CALF is doing.

If the ranchers thought they had a good case in 1975 and 2004, just imagine how much stronger their case is now. Take JBS for example, you don’t think a company who has had its officers and owners thrown in jail in Brazil for bribing Brazilian politicians, and for illegally selling rotten meat for export, would stoop to a little price fixing now and then do you?

Who knows, maybe the third time will be a charm for American ranchers. We’ve already had two moral victories, this time it would be nice to see the guilty packers pay cattlemen for their crimes in cold hard cash.

May 15, 2019

Livestock Market Digest

Page 3

MISSING attacked by someone from a different racial group -- a rarity for most violent crime victims. A total of 5,656 cases for missing native women or girls had been entered into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database by the end of 2017, with 633 of those cases still active.

That’s 0.7 percent of all active NCIC missing persons cases, a seemingly small share.

But those numbers only tell a fraction of the story. Many native people choose not to report crimes, a result of long-existing tensions between police and indigenous communities.

When a crime is reported, police agencies do not always prioritize missing native cases.

What’s more, different police departments have different requirements for how they share case information with national databases like the NCIC. Other inconsistencies with data collection and jurisdictional communication complicate things even further.

The fact is that native women and girls are going missing around North America, and no one knows exactly how many.

The problem isn’t new, but federal and state lawmakers have been slow to address it. That’s beginning to change: Bills have been introduced in recent years in Arizona, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Washington state that aim to build tribal relations, collect research, promote transparency and provide resources to law enforcement. But with native communities divided across 50 states, thousands of counties and more than 300 federal reservations, pinpointing a solution will not be an easy thing to do.

Annita Lucchesi, a human trafficking survivor, knows firsthand the dangers native women face in their day-to-day lives.

Now a doctoral student with the University of Lethbridge in Canada, Lucchesi was frustrated with the lack of data on

continued from page one

women who go missing around the United States and Canada.

Four years ago, she decided to start compiling information herself “by any means necessary.”

Canadian news media had already begun discussing missing native cases as a larger national problem. But little of that was happening in the United States.

Lucchesi filed Freedom of Information Act requests, waded through news archives and online missing persons databases, reached out to native families, and scoured social media pages looking for cases. Today she operates the largest database specifically targeting missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, transgender individuals and two-spirit people, a traditional third-gender category that’s recognized by many native communities. Her database now includes cases dating back to the 1900s for about 3,500 missing and murdered individuals, but she estimates an additional 20,000 need to be added.

Lucchesi’s research has received widespread news coverage over the last two years, helping to push the conversation about missing natives into the spotlight. “I think the most important thing is that it’s been healing for families to have that sense of validation, to have that sense of finally being heard,” she says. “Because so many families never get the chance to be heard.”

Like many other advocates, Lucchesi says the problem is rooted in systematic racism and colonialism. American Indian and Alaska Native people are not only among the country’s smallest minority populations, but they also have very little legislative representation. Just this year, Democratic Reps. Deb Haaland of New Mexico and Sharice Davids of Kansas were sworn in as the country’s first Native American congresswomen. Of the country’s 7,383 state legislators, only 82 are Native American. For generations, na-

tive people have felt erased from society and treated as an afterthought; that history, say Lucchesi and others, also manifests in the way missing native cases are processed and investigated by law enforcement.

State and local agencies face wide-ranging challenges when it comes to addressing any missing or unidentified persons case.

Bodies may sit unidentified for years. Scores of prosecutable homicides go unsolved. Many agencies lack resources, manpower and training in a number of areas. In Native American communities, these shortcomings are even more apparent.

Lucchesi partnered with the Seattle-based Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI) to release a report last November assessing the “national data crisis” surrounding missing indigenous women and girls. Researchers contacted law enforcement agencies in 71 U.S. cities. Some 48 of them either did not provide data or “provided partial data with significant compromises.” While the report samples a small share of all U.S. cities, UIHI nonetheless provides one of the most comprehensive assessments available of police data collection on Native American cases. Among the challenges highlighted by the report are racial misclassifications of victims. Police in Fargo, N.D., for example, told researchers their data system defaults to white if a victim’s race is not specified in a missing persons report. In cases from Seattle, victims marked “N” for Negro in the 1960s and ’70s were often misinterpreted to be Native American. Or consider Billings, Mont. The UIHI report identified 17 cases there that were not in law enforcement records, the second highest of the 71 cities after Gallup, N.M. On the whole, natives accounted for 30 percent of Montana’s missing women and girls in July 2017, despite making up just 3 percent of the state’s population.

Racial stereotypes about sub-

stance abuse, sex work or criminal history among native people also prompt some law enforcement agencies to take a missing persons report less seriously, researchers say. “There are times when police departments will ask questions that perhaps they don’t ask of white communities,” says Esther Lucero, chief executive officer of the Seattle Indian Health Board, which oversees UIHI. “‘Are you involved in sex trafficking? Are you a drug user?’

All of these questions that begin to change the narrative and shift blame onto the victim.”

When a native person goes missing, one of the fundamental questions is who’s in charge.

“Specifically, when you are in Indian Country, jurisdiction gets really weird,” says Caroline LaPorte, senior policy adviser on native affairs at the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. “In a lot of these cases, there’s confusion by law enforcement about who is supposed to respond. Is it state law enforcement or Bureau of Indian Affairs law enforcement? Or is it the FBI?” There are approximately 326 reservations under federal jurisdiction. Tribal police are typically the first line of defense for crimes committed on reservations. But there’s a catch: A 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision stripped tribal police and courts of the right to criminally prosecute non-native offenders.

The reauthorization of the U.S. Violence Against Women Act in 2013 partially restored these rights, allowing tribes to investigate, prosecute, convict and sentence non-natives in cases of domestic or dating violence.

Even with the change, tribal police are underfunded and understaffed. For example, about 50 officers patrol South Dakota’s 3,500-square-mile Pine Ridge Reservation, an area that’s larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Complicating the issue further are reservations in half a dozen states -- Alaska,

California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon and Wisconsin -- that fall under state jurisdiction, not federal. And what if a resident of a tribal reservation is abducted or murdered off the reservation?

Jurisdictional nuances like these can significantly slow down investigations.

The Violence Against Women Act is up for reauthorization again this year. Native activists want to amend the law to extend tribal criminal jurisdiction of non-natives in cases of child abuse, sex trafficking, rape and murder. That change would help clear up some jurisdictional challenges for much of Indian Country. But more than 70 percent of native people do not live on reservations. For states and localities where most natives live, solutions may come only after governments improve their data.

Washington state Republican Rep. Gina Mosbrucker is one of the lawmakers leading the effort to address that problem. “We knew that there is no number in the state of Washington [on missing native women]. There was no database.” The ability to provide hard numbers -- even an estimate -- can help lawmakers assess how extensive the problem is and where to allocate funding.

The unsolved indigenous cases also highlight broader, more systemic challenges with the way this country handles missing persons reports. States and localities each have their own missing persons databases that differ from the FBI’s NCIC database. All of these are also different from the Department of Justice’s National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. That database, known as NamUs, was launched in 2007 as part of an effort to enhance data sharing across jurisdictions and improve access to forensic services to help solve cases.

One significant difference between the NamUs and the continued on page four

Page 4

Livestock Market Digest

May 15, 2019

BLM Now Hopes Hammond’s Cattle Can Reduce Fire Risk

BY GREG HENDERSON WWW.DROVERS.COM

S

teven Hammond (second from left) and Dwight Hammond (fourth from left), were pardoned by President Trump last year and their grazing permits restored early this year. ( Courtesy of the Hammond family ) In a most ironic twist in a western saga that has featured more than a few twists, the Bureau of Land Management hopes cattle from Dwight and Steven Hammond – ranchers the U.S. government prosecuted for starting range fires – can reduce a fire risk on the high desert of eastern Oregon.

The Hammond’s long-running dispute with the federal government ended with prison sentences for arson — and later inspired the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation.

President Trump pardoned the Hammonds in July of last year.

On January 2, 2019, former Interior Secretary Ryan K. Zinke ordered the renewal

of a 10-year grazing permit for Hammond Ranches Inc., run by the elder Hammond and his son Steve.

Earlier this month, part of the Hammond’s grazing allotment was deemed a fire hazard by the BLM – due to the fact the land has not been grazed for five years. The absence of grazing was due, of course, to the fact the Hammonds were in jail and their grazing permits had been revoked.

On April 9, the BLM released a new environmental assessment for grazing on the Hammond Allotment, one of the largest of several the family uses in the high desert of eastern Oregon, where rolling hills are broken by rocky outcroppings. The BLM notes cattle have not grazed the land for five years because the ranchers’ permits weren’t renewed in 2014.

The wildfire risk has neighbors concerned, many of whom have sent letters to the BLM. Since the 5,800-acre Hammond Allotment has

been vacant, the BLM said in its proposal that crested wheatgrass is now a “standing biomass that has reduced the health and vigor of the stand.

The standing biomass has also created additional risk of wildfire spread because of the amount and distribution of cured fine fuel.”

The Hammonds were convicted of arson for two fires, one in 2001 and the other in 2006, which together burned a few hundred acres. Prosecutors, however, used the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 in calling for the two to serve mandatory five-year sentences for the convictions.

Originally, however, U.S. District Judge Michael R. Hogan said such a lengthy sentence “would not meet any idea I have of justice, proportionality ... it would be a sentence which would shock the conscience to me.”

Hogan instead sentenced Dwight Hammond to three months in prison and his son

Hammond Family Steven Hammond to a year and one day. The two served their time and went back to their ranch, but in October 2015, federal prosecutors asked that they be resentenced to the full five years. A federal appeals court ordered them back to prison.

That was the spark that set in motion the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupa-

MISSING

tion in Oregon, led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy, the sons of Cliven Bundy who was at the center of his own standoff with the BLM in Nevada in 2014.

The Bundy brothers were acquitted in October, 2016, of federal conspiracy and weapons charges stemming from the Malheur takeover. Charges against Cliven Bundy were dismissed in January, 2018.

continued from page three

awareness about their services among both the public and the police. Many law enforcement agencies aren’t even aware that NamUs exists. Only four states -- Illinois, Michigan, New York and Tennessee -- require law enforcement agencies to enter missing persons records into NamUs. One federal bill, dubbed “Billy’s Law,” would have addressed some of these concerns by combining the NamUs and NCIC databases.

Introduced in the U.S. House in 2011, the bill never made it out of committee. “I really wish there was a way that as a state we could mandate all being on the same system,” says Greg Wilking, an officer with the Salt Lake City Police Department.

“We have 14 jurisdictions in this valley alone, and we are now trying to move toward a valley-wide [data] system.”

Lawmakers have introduced some pieces of legislation specifically aimed at indigenous cases. Savanna’s Act, first in-

ELM

troduced in Congress in 2017, would mandate updated data, standardized law enforcement guidelines, and training for law enforcement agencies in addressing cases of missing and murdered indigenous people.

The measure passed the Senate but stalled in the House; it is expected to be reintroduced this year. At the state level, legislation has been introduced in Minnesota, Montana and North Dakota seeking to improve communication between state, local and tribal authorities to investigate missing persons cases, in addition to tracking just how many cases there are.

Many places are looking to Washington state as a model.

Lawmakers in Olympia last year passed legislation championed

by Mosbrucker that tasks the Washington State Patrol (WSP) to work with tribes, local law enforcement and the Department of Justice to compile data on missing native women. The measure also directs the WSP to

FARMINGTON

NCIC databases is public access. Unlike with NCIC, the general public has the ability to submit information or search for someone directly on NamUs. The submitted profile -- verified by the NamUs team -- contains details such as physical descriptions, last known whereabouts or the clothing a potential victim was wearing. NamUs staff can also upload and view biometric information such as fingerprints and dental records. A 2016 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office stated that “in fiscal year 2015, 3,170 long-term missing persons cases were reported to NamUs while 84,401 missing persons records reported to NCIC became long-term cases.” It added that “inefficiencies exist in the use of information on missing and unidentified persons primarily because there is no mechanism to share information between the systems.”

Part of the challenge for the NamUs team is building

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issue a final report, due in June, with recommendations for how to increase resources. The agency hosted meetings with native communities around the state to hear their stories and get a sense of where to begin, says WSP Capt. Monica Alexander.

Still, finding concrete numbers for the final report has proven to be difficult. “The only way we can help the legislature see the problem and advocate for funding is to be able to get information,” she says. “It’s been really wonderful meeting people and opening the dialogue, but it’s been really challenging because I don’t feel like I have anything tangible to take back.”

Mosbrucker says she understands the difficulties of gathering comprehensive information, but she is not waiting for the final report to take action. In January, she introduced another bill that would establish two tribal liaison positions for the WSP to build better relations between tribes and law enforcement. It

would also establish a task force to develop a “best practices protocol” for police to follow.

Mosbrucker says she hopes to see more from other states.

“It’s not a tribal versus non-tribal issue,” she says. “We have to find these people, they’re in every single state -- moms and daughters and aunts. We have to find answers and we have to find resources.”

Today on the Yakama Reservation, 200 miles from the Washington Legislature, Rosenda Strong’s family and friends are still searching. It’s been six months since her sister’s disappearance, and Cissy has mixed emotions as law enforcement agencies continue their investigation. Rosenda’s photo still circulates on social media and at local businesses and agencies, but the press coverage has slowed. At this point, Cissy says all she can do is keep sharing her sister’s story, pushing for change and hoping that answers will one day come.

May 15, 2019

Livestock Market Digest

The View FROM THE BACK SIDE

Wolves of All Kinds

BY BARRY DENTON

W

olves come in all forms these days, some animal and some human. We spent over one hundred years getting rid of predators such as the Mexican Grey Wolf that was almost extinct by the 1970’s.

In 1998 under the federal program “the Endangered Species Act” this Mexican Grey Wolf was reintroduced to Arizona and New Mexico. In Arizona at last count there were 116 wolves in Arizona alone. It sounds to me that the organizations that promote this nonsense are disappointed in the numbers after 20 years.

Last week in Prescott, Arizona, Mark Cook with an organization called “Wolves Of The Rockies” did a presentation to middle school, high school, and college students about the attributes of increasing the numbers of the Mexican Grey Wolf in Arizona and New Mexico.

Number one, it is a great example of how lost in the leftist agenda our public schools are.

Only one side of the issue was presented, so why would this be allowed in a public school? I can guarantee that most children attending the presentation have never lived in an environment where a wolf can have devastating effects on their own family and how well they live.

According to the December 31st, 2018 edition of the Free Range Report, “In Catron County, New Mexico, aggressive Mexican gray wolves are terrorizing residents. Here wolves are killing pets in front yards in broad daylight, and forcing parents to stand guard when children play outside.

The threat has become so ominous the local school district has decided to place wolf shelters (kid cages) at school bus stops to protect school children from wolves while they wait for the bus or parents.”

Since when, should children be shut in cages, so wolves can roam free? This is complete regression in my view. Funny, how these left-wing organizations never want to reintroduce a nearly extinct species of rats back into the cities where they live.

However, they are more than happy to try and tell rural people how they should live with their predators. Here is a partial quote from author Aldo Leopold that appears on the home page of “Wolves Of The Rockies”, “The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the range.”

I am sorry folks, but to me this is the most empty-headed statement that I have heard yet. My interpretation is that Mr. Leopold thinks the wolf is on a mission to keep the range

balanced. It’s pretty bad when humans think that animals are their equal in mind, and are just on earth to run the place justly.

I think if you are so in love with the Mexican gray wolf that you ought to buy your own land to run them on, and keep them at your own house. I do not want them at mine.

This is one case where the “Endangered Species Act” of 1973 has backfired because it has been misused by extreme environmental groups and their influence on parts of the United States government. I know our own editor Caren Cowan has been at the forefront of this issue and I commend her for her efforts on behalf of the rancher.

In his last act as President, Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 330 federal inmates convicted of drug crimes. In my book, this is releasing a predator that needs to be extinct. Just think of the manpower that it took to get those inmates convicted in the first place. I wonder how the policeman that risked his life to capture this guy feels?

Why would a policeman ever want to risk his life again if this is the result? These people are not political prisoners, these folks convicted of felony drug crimes hurt our society in so many different ways. If you look at some of their records, they were repeat offenders that did other horrible crimes.

I think it will be interesting to see how many of these people will be arrested and convicted once again. Lets see how many of them return within five years of being released and how much more damage they do. Why experiment when we already know the final result?

One of my favorite quotes from the Bible is Proverbs 17:16 which states: A wise man’s heart is at his right hand, but a fool’s heart is at his left.

This becomes some of the best common sense that you can learn and in today’s United States it becomes truer each day. I am just shocked by the lunacy of some of our elected officials and the ignorance or apathy shown by voters.

Face it, we have plenty of wolves in our government that want to become celebrities and feed off the taxpayer. Many are not concerned with the good they could do for the country, but seem to have their own personal agenda or the agenda of the money that put them there.

As ranchers, farmers, and agricultural people we are becoming extinct. There are less of us all the time and we independents have become victims of corporate agriculture in addition to the leftist agenda. My best advice is to fight it in any way that you can to survive.

We may be growing smaller in numbers, but we are still the toughest and most resilient sector of people in this country.

Page 5

‘America First’ May be Last Hope for These Cattle Ranchers

BY DAVID J. LYNCH / WASHINGTON POST

F

ifty-mile-per-hour winds and snow drifts seven feet deep greeted Ted Wishon when he checked on his cattle herd, hunkered down on a hillside along the northern bank of the Columbia River.

With his 21-year-old son, George, Wishon labored through six weeks of brutal weather this year keeping hundreds of animals alive. The two men — living in a spartan trailer on leased land pinned between a winery and the icy waterway — repaired fences, delivered calves and kept the herd fed and watered.

As spring approached, the snow melted and the winds grew slack. The gales that now buffet the Wishons are political.

The men are among a group of cattle ranchers who say their livelihood may depend upon persuading Congress to order mandatory country-of-origin labeling for the steaks and burgers they produce. The government once required such labels, but lawmakers outlawed them in 2015 to comply with global trade rules.

The election of Donald Trump, a vocal advocate of “Buy America” policies who revels in disrupting the status quo, gave the ranchers hope of reversing their earlier defeats. But they are finding that even in an “America First” era, the laws of politics still apply: An industry needs powerful legislative allies, a united front and a credible path to victory.

The ranchers now are mounting a long-shot bid to persuade lawmakers to write labeling requirements into legislation to implement Trump’s North American trade deal with Canada and Mexico. Without them, the deal will favor the multinational corporations that dominate the meatpacking industry at the expense of American cattle ranches, said the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF), a trade group.

“We have a superior product, but the consumer doesn’t know,” said the younger Wishon. “What might be good for American cattle producers in a trade deal might be squashed by the multinationals.”

Over the past decade, labeling advocates — who insist consumers prefer meat identified as American — have won and lost congressional battles, been rejected twice by World Trade Organization (WTO) rulings and battled members of their own industry who call the measure costly and unnecessary.

The Wishons say made-in-America labeling could determine their survival as independent producers. The family’s operation was solidly profitable four years ago but now exists on a thin financial margin the men blame on powerful foreign forces.

“We struggle to make ends meet,” said Ted, 58, who has the ruddy complexion and meaty hands of a man accustomed to working outdoors.

The family’s first ranchers, Ted’s grandparents, settled in Washington after being turned back at the Canadian border while attempting to drive a herd of horses to Alaska.

His father later opted to run a sawmill rather than a ranch.

So when Ted and his wife, Debbie, launched their operation in 1985, they had only 10 head of cattle.

“We started from scratch,” he said. “We didn’t inherit any-

thing.”

Today, they own about 750 Hereford cattle, which spend winter months in Paterson and the rest of the year near Colville, north of Spokane. It would take continued on page eleven

RIDING HERD

continued from page one

• Editors also don’t like it when I refer to appliances that are no longer in use such as my mother’s Mixmaster mixer, Oliver tractors and Oldsmobiles. I also date myself when I refer to the toys I played with as a child like steelies (marbles), blocks and rocks. Hey, we were poor, what can I say?

Young readers today simply can’t begin to comprehend that a single orange could be a kid’s total take from Santa Claus.

• I lose people when I mention my cowboy idols like Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Hopalong Cassidy and The Lone Ranger.

They aren’t interested in what time the Ed Sullivan Show came on (eight o’clock on Sundays), or that Bonanza came right on after it, but on a different channel. I make myself unbelievable as a writer when I say things that could obviously not be true, such as the fact we only got three channels on our black and white television set and cigarettes made up the bulk of the advertising on TV. • My continual reference to people like Bob Hope, Douglas McArthur, Mamie Eisenhower, Ed McMahon and Sandy Koufax leave readers scratching their heads. And

my Watergate and Woodstock references have readers going to Google to find out who, or what, they were.

• A more urbanized audience knows little about agriculture and I only confuse them when I refer to things like PTO, brucellosis and lactation. They either have never heard of, or have never used, tools such as the hoe, shovel and ball pein hammer.

• Younger readers are miffed at my continued use of proper spelling and complete words when I could get by using a few letters such as “u”, “r” and “LOL”. I suppose they think I should save letters as if they are on the endangered species list. I’m sure there is probably a group somewhere trying to save the “Z”.

• Editors say I should reinvent myself and “grasp the new paradigm,” whatever that means.

I suppose I should look forward to the future more but it’s hard when you know you won’t be around for most of it. So I’ll hang on, trying to remain relevant while insisting that the past isn’t dead as long as I’m around. wwwLeePittsbooks.com

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Livestock Market Digest

May 15, 2019

EPA Won’t Regulate Pollution that Moves Through Groundwater ARIEL WITTENBERG AND ELLEN M. GILMER, E&E NEWS REPORTERS

E

PA won’t regulate any pollution to surface waters that passes through groundwater.

The Clean Water Act regulates pollution to surface water and requires permits for so-called pointsource discharges to them.

But questions have remained about whether the law regulates any pollution that ends up in surface waters, or only direct discharges.

EPA now says it’s the latter.

“The agency concludes that the best, if not the only, reading of the Clean Water Act is that Congress intentionally chose to exclude all releases of pollutants to groundwater from the [point source] program, even where pollutants are conveyed to jurisdictional surface waters via groundwater,” the agency wrote in an interpretive statement posted online in mid-April, 2019.

If pollution travels through groundwater, EPA says, it “breaks the causal chain” between a source of pollution and surface waters.

That could affect regulation of pollution from a variety of sources, including seepage from coal ash and manure management ponds, sewage collection systems, septic

system discharges, and accidental spills and releases.

The guidance comes as the Supreme Court is preparing to hear arguments on the same issue.

But the memo contradicts arguments EPA and the Department of Justice made on the same case three years ago.

“The case law does not require the means by which the pollutant discharged from a point source reaches a water of the United States to be a point source,” the agencies wrote in a brief to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in County of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawai’i Wildlife Fund.

That 2016 brief further concludes that while the Clean Water Act clearly does not regulate groundwater, the law does cover “the movement of pollutants to jurisdictional surface waters through groundwater with a direct hydrological connection.”

“Such an addition of pollutants to navigable waters falls squarely within the Clean Water Act’s scope,” it says.

The 9th Circuit ultimately agreed with the agencies, as did the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a separate case.

The Supreme Court takes up the

9th Circuit case this fall.

EPA’s memo also contradicts multiple regulations dating back to the 1990s related to specific sources of pollution, including those for combined animal feeding operations, and feedlots, which clarify that while groundwater pollution itself is not to be regulated, pollution that reaches surface water is.

Now, however, EPA argues that the Clean Water Act clearly does not extend to such pollution, and that arguments it made before the 9th Circuit “take insufficient account of the explicit treatment of groundwater in the Clean Water Act.” Because the Clean Water Act mentions groundwater only in reference to guidance and funding for states and because the act does not include groundwater in any of its regulatory sections, EPA now says “any circumstance in which a pollutant is released from a point source to groundwater is categorically excluded from the Clean Water Act’s coverage.”

“When analyzing the statute in a holistic fashion, Congress’ intent becomes evident: Congress did not intend for the [point source] program to address any pollutant discharges to groundwater, even where

groundwater may be hydrologically connected to surface waters,” EPA writes.

“While no single provision of the Clean Water Act expressly addressed whether pollutants discharged from a point source that reach jurisdictional surface waters through groundwater are subject to ... permitting requirements, when analyzing the statute in a holistic fashion, congressional intent becomes evident,” the statement says.

Vermont Law School professor Pat Parenteau said he was surprised EPA didn’t opt for a more nuanced approach.

“I thought they would tighten the direct hydrological connection [standard] with space and time,” he said. “They could have layered that with lots of requirements that would have made it very difficult for these citizen suits to go forward.”

Environmental groups acknowledge that the landmark environmental law does not regulate groundwater itself but say that’s not the same as allowing pollution to reach surface water if it travels through groundwater.

They have argued in favor of regulating surface water pollution when it can be directly traced back to a point source, regardless

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of whether it first traveled through groundwater.

That’s what happened in the Maui case, where environmentalists sued the county alleging a link between municipal wastewater injection wells and pollution that seeped through groundwater into the Pacific Ocean (Greenwire, Feb. 19).

Earthjustice lawyer David Henkin, who represents the environmentalists in the case, slammed EPA’s new interpretation as a political move.

“This notion that discharges that reach navigable waters via groundwater were not covered under the Clean Water Act is a total repudiation of four decades of consistent EPA positions,” he told E&E News.

“It just makes it clear that this is purely political and not based on any principal.”

Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Frank Holleman said EPA’s guidance is a handout to polluters, noting that it would exclude discharges made even inches away from waterways if the pollution first traveled through groundwater.

“They are exempting major lakes and rivers from the Clean Water Act protections whenever a polluter doesn’t extend their pipe all the way,” he said.

He said it is “illogical” to exclude groundwater-to-surface-water pollution from regulation, saying that in some cases, the cause of pollution is “as easy to trace as pollution that falls through the air before landing in waterways.”

EPA’s arguments that it is merely adhering to the Clean Water Act don’t hold water, Holleman said.

He noted that the list of examples of regulated point sources in the Clean Water Act itself includes sources like wells, combined animal feeding operations and rolling stock that do not discharge pollution directly into surface water.

“Obviously you don’t put a well in a river; you put it in the ground nearby,” he said. “But logical consistency, statutory language and protecting the nation’s water resources are not the goals of this administration.”

Supreme Court case looms Holleman said he hopes Supreme Court justices will see those inconsistencies when the high court considers the Maui case this fall.

Former EPA lawyer Kevin Minoli, now at the law firm Alston & Bird LLP, said EPA’s interpretation might earn less deference in the Supreme Court case, given that the agency crafted it in response to litigation and without going through a full rulemaking process under the Administrative Procedure Act. “All those things lessen its value in front of the Supreme Court,” he said. “It may be different if this was a long-standing interpretation that was done through a notice-and-comment rulemaking under the APA. That’s when you get into the world of deference. When it’s developed during litigation, in response to litigation, it is not going to be generally as persuasive or influential to the court.”

Minoli also said the policy falls far short of EPA’s goal to clarify the issue because the new interpretation does not apply in areas where courts have already ruled otherwise. That includes the 9th and 4th circuits, which cover 14 states in the West and Mid-Atlantic regions.

“It perpetuates the uncertainty for years to come,” he said. “It locks in, until the Supreme Court decides, differential treatment depending on what state you’re in.”

May 15, 2019

Livestock Market Digest

Page 7

REAL ESTATE GUIDE For Real Estate and Classified Advertising Please Call 505/243-9515

Bottari Realty Paul Bottari, Broker

775/752-3040 521 West Second St. • Portales, NM 88130

575-226-0671 or 575-226-0672 fax

Buena Vista Realty

Qualifying Broker: A.H. (Jack) Merrick 575-760-7521 www.buenavista-nm.com

Nevada Farms & raNch PrOPerTY

SCOTT MCNALLY

www.bottarirealty.com

Ranch Sales & Appraisals

TEXAS & OKLA. FARMS & RANCHES • 83 acre wood home with barns, meadows and woods. Fronts State Rd. $545,000 • 160 acre Ranger Eastland Co, $560,000 • 270 acre Mitchell County, Texas ranch. Investors dream; excellent cash flow. Rock formation being crushed and sold; wind turbans, On the Plaza some minerals. Irrigation water Donald Brown developed, crop & cattle, modest Qualifying Broker off I-20.

Price 505-507-2915 cellVista Realty atimprovements.

Call Buena 575-226-0671Just or the listing agent 505-838-0095 Lori Bohmfax 575-760-9847, or Melody Sandberg 575-825-1291. reduced to $1.25 million.

116 Plaza Many good pictures on MLS or www.buenavista-nm.com

SOCORRO PLAZA REALTY

PO Box 1903 Socorro, NM 87801 www.socorroplazarealty.com dbrown@socorroplazarealty.com

AG LOANS AGLAND LAND LOANS AsLow LowAsAs 3% As 4.5% OPWKCAP 2.9% OPWKCAP 2.9%

INTEREST RATESAS AS LOW 3% INTEREST RATES LOW ASAS 4.5% Payments Scheduledon on2525 Years Payments Scheduled Years

Joe Stubblefield & Associates 13830 Western St., Amarillo, TX 806/622-3482 • cell 806/674-2062 joes3@suddenlink.net Michael Perez Associates Nara Visa, NM • 575/403-7970

• 840 Immaculate, Hunt Co, TX. Ranch. Pastures, 40 tanks, and lakes. Beautiful home, barns, and other improvements. Some minerals, game galore. All for $1.35 million.

Joe Priest Real Estate

1-800/671-4548

joepriestre.net • joepriestre@earthlink.com

Bar M Real Estate

Selling residential, farm, ranch, commercial and relocating properties.

COLETTA RAY

Pioneer Realty 1304 Pile Street, Clovis, NM 88101

www.ranchesnm.com 575/622-5867 575/420-1237

575-799-9600 Direct 575.935.9680 Office 575.935.9680 Fax coletta@plateautel.net www.clovisrealestatesales.com

521 West Second St., Portales, NM 88130 www.scottlandcompany.com Ben G. Scott – Broker • Krystal M. Nelson – NM QB 800-933-9698 • 5:00 a.m./10:00 p.m.

RANCH & FARM REAL ESTATE

We need listings on all types of ag properties large or small!

■ TOP OF THE WORLD – Union Co., NM – 5,025.76 +/- ac. of choice grassland w/stateof-the-art working pens, recently remodeled bunk house, barbed wire fences in very good to new condition, well watered, on pvmt.

■ WE CAN NOW DIVIDE – THE PAJARITO RANCH – Guadalupe Co., NM as follows: 3501.12 ac. +/- of grassland w/a commercial water well located adjacent to I40 w/capability of producing large incomes together w/a great set of pens, a 17,000 gal. water storage tank, overhead cake bin, hay barn & other stock wells. 700.89 ac. +/- of grassland can be purchased in addition to the 3501.12 ac. The beautiful, virtually new custom built home w/all amenities and a large virtually new metal barn w/an apartment inside on 40 ac. can be purchased separately or with the ranch.

■ POST, TX – 6,376.92 acre ranch in Kent Co., TX on pvmt. & on all weather roads w/a virtually brand new custom built home, state-of-the-art barns & pens, a complete line of farm & ranch equipment, a registered Red Angus herd of cows, mineral income w/potential for commercial water sales & secluded, beautiful areas w/bluffs & meadows around every turn in the road, an excellent supply of stock water from subs & windmills, deep year round dirt tanks & The North Fork of the Brazos River through the ranch.

575-226-0671 www.buenavista-nm.com

Rural Properties around Portales, NM 1242 NM 480 - Nice home on 59.7 acres, grass 427 S Rrd P 1/2 - Large nice home, lots of barns 24+ ac 1694 S Rrd 4, Great home, barns, cattle pens, location 2344 S Rrd K east of Dora, NM, great - Near wind farms All properties excellent homes & can have horses, etc.

See these and other properties at www.buenavista-nm.com

M U R N E Y , ASSOCIATES, REALTORS® 1625 E. Primrose • Springfield, MO 65804 • murney.com • 823-2300

See all my listings at: paulmcgilliard.murney.com Paul McGilliard - Cell: 417/839-5096 • 1-800/743-0336

Missouri Land Sales • MAJOR PRICE REDUCTION! 564 ACRE GASCONADE RIVER FARM. 360 Acres of lush grass/hay/ tillable bottom ground make up this highly productive livestock/hunting property.Well maintained older 4 Bed, 3 Ba home. Only 45 miles east of Springfield, Mo. MLS#60115449 • PRICE REDUCED” DEVELOPMENT, 240 Acres surveyed into small buildable tracts. Hunting retreat (lots of wildlife), recreational (build your dream home overlooking your lake & enjoy!) Then sell surveyed tracts off to finance your retirement/investment. Good roads thru surveyed acreage, only1+ miles from Hwy.60 (4-Lane Hwy). A tract of land this large, surveyed in small acreages rarely ever comes on the market! Owner may divide & sell 160 acres or 80 acres. This property is priced to sell!

MLS 60128270.

• 80 ACRES - 60 Acres hayable, live water only 50 miles east of Springfield, 1/4 mile off of Hwy 60. 3 Bed, 1 1/2 Ba, 1432 sq. ft. home, nestled under the trees. Full basement (partially finished), John Deer Room. MLS#60059808.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA RANCH PROPERTY 31 years in the ranch business - see www.ranch-lands.com for videos & brochures

DUANE & DIXIE McGARVA RANCH: approx. 985 acres Likely, CA. with about 600+ acre gravity flood irrigated pastures PLUS private 542 AU BLM permit. About 425 acres so of the irrigated are level to flood excellent pastures with balance good flood irrigated pastures. NO PUMPING COST! Dryland perfect for expansion to pivot irrigated alfalfa if desired. Corrals & livestock scales. Plus Private BLM permit for 540 AU is fenced into 4 fields on about 18,000 acres only 7 miles away. $3,495,000 Call Bill Wright. 530-941-8100 BEAVER CREEK RANCH: about 82,000 acres - with 2,700 deeded acres plus contiguous USFS & BLM permits for 450 pair; 580+- acres irrigated alfalfa, pasture, and meadow from Beaver Creek water rights and one irrigation well. 3 homes, 2 hay barns, 4 feedlots each w/ 250 ton barns, 2 large reservoirs, can run up to 500-600 cows YEAR ROUND. Reduced Asking Price $5,400,000. 530-941-8100 NORTH FORK RANCH: approx. 2,822 ac - Winter range west of Cottonwood & Red Bluff, CA. Rolling oaks, stock ponds, seasonal drainage’s, good quality. Beautiful views of Mt. Shasta & Mt. Lassen. Good gravel road access with a good system of dirt roads and trails to access the interior of the ranch. Great recreational opportunities with hunting and fishing. Deer, wild pigs, wild turkey, quail and dove hunting! REDUCED ASK PRICE – now $2,965,000 Call Bill Wright 530-941-8100

BILL WRIGHT, SHASTA LAND SERVICES, INC. 530-941-8100 • DRE# 00963490 • www.ranch-lands.com

SULTEMEIER RANCH – First time offering of a ranch that has been owned and operated by the same family for over 70 years. Fifteen miles southeast of Corona, NM in Lincoln County. 11, 889 Deeded Acres, 1,640 Federal BLM Lease Acres and 2,240 NM State Lease Acres. Grazing Capacity estimated at 300 AUYL. Water provided by five wells and pipelines. Improved with two residences, barns and corrals. The ranch had a good summer with abundant grass. Good mule deer habitat. Call for a brochure or view on my website. Price: $4,400,000 19TH STREET FARM – Located just outside the city limits of Roswell, NM. Six total acres with 5.7 acres of senior artesian water rights. Improved with a 2, 200 square foot residence, horse barn with stalls, enclosed hay barn with tack room and loafing shed.

Price: $400,000 COCHISE RANCH – Ranch property located just west of Roswell, NM along and adjacent to U.S. Highway 70/380 to Ruidoso, NM. Comprised of 6,607 deeded acres and 80 acres of NM State Lease acres. Water is provided by three solar wells and pipelines.

Fenced into several pastures and small traps suitable for a registered cattle operation.

Improvements include two sets of pens, shop, and hay barn. Price: $2,500,000 Scott McNally, Qualifying Broker Bar M Real Estate, LLC P.O. Box 428, Roswell, NM 88202 Office: 575-622-5867 Cell: 575-420-1237 www.ranchesnm.com

O’NEILL LAND, llc P.O. Box 145, Cimarron, NM 87714 • 575/376-2341 • Fax: 575/376-2347 land@swranches.com • www.swranches.com

WAGONMOUND RANCH, Mora/Harding Counties, NM. 4,927 +/- deeded acres, 1,336.80 +/- state lease acres, 2,617 +/- Kiowa National Grassland Lease Acres.

8,880.80 +/- Total Acres. Substantial holding with good mix of grazing land and broken country off rim onto Canadian River. Fenced into four main pastures with shipping and headquarter pasture and additional four pastures in the Kiowa lease. Modern well, storage tank and piped water system supplementing existing dirt tanks located on deeded. Located approximately 17 miles east of Wagon Mound on pavement then county road.

Nice headquarters and good access to above rim. Wildlife include antelope, mule deer and some elk. $2,710,000 MIAMI HORSE HEAVEN, Colfax County, NM. Very private approx. 4,800 sq ft double walled adobe 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom home with many custom features, 77.50 +/- deeded acres with water rights and large 7 stall barn, insulated metal shop with own septic. Would suit indoor growing operation, large hay barn/equipment shed. $1,375,000.

RATON MILLION DOLLAR VIEW, Colfax County, NM. 97.68 +/- deeded acres, 2 parcels, excellent home, big shop, wildlife, a true million dollar view at end of private road. $489,000.

House & 1 parcel $375,000

SOLD

MIAMI 80 ACRES, Colfax County, NM. 80 +/- deeded acres, 80 water shares, expansive views, house, shop, roping arena, barns and outbuildings. Reduced $485,000 COLD BEER VIEW, Colfax County, NM 83.22 +/- deeded acre, 3,174 sq ft, 5 bedroom, 3 ½ bathrm, 2 car garage home situated on top of the hill with amazing 360 degree views.

Reduced $398,000 $349,000 MIAMI 20 ACRES, Colfax County, NM. 20 +/- deeded acres, 20 water shares, quality 2,715 sq ft adobe home, barn, grounds and trees. Private setting. This is a must see. Reduced to $265,000

FRENCH TRACT 80, Irrigated farm with gated pipe, house, stone shop, many out buildings privacy. Reduced to $292,000 MAXWELL FARM IMPROVED, Colfax County, NM. 280 $350,000 +/- deeded acres, 160 Class A irrigation shares, 2 center pivots, nice sale barn, 100 hd feedlot. Depredation Elk MAXWELL SMALL HOLDING, home with horse improveTags available. Owner financing available to qualified ments, fenced, water rights and 19+/- deeded acres. Handy buyer. Significantly reduced to $550,000 to I25 on quiet country road. $232,000.

Page 8

Livestock Market Digest

CLASSIFIEDS

Baxter BLACK

KADDATZ

Auctioneering and Farm Equipment Sales New and used tractors, equipment, and parts. Salvage yard, combines, tractors, hay equipment and all types of equipment parts.

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The Romantic Cowboy

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angus

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Bradley 3 Ranch Ltd. 70+ Charolais Bulls 200+ Angus Bulls

— BULL SALE — FEBRUARY 15, 2020 At The Ranch NE Of Estelline, Texas

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BEEFMASTER

May 15, 2019

here’s nothing like an evening of calving to promote the romantic image of the cowboy. Right, ladies?

Don invited a nice woman out to his ranch in Alberta for an evening of candlelight, wine and canned bean dip. This dinner date coincided with calving season. After an hour of civilized conversation about French painting, Brexit and the condition of the rodeo arena in Ponoka, Don invited his date to go with him to check the cows.

She didn’t exactly squeal with delight but he explained how scientific livestock raising had become. “Almost like visiting a human hospital maternity ward,” he said, authoritatively.

They drove his F-250 out into the calving pasture and immediately spotted a braymer cross cow tryin’ to calve. “We’ll watch her for a few minutes to see if everything comes out okay,” suggested Don sliding an arm around her shoulders.

They sat in the warm cab, moonlight mixing

with Don’s elaborate discourse of bovine parturition. After half an hour he decided to assist the cow. Partly for the cow and partly to show off.

The calf appeared to be hip locked. His date prepared to see her date save the day. Don drove up to the head end of the cow and left the headlights shining in her eyes. Sneaking out, he slipped around behind her. He slid the O.B. chains over the calf’s protruding front feet. At first tug the cow arose like a bee stung buffalo!

She whirled to mash Don. He was jerked off his feet but clung to the straps as the cow chased him like a dog chasin’ it tail! He was alternately upright, flat out, levitating, scooting, skiing, sliding, screaming and squirreling as the three of them circled like a shaky ceiling fan. His only hope of survival was to hang on and stay behind the helicoptering cow. She managed to land enough blows to win the round and tromp his fallen hat to a pulp.

On one mighty jerk, the calf popped out. Don executed a complete cartwheel and landed on his back. The cow rolled him once and headed off into the darkness.

His date, who had watched Don’s calving technique from the cab was not impressed. “Less than professional,” she had commented as he climbed in his cab after giving the departed cow a four alarm cussing.

Don tried to regain his composure and recapture the mood by explaining that he had been in control the whole time. However it was not very convincing what with the big glob of manure plastered on the side of his neck and the piece of placenta dangling from his ear. www.baxterblack.com

CWD Confirmed in Farmed Oklahoma Elk OKLAHOMA DEPARTMENT OF WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

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n elk from a farmed herd in Lincoln County has tested positive for chronic wasting disease (CWD), according to the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food & Forestry (ODAFF) and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.

The 2-year-old bull elk died as the result of an injury. The elk was tested through routine surveillance in compliance with the breeding facility’s Certified Herd Plan.

CWD is a fatal neurological

disease that affects the brains of elk, deer and other cervid species. No vaccine or treatment for the disease exists. Importantly, no health risk to humans or non-cervid livestock has been documented.

ODAFF has quarantined the farmed breeding facility, and the Wildlife Department will be testing wild deer in the area near the facility for the presence of CWD. The adjacent commercial hunting area associated with this facility has been quarantined as well. The State Veterinarian has issued a stop-movement order for any intrastate cervid transport for 30 days in

2019 DEBRUYCKER CHAROLAIS BULL SALE RESULTS HIGH SELLING BULLS Lot Sire 500 $26,000.00 Hudspeth Farms St Joe, AR BHD Kincsem B629 & King Syndicate DC/BHD KING F2503 P 160 $20,000.00 Five Star Havre, MT BHD Ares D146 P 319 $15,000.00 Borderland Cattle Rockglen, SK BHD Cobaltocene C330 P 116 $12,500.00 C&D Charolais Valier, MT MD Durban A1135 161 $12,500.00 Wienk Charolais Lake Preston, SD BHD Ares D146 P 175 $10,000.00 Travis Foote Esther, ALB BHD Ares D146 P

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TOP SELLING SIRE GROUPS 14 BHD KINCSEM B629 @ $6,365.38 55 BHD ARES D146 P @ $6,054.55 8 CJC ZANZIBAR Z988 P @ $5,218.75 10 BHD ZEUS X3041 @ $5,025.00 22 LHD SIR MIKHAIL A1013 @ $4,863.64 8 BHD ZEN X270 P @ $4,750.00 12 JDJ STYLE A340 @ $4604.17 12 BHD ISOTOPE Z414 P @ $4,520.83 22 MD DURBAN A1135 @ $4,420.45 11 BHD STOGIE Z389 @ $4,386.36 30 BHD ZENTASTIC A3037 P @ $4,250.00 14 MD CUBAN B3012 @ $4,232.14 11 BHD ZENDO C111 P/S @ $4,227.27 27 LT LEDGER 0332 P @ $4,083.33 21 BHD LIGHTNING B434 P @ $4,071.43

order to assess the situation.

This is the second confirmed case of CWD in Oklahoma.

The first case was confirmed in a farmed elk herd in Oklahoma County in 1998. Surveillance testing around that area since then has not revealed any deer with the disease.

The Department of Agriculture, Food & Forestry and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation are implementing emergency measures to monitor and protect the state’s wild and farmed cervid herds and will provide information to the public as it becomes available.

May 15, 2019

Livestock Market Digest

Ranching on the Border

T

he U.S. border with Mexico is just under 2,000 miles. Look at a land ownership of New Mexico and Arizona and you will see that much of that land is federally owned, which automatically involves federal lands ranchers in the many border issues currently being discussed.

What is it really like to ranch on this border today?

In a recent interview Russell Johnson, a fourth-generation rancher from near Columbus, New Mexico explained the problems he has experienced: • People have broken into buildings and homes • Cattle theft is a big issue since much of the border is only a barbed wire fence • Vehicles have been stolen • In instances where the illegal immigrants get lost or are forced to drop out of the group, they set grass fires to signal for help • Fences that divide pastures have been cut • Floats and water towers

have been destroyed, draining water systems for cattle.

• When entering the U.S. clips are removed and the wires are stood on for vehicles to pass, but if the Border Patrol is encountered they turn around and “just barrel through it.”

Eighty-three year old Warner Glenn’s family first moved to the Arizona-Mexico border area in 1896. Glenn says that while illegal immigration has always occurred in the area, the ones coming through now are “hard-core”, especially the “drug guys.”

Glenn tells CBN News that, if they go by a residence and “there’s nobody there, they are going to go in and look around.

And firearms, top of the list, any kind of jewelry, top of the list, cash, top of the list…”

“We don’t lock the doors because they’d just break the window anyway,” says Billy Grossman, another rancher in the area. Grossman’s says illegal crossers have entered his home several times and he recently

Collectors Corner

by Jim Olson

Silver Hallmarks

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dvanced collectors of Native American and Southwestern style jewelry will most often turn an item over and inspect the back of it after glancing at the front. In many cases, the back can tell them just as much as the front.

You can tell about construction (hand-wrought or casting method, etc.) and also, that is where you will generally find the hallmarks. What do the hallmarks tell them?

Here is a little history of hallmarks: Way back in 1158, King Henry II passed a law stating that all British silver coins had to be minted in 92.5% (.925) pure silver and 7.5% copper. This alloy was known as “Sterling Silver.” Then, in 1238, Henry III passed a law that said no silver items could be made which were “worse than the king’s money,” and therefore, sterling silver became the standard for silver items. In 1300 Edward II passed a law saying no item made of silver could be sold until it had been assayed and marked with a hallmark dedicated for the purpose of verifying the silver content. So now we have the first widely recorded silver hallmark.

Along the way, England added additional requirements of the silversmiths until they eventually had a system of being able

to tell the metal purity, maker, city and date where an item was made, just by looking at the hallmarks. This system eventually became one of the most highly structured hallmarking systems in the world and is still used throughout the United Kingdom to this day.

Silversmiths in Colonial America were predominantly of European descent and they typically used hallmarks. Their trade was brought over from England and neighboring countries, where, as stated above, hallmarks had been in use for a long time. The silversmithing trade slowly worked its way west along with colonization.

In the United States, there is no law stating precious metals have to be hallmarked, however, if a quality mark is used (ie: sterling, coin silver, etc.) then it is also required to be marked by the artist or manufacturer. This way, if there is ever a question as to the metal content, the maker can be traced and held accountable. Obviously this law was not adhered to well as you will often see items that say nothing more than “sterling,” or “coin” silver, etc..

Down south, the Aztecs were making gold and silver jewelry when the Spanish arrived in what is now Mexico. The ar-

Page 9

caught one trying to steal his pickup. After law enforcement arrived, Grossman found a bail of marijuana in the back of his truck and quite a few items that had been stolen from his home.

Matt Thomas, a Pinal County deputy, says, “They’ve gotten more advanced and there are more numbers. They set up their own networks now and they pretty much control the terrain and those networks.

They have good control of them visually which means that if we go in by air or by land they know that and so they can adjust they can shut down operations and they can maneuver around us.”

Joel Edwards, a County Commissioner in Hidalgo County, New Mexico, tells us pretty much the same thing.

“The cartels have a lot of the latest technology; the people that are coming across, they have sophisticated communication equipment. They’re not just desperate migrants. These people are … up on technology, they’re up on weaponry. Their loads that they’re carrying are worth thousands and thousands of dollars. They are protecting it because that’s how they’re making their money,” Edwards explains.

This was all recently confirmed by reporters from KPHO who set out to see if there really were scouts for the cartels residing in the U.S. It didn’t take them long to find one, just south of Phoenix. One of the reporters actually entered

one of their camps. He reports: “What I see amazes me. It’s like a small military forward operating base. I see gear boxes covered in camouflage material, bags shoved into cracks in the boulders, a kitchen with a stove set up under a rock overhang (I assume to avoid detection by helicopters) and solar panels set out to recharge the scouts’ electronic equipment.”

The ranchers and other inhabitants along the border have been put in this precarious situation by two different Border Patrol policies. One started in El Paso with Operation Hold The Line. Border Patrol agents were placed within eyesight of each other along the Rio Grande for the purpose of diverting illegal immigration from urban areas to the remote areas along the border. This proved to be highly successful, for the urban areas anyway.

The exact opposite approach is used in the remote areas, where the policy is to interdict illegal crossers after they have entered the U.S. and traveled inland for twenty miles or so.

The Border Patrol claims this is the most efficient and effective method of apprehension in these remote areas.

The combination of these two policies, driving illegal immigrants to remote areas but not interdicting them at the border, has left folks residing in these areas in a vulnerable situation.

This is where we are seeing the reported thefts and vandalism

perpetrated against the ranching community. In essence, the border has been moved inland, and these folks are suffering the consequences: homes being entered, vehicles stolen, cattle stolen, interior fences cut, water tanks destroyed and so on.

Ranchers have been shot and a hired hand has been kidnapped.

Many of them are living in fear. Commissioner Edwards says, “…they shouldn’t have to live in fear that somebody is going to steal their vehicle or their four-wheeler or their horses, just because they live on an international border.” “Some of my residents go back and forth across the border because they actually have some family on the other side of the border, and they fear retaliation from the cartel if they cooperate and [try] to do something about the border problem”, said Edwards.

These families, in essence, have been abandoned by their country and you can certainly understand why they believe this is an emergency. They are tired of living in an area that has been ceded to the cartels and have every reason to demand immediate action to resolve this untenable situation.

Until next time, be a nuisance to the devil and don’t forget to check that cinch.

rival of the Spaniards however, brought new techniques and designs to the Natives. With an abundance of silver in Mexico, this eventually became the metal of choice for Mexican silversmiths. The craft crept northward along with the colonization of Mexico. History tells us this is likely where the Native Americans of the Southwest first came into contact with the art form. The Spanish did not have a mandatory hallmarking system like their European neighbors, but they did have a voluntary system which was generally adhered to and also followed when they started making items in the “New World.” Most of the items were hallmarked.

By the early 1800s, many Native Americans in the Plains and Western parts of the United States had been exposed to the silversmithing trade. It is generally accepted that sometime in the mid-1800s, the craft was starting to take hold and by the late 1800s, it was being widely practiced. Silversmithing knowledge came to them from both the south and the east. By the late 1800s, when silversmithing starting to become a way of making money, Natives were influenced by a blend of their own cultures and the traders who marketed their wares. Most early Native silversmiths however, did not hallmark their items.

Although it was common for silver jewelry to be hallmarked elsewhere in the United States and Mexico (the Native Americans two largest sources of influence), they did not hallmark their wares. A common belief (especially with regards to the Navajo who were the largest group of silversmiths), is that this practice was rejected because they were a humble people and hallmarking an item was the to bring attention to yourself, which was the same a

bragging or boasting. This was frowned upon in their culture at the time. There are other theories as well.

Early 1900s manufacturers of Southwestern style jewelry however, often hallmarked their products. Companies like Pacific Jewelry, H.H. Tammen, Arrow Novelty, Bell and others would hallmark their jewelry for silver content and also with their company marks. It was predominately the individual silversmiths who did not mark their items at that time.

That all started to change in about the 1930s. You see, when “Native American” style jewelry started to gain in popularity with the tourist visiting the Southwest in the early 1900s, opportunist jumped in and started producing Southwest style jewelry that competed with the authentic Native pieces.

This eventually became such a problem that in the 1930s, the Indian Arts and Crafts Board (IACB) stepped up to address

the issue. They implemented a hallmarking system that, while well-intended, was not user friendly and did not last long. It did however serve as a catalyst for the hallmarking of Native silver jewelry in the Southwest.

From the 1930s till the 1970s, the progress was slow.

Most Native jewelry was still not hallmarked as old habits and beliefs tend to hang on.

However, in the 1970s, there was a huge turquoise jewelry boom. There was so much money being made in the business that imports once again became an issue. This time, a new generation of Native American silversmiths widely accepted the fact, that in order to set their items apart and to authenticate them, they must be hallmarked.

Hallmarking then became the rule, not the exception. Native hallmarks are not that different than those of other silversmiths in the United States, often us-

Frank DuBois was the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003, is the author of a blog: The Westerner (www.thewesterner.blogspot.com) and is the founder of The DuBois Rodeo Scholarship and The DuBois Western Heritage Foundation

continued on page ten

Page 10

Livestock Market Digest

May 15, 2019

‘Go Down the Mountain’ Seeks to Reclaim History of Displaced Blue Ridge Families

BY ALLISON BROPHY CHAMPION CULPEPPER STAR-COMPONENT

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uthor Meredith Battle revives the layered history and traditions of the Blue Ridge’s forcibly displaced population in her recently published debut novel, “Go Down the Mountain.”

The 224-page book is believed to be the first fictionalized version based on the true story of the people whose land was taken by the state and federal governments in the 1930s to make way for Shenandoah National Park, formed from eight counties, including Greene, Madison and Rappahannock.

“I thought the most exciting part about writing this novel would be getting to hold the book in my hand, but it was actually hearing from descendants of the displaced,” said the 46-year-old writer, who lives in Loudoun County. “I have received so many messages thanking me for writing this story and photos of their family members from back in the 1930s before they left the park. It has been very moving.”

Though fictional, “Go Down the Mountain” is very much rooted in documented truth. It is set in mythical Lovingston Hollow, inspired by the real-life Corbin Hollow of Madison County. The book’s main character is a nervy mountain teen named Bee, whose father suddenly dies in a snake-charming accident, leaving her to live with an abusive mother.

In the book’s first chapter, “A Deal that Would Make the Devil Flinch,” they get a visit from a government agent intending to take their land.

“A state man called Rowler was the cause of it. He came by our place and said the state had given our land to Un-

cle Sam for a park. We were to be out in five months or be considered at odds with the law. Mama told him we’d sell.

Our land was worth fifteen dollars an acre, she said. She made a big speech about how we wouldn’t take any less for it.

While she talked, Rowler looked me up and down and licked his lips like I was a slice of scrapple fresh from the frying pan. He was the kind of husky white man who had a layer of pasty fat on him from sitting on his ass in a desk chair, his cheeks flushed pink from sneaking sips of whiskey. His brown mustache twitched even when he wasn’t talking, until I thought it might jump off his face and scurry into a hole in the floorboards.

“He told Mama we wouldn’t get squat since Daddy’s people never filed papers with the county courthouse. I figured as much. Daddy always said the Livingstons didn’t need papers when a handshake and a man’s word would do.

Seems like we didn’t need a deed when the whole goddamned Hollow was named for us,” Battle writes.

As a girl growing up in Fairfax, the author regularly visited Shenandoah NP and the mountains, calling it her “happy place.” Battle said she never once learned in school about the thousands of people who were displaced from its storied hollows or the hard path ahead they faced. As an adult, she came across stone walls and a bit of a chimney in her Shenandoah hikes.

“I was just shocked. I had no idea people had lived there. When I started to look into the story, I just couldn’t let it go,” Battle said.

The more she learned, the more she had to know. The author started digging into the history while living in California

two years ago, when her husband was stationed there with the military. The research helped her feel closer to home and it was eye-opening, she said.

“The more I researched, the more I found these people could have been my people,” Battle said, mentioning her own father grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Alabama. “They look like my dad’s family, they lived like his family, I felt like I knew them and understood their stories.”

Digging deeper, the author was shocked at the notion of how the government took their land or purchased it for meager Depression-era prices. Some of the poorest hollow folks, Battle recounted, were taken to an asylum in Luray, and in some cases, medically sterilized without their consent, according to filmmaker Robert Knox Robinson’s first-person interviews.

“When sociologists and journalists arrived to see the mountain people for themselves, they seemed singularly focused on the dirt-poor residents of Corbin Hollow,” she writes in the afterword. “In their book, “Hollow Folk,” sociologist Mandel Sherman and journalist Thomas Henry referred to ‘unlettered folk,’ living in ‘mud-plastered log cabins.’ They described them as ‘almost entirely cut off from the current of American life.’”

A letter from a visiting social worker was equally ill-informed, describing hollow folk as “steeped in ignorance” and “possessed of little or no ambition, little sense of citizenship, little comprehension of law, or respect for law, these people present a problem that demands and challenges the attention of thinking men and women.”

The misrepresentations helped the government market the proposed as-

similation of these people into modern society as a humanitarian effort, Battle writes.

Rejecting this mischaracterization, the author got to know the real mountain people in her research, including listening to hours and hours of recorded interviews done in the 1970s through James Madison University. They talked about things like hog killing day and picking apples and all their traditions and way of life, Battle said.

“These people were intelligent, successful business people—some had large orchards earning thousands of dollars. They were tenacious people, beautiful storytellers with such a strong culture and families,” she said. “With this book, I hope I have been able to reclaim some of that for all of those who lost their homes.”

About 500 families—more than 2,000 people—were removed by the state of Virginia from counties spanning the future national park over a period of 10 years. In 2013, the Blue Ridge Heritage Project formed with a mission of establishing stone chimney monument sites in each of the counties where people were displaced. To date, seven have been established, including the first in Madison County in 2015.

“At the time the Shenandoah National Park was proposed in the 1920s, more than 3,000 people lived in this part of the Blue Ridge. The mountains were alive with small communities— houses, farms, churches, schools dotted the landscape. Some of the families had resided in these mountains for over a hundred years,” according to Blue Ridge Heritage Project.

Released T through publisher Mascot Books, “Go Down the Mountain” is also available at Amazon.com.

Carl’s Jr. Tests a CannabisInfused Burger in Colorado WWW.REALAGRICULTURE.COM/

W

ith the passing of the 2018 Farm Bill in the United States, the hemp industry is looking for a major boom for the crop. Long looked upon as a food and fibre play, hemp’s latest opportunity is CBD. According to a CNN Business story Carl’s Jr planned to test a CBD-infused burger on April 20th at a Colorado based outlet to celebrate 4/20.

ProjectCBD describes CBD as a safe, non-addictive substance, and one of more than a hundred “phytocannabinoids.”

Travis George, CEO of End-

P.O. Box 7458 Albuquerque, NM 87194 505/243-9515 Fax 505/998-6236 www.aaalivestock.com

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~Gift Certificate ~ To:_________________________________ From:_______________________________ You have received a ____ year subscription to the Livestock Market Digest.

less Sky,a Canadian based CBD extractor, says that, “It’s still the first inning in the CBD industry and investors are really starting to see the massive opportunity they have to make money in the CBD markets with developments such as this.”

Regulators in Canada and the U.S. have not officially ruled on food and beverage inclusion of CBD, but the consumer is not waiting in either country as people can find CBD-infused products on store shelves if they go looking for it. According to George, “the U.S. market is still somewhat fragmented as far as consistent legislation in each state goes.”

SILVER HALLMARKS ing their initials or names, and sometimes symbols or brands are used.

In America, silver hallmarks tend to resemble that of the United Kingdom as far a metal content is concerned. We use the words “sterling” or “coin” silver to indicate purity instead of a fractional interest (such as .925 or .900, even though they mean the same thing). Much of the rest of the world uses the fractional interest numbers.

In summary, most jewelers in the United States hallmark with the words Sterling or Coin Silver rather than their counterparts, .925 or .900 and they also use an identifiable hallmark or signature to identify themselves

From the beef industry’s perspective, neither Canadian Beef or the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association have developed a position on the marketing of beef and CBD together at this time.

“Time will tell whether this is a nicely times publicity stunt or something that fast food chains as a whole will chase further,” says RealAg Radio host Shaun Haney.

Publicity or not, the CBD-infused burger “had a full parking lot (and) people waiting in the drive-thru” just before its 6:00 a.m. opening according to a story in Leafy.

continued from page nine

as the artist. A lot of times, when you see the numerical versions of silver content on a piece, it can be an indication of an item made elsewhere in the world.

Remember though, much Native American and Southwest style jewelry made before the 1930s is not hallmarked at all.

Although hallmarking silver jewelry was slowly gaining popularity from the 1930s through the ‘70s, you will still see a lot of it that was not marked from that period either. From the 1970s to current, most of it is hallmarked and any modern item that is not marked is probably suspect in some way. In recent times, several folks have done a lot of research on the subject

and there are now many books and resources out there with databases of silver hallmarks and the makers. This is a nice way to figure out who the artists are because items made by certain silversmiths can demand a premium.

As you can tell, hallmarks are very important to know about when studying jewelry, however, they can be faked, so you should always deal with reputable sellers who stand behind what they sell. Besides educating yourself about the hallmarks, you should always buy something that appeals to you and that you will enjoy owning.

Jim Olson © 2019, www.WesternTradingPost. com

May 15, 2019

Livestock Market Digest

Page 11

Judges Reject Challenge to BLM Wild Horse Plan MICHAEL DOYLE, E&E NEWS REPORTER

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new appeals board decision shows it takes more than mere passion for wild horses to upend Bureau of Land Management plans.

In the opinion of the Interior Board of Land Appeals, a challenge to a BLM wild horse plan stacked the raw feelings of one person against facts, reasoned arguments and procedural regularity on the part of the agency.

In a slam-dunk but still instructive decision issued Monday, the IBLA upheld a plan to remove approximately 465 wild horses from the Onaqui Mountains Herd Management Area in Utah.

While acknowledging the “adamant” pleas of the plan’s challenger, an individual identified as Jean Public, the two-member IBLA panel said the appeal lacked crucial information.

“Her email merely expresses fervent opposition to BLM’s decision, describes her own policy preferences for managing the public lands, and attacks without ev-

idence the motives and integrity of BLM officials,” IBLA Administrative Judge K. Jack Haugrud wrote.

In her challenge, rife with misspellings and typos, Jean Public demanded “some investigation of how money is bringing about the decsiions that are being made at this lousy corrupt agency.”

“We need to keep our open puubli cland for wildlife which is being exterminated in massive amounts every single day by our federal agencies like blm,” the challenge declared.

Nationwide, BLM manages more than 82,000 wild horses and burros inhabiting roughly 27 million acres of federal herd management areas, more than twice as many as officials consider suitable (Greenwire, April 1).

The 200,000-plus acre region in question in the new IBLA decision is located about 35 miles southwest of Tooele, Utah.

“The HMA’s wild horses are very popular with the viewing public and wild horse advocacy community, and have

been featured in social and traditionally media outlets,” BLM acknowledged in an environmental assessment.

One large and much-loved band of approximately 100 to 200 wild horses, in particular, tends to hang out in the south end of Skull Valley close to Davis Mountain and the Pony Express Trail, especially in the spring foaling season.

Upward of 586 wild horses are now thought to inhabit the Onaqui Mountains Herd Management Area, well above the area’s “appropriate management level” of between 121 and 210 horses.

BLM proposes to use bait or water traps and possibly helicopters to gather and remove excess wild horses from inside and adjacent to the herd management area. BLM is also considering treating mares with fertility control vaccines and conducting sterilization activities that include spaying and neutering.

The lower density of wild horses is supposed to reduce competition for resources, allowing the remaining horses to utilize superior habitat.

“Confrontations between stallions would also become less frequent, as would fighting among wild horse bands at water sources,” BLM predicts.

In one of several object lessons for future challengers, the IBLA noted that Jean Public lacked legal standing because she failed to show she had visited the wild horses and had “concrete” intentions of visiting in the future.

AMERICA FIRST three tons of hay per head of cattle to keep the herd alive up north during the winter, which is why Ted and George bring them here to graze on corn stalks and wheat.

On a recent day, father and son drove across the pasture in their 2006 Dodge Ram pickup with 300,000 miles on it.

Shotgun shells rattled on the dashboard, available if needed to deal with the coyotes that threaten the herd.

As cattle prices rose and fell in recent years, the Wishons became convinced they were the victims of foreign forces, including the WTO and large meatpackers.

From $79 per 100 pounds in December 2009, prices soared to a peak of $171 in November 2014, before plunging to $94 in late 2016 and recovering now to about $115.

Bill Bullard, chief executive of the 5,000-member R-CALF, said mandatory product labeling would allow domestic cattle to command higher prices.

The larger National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), representing about 175,000 cattle producers, feeders and meatpackers, insists that’s not true.

The association, which backs voluntary labels, cites a 2015 study for the U.S. Agriculture Department, which “found little evidence that consumers would be likely to increase their purchases of food items bearing U.S.-origin labels.”

The controversy dates to 2008, when Congress required mandatory labels for beef and pork. But when the labeling rules were in effect, only animals that were born, raised and slaughtered in the United States qualified as “Product of USA.” Major meatpackers objected to the added cost of tracking and separating live animals, an expense that was passed along to some ranchers.

Kevin Kester, a rancher in San Luis Obispo, Calif., whose herd includes cattle from Mexico, said the measure had added a six-figure sum to his annual costs.

“We had to quit producing the Mexican cattle. It had a huge negative impact on my family ranching business,” said Kester, a former NCBA president.

Mexico and Canada, which ship about 2 million live cattle

continued from page five

each year to the United States, complained to the WTO that the measure was an impermissible trade barrier.

In 2012, the organization agreed. The Barack Obama administration rewrote the regulation, but two years later the global trading body vetoed that approach and authorized Mexico and Canada to levy $1 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agricultural exports if the labeling requirement was not dropped.

Today, as long as the cattle is processed in an American plant, it can carry a “USDA” label. The Wishons say that has hurt their business as cattle from Mexico and Canada flood the market. (Michael Hanson/For The Washington Post) Congress swiftly repealed the measure.

Today, as long as the cattle is processed in an American plant, it can carry a “USDA” label.

Bullard said that a plunge in cattle prices that occurred around the same time demonstrates that the end of labeling hurt ranchers. But live cattle futures began falling almost a year before the final WTO ruling, and a 2018 study by the Government Accountability Office concluded prices collapsed because of basic supply-and-demand factors, including a prolonged drought that affected the price of cattle feed.

Trump’s first months in office encouraged Bullard to renew the fight. In his first 90 days in the White House, the president issued a “Buy America” executive order governing federal contracting and included “country of origin labeling” on a 24-point list of his trade-negotiating goals.

“We were elated when the new president announced the executive order,” Bullard said.

But opposition from powerful lawmakers quickly scuppered their prospects. In a March 2017 hearing, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, warned Robert E. Lighthizer, the president’s chief trade negotiator: “We do not need to go down that road again.”

Lighthizer’s office declined to comment.

Bullard said he recently made his case to administration officials, including Peter Navarro, an assistant to the president.

But there is little appetite in the nation’s capital for re-litigating

the trade spat at the World Trade Organization, and R-CALF is outgunned by the more powerful NCBA, which worked to repeal labeling and prevent the Trump administration from bringing it back, according to its lobbying disclosure forms.

Since 2012, the group’s political action committee (PAC) has sharply increased its campaign spending, contributing $3.1 million to candidates for federal office, with nearly all of it going to Republicans.

Bullard’s group spends $200,000 on annual lobbying expenses, but lacks a PAC. The younger Wishon holds out hope that Trump will come to the ranchers’ rescue.

“I’m a little bit shocked he hasn’t gone the American beef route the way he has with other commodities,” he said. “But he isn’t done yet.”

Because labeling was not part of the negotiations with Mexico and Canada in the North American trade deal, it probably cannot be included in the legislation. Congress can add to that bill “only such provisions as are strictly necessary or appropriate,” according to a 2015 trade law.

“This is a big challenge,” said Roger Johnson, head of the National Farmers Union, which supports mandatory labeling.

“We have been up on the Hill and having not a very good reception.”

Labor unions backing efforts to tighten enforcement of the trade deal’s labor provisions are having more success. They enjoy support from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who controls the schedule for voting on the bill.

William Reinsch, a Commerce Department official in the Bill Clinton administration, calls labeling a “zombie issue” that refuses to die.

“These people never give up,” said Reinsch, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s a complete waste of time. They don’t have enough votes.”

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) plans to test that assertion as soon as this month by proposing a nonbinding Senate resolution on labeling, according to Sarah Feldman, the senator’s spokeswoman.

To the Wishons, who blame foreign cattle and foreign-owned meatpackers for their plight,

mandatory labeling would ease some of the financial pressure.

But modest operations like theirs confront broader forces, including consolidation at every part of the food-production chain: ranchers, feedlots and meatpackers, they said.

Each year since 1980, an average of almost 17,000 cattle ranchers have gone out of business, according to a recent study by the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly group.

The four largest beef packing firms — JBS of Brazil; Arkansas-based Tyson Foods; Cargill Meat Solutions of Wichita; and National Beef Packing of Kansas City, Mo. — hold 85 percent of the market, up from 25 percent in 1977.

“I used to say they would never be able to control the Washington cowboy, the Washington rancher,” Ted said. “But now we see how that will happen. We will be controlled by the major companies.”

If the financial outlook gets much darker, the younger Wishon may end up as just another cog in a corporate machine rather than pursue the life of self-reliance his father has enjoyed.

“George still might be able to be a rancher, but he’ll ranch to Tyson’s specifications or JBS’s specifications, using the genetics they want and the feed they want,” his father said. “And he will receive a paycheck. He won’t have any ability to better himself.”

In the other Washington, the president says his United States-Mexico-Canada Agree-

ment will replace “the worst trade deal ever made,” a reference to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The Wishons think Trump’s North American trade deal could still be improved.

“NAFTA was a tough thing.

It made some difficult times for us,” said the elder rancher. “I don’t know that the new agreement bettered us.”

Page 12

Livestock Market Digest

May 15, 2019

New Regulation Improves Scrapie Eradication Program

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long-awaited scrapie rule was published in late March in the Federal Register. The rule - which was first proposed in 2015 by U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service - has been anticipated by the American sheep and goat industry since 2016.

For the most part, the industry will not notice much of a difference in the scrapie eradication program, but some segments will see a change. Particularly, changes will be noticed by goat producers and those moving animals in slaughter channels (except wethers less than 18 months of age) or transporting unidentified sheep or goats.

Importantly, the rule incorporates into regulation APHIS’ long-standing policy to use genetic testing to identify genetically resistant or less susceptible sheep for exemption from destruction and as qualifying for interstate movement. The rule takes effect on April 24, 2019.

Producers are asking the American Sheep Industry Association how the rule affects them. As mentioned before, most producers will not notice a change to their current practices. However, goat producers and those who move animals in slaughter channels or who move unidentified animals will be affected by the rule changes.

A foundational component of the scrapie eradication program is the ability to trace diseased animals to their flock of origin. The new rule makes the identification and recordkeeping requirements for goat owners consistent with those requirements that sheep owners have followed for many years. Like sheep producers, producers of goats for meat or fiber

and slaughter goats more than 18 months of age will be required to officially identify their animals to their flocks of birth or flocks of origin, and to maintain certain identification records for five years. There is flexibility in the type of official identification that can be used, but the device or method must be approved in accordance with USDA regulations.

A sheep or goat must be identified to its flock of origin and to its flock of birth by the owner of the animal (or his or her agent) before commingling the animal with sheep or goats from any other flock of origin. This includes unloading of the animal at a livestock facility approved to accept unidentified sheep or goats and that has agreed to act as an agent for the owner to apply official identification. The animal must be identified prior to commingling with other animals from other flocks of origin. When transporting unidentified sheep, the owner or the owner’s agent must have an owner/hauler statement that contains the information needed for the livestock facility to officially identify the animals to their flock of origin and - when required - their flock of birth. Ownership changes also require the sheep and goats to have official identification.

APHIS notes that if the flock of birth or flock of origin is not known because the animal changed ownership while it was exempted from flock of origin identification requirements, the animal may be moved interstate with individual animal identification that is only traceable to the state of origin and to the owner of the animals at the time they were so identified. However, to use this exemption the person applying the identification must

have supporting documentation indicating that the animals were born and had resided throughout their life in the state.

Sheep and goat producers who are new to the program and are requesting their flock identification number for the first time may receive some assistance in obtaining tags. Currently, APHIS will provide up to 80 plastic flock ID tags free-of-charge - to producers?who have not received free tags from APHIS in the past. APHIS will discontinue the availability of no-cost metal tags for producers. For more information, visit USDA’s Sheep and Goat Identification page. To request official sheep and goat tags, a flock/ premises ID or both, call 1-866-USDA-Tag (866-873-2824).

One of the purposes for the changes to the current scrapie eradication program is to ensure that all potential pockets of infection are captured so that the United States can be officially declared free of scrapie. Full eradication of the disease will ultimately reduce producer costs and improve trade opportunities for American sheep and goat products.

A key part to this effort is identifying all sheep and goats that are moved in interstate commerce. Fortunately, the majority of sheep and goats that are moved in interstate commerce are already identified back to their flocks of origin and birth, but there are some populations that have not been previously included. The new regulation makes some changes to capture animals that previously were not required to be identified.

APHIS will now require that those individuals - or their agents - who move unidentified sheep or goats to a market or other premises where they will then be

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identified and those moving animals in slaughter channels (except wethers less than 18 months of age) to have an owner/ hauler statement that indicates specific information needed for official identification and recordkeeping. This includes the name, address and phone number of the owner and the hauler (if different), the date the animals were moved, the flock identification number or the PIN that is assigned to the flock or premises of the animals, the number of animals, and the species, breed and class of animals. If breed is unknown, the face color for sheep must be recorded and for goats, the type (milk, fiber or meat) must be recorded.

The name and address of point of origin - if different from the owner address - and the destination address must also be included in the owner/hauler statement.

If moving individually unidentified animals or other animals required to move with a group/lot identification number, the group/lot identification number and any information required to officially identify the animals must be included on the owner/hauler statement. For animals in slaughter channels, the owner/hauler statement must indicate that the animals are in slaughter channels (except wethers that are less than 18 months of age).

An owner/hauler statement is not required if the animals are not in slaughter channels and are officially identified or are traveling with an Interstate Certificate of Veterinary Inspection, commonly called a health certificate.

Animals moved from one premises owned by the producer across state lines to another premises owned or leased by the producer - such as for grazing - will need an owner/hauler statement unless an ICVI is required.

ASI will keep the industry informed as it continues to evaluate the changes to the scrapie eradication program regulations, and its impact on producers. Additional educational material will be available soon to help producers comply with the regulation changes.

NCBA CEO Kendal Frazier Announces Plans for Retirement

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fter 34 years with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), the past four as CEO, Kendal Frazier announced his plans for retirement in late April. Frazier’s career began as a farm broadcaster in Kansas, where he also served as director of communications for Kansas Livestock Association, before moving to Denver, Colorado, to join the staff of the National Cattlemen’s Association (NCA), predecessor organization to NCBA. During his career, he served the beef industry through some of its most challenging times and events.

When NCA merged with the National Livestock and Meat Board in 1996, Frazier was a member of the team who worked with staff and beef industry volunteer leaders to address a steep decline in demand, helping to address the consumer concerns which had led to losses in market share and falling prices. This work ultimately helped to reverse those declines and set the industry on a new, consumer-focused path. Frazier was also instrumental in helping secure the passage of the checkoff referendum and worked to secure resources for the first checkoff funded public relations and issues management work conducted by NCBA as a contractor to the Beef Checkoff in 1998.

That prescient work would prove to be vital to the long-term success of the beef industry in 2003, when the first domestic case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy was announced. The work done

by Frazier and the NCBA team helped maintain consumer confidence around the globe and ensured that every effort to minimize the impact on the beef industry was minimized.

NCBA will begin the search process to select a new CEO immediately, and Frazier will remain in place to assist with the transition process, until Dec. 31, 2019.