LMD November 2011

Livestock

Riding Herd

MARKET

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

– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL NOVEMBER 15, 2011 • www. aaalivestock . com

Digest Volume 53 • No. 12

by LEE PITTS

Our Time Has Come “Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.”

— Anonymous

A Bad Deal I

by Lee Pitts ’m sure you were absolutely frozen in horror and locked yourself indoors when you heard the news that at least 50 law officers armed with assault rifles were attempting to hunt down a menagerie of wild animals near Zanesville, Ohio, that their owner had turned loose before killing himself.

Almost immediately after the first wild animal sighting classes were canceled at four area school districts, warning signs told motorists to “Stay in your vehicle,” the Muskingum County Sheriff advised area residents to stay indoors and he kept frightened residents updated via alerts on his Twitter account. Even Jack Hanna, of Wild Kingdom and Tonight Show fame, drove all night to Zanesville from Pennsylvania to help. Once there Jack calmed resident’s fears by saying that the escapees were “mature, very big and aggressive.” He also said that the most aggressive of the animals would become more dangerous the longer they were on the loose: “Obviously, as the days go on, hours go on, the animals are going to have to have food.”

Thanks, Jack, for those comforting words, I’m sure they calmed the hysteria.

Now here’s the part that main-

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“Take care of yourself as well as you do your horse and you'll both be healthy.” stream media missed and that I found so ironic. The authorities said they were gunning for the most dangerous of the animals – “big bears, wild cats and wolves.”

“Bears, wild cats and wolves,” oh my! Aren’t those the same animals that our government is turning loose, or letting roam free, with careless abandon in

the West?

Folks in the East are warned to stay indoors until officers kill the animals while we in the West are expected to turn our kids outside to play in areas where the same animals roam at will.

And if you shoot one in the West, like they did in the East, you are looking at huge legal

bills, fines, and probably a stay in prison. For doing the exact same sensible thing that law officers back East did to protect their citizens. We in the West are supposed to live (or die) with the forced reintroduction of wolves and grizzly bears and the protection of mountain lions, while they hunt them down and kill them in the East. Does anyone else see the double standard and sheer lunacy here? Now, thanks to the Obama administration, we are about to crank up the madness.

Reddish Green First of all, let’s get one thing straight: radical environmentalists shouldn’t be called “greens”, they should be called what they are... “reds”. They are nothing more than Socialists who believe that citizens shouldn’t be allowed continued on page two

PETA lawsuit seeks to expand animal rights

by DAVID CRARY and JULIE WATSON, Associated Press

federal court is being asked to grant constitutional rights to five killer whales who perform at marine parks — an unprecedented and perhaps quixotic legal action that is nonetheless likely to stoke an ongoing, intense debate at America’s law schools over expansion of animal rights.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is accusing the SeaWorld parks of keeping five star-performer whales in conditions that violate the 13th Amendment ban on slavery. SeaWorld depicted the suit as baseless.

The chances of the suit succeeding are slim, according to legal experts not involved in the case; any judge who hews to the original intent of the authors of the amendment is unlikely to find that they wanted to protect animals. But PETA relishes engaging in the court of public opinion, as evidenced by its provocative antifur and pro-vegan campaigns.

The suit, which PETA says it will file Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Diego, hinges on the fact that the 13th Amendment, while prohibiting slavery and involuntary

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servitude, does not specify that only humans can be victims.

Jeff Kerr, PETA’s general counsel, says his five-member legal team — which spent 18 months preparing the case — believes it’s the first federal court suit seeking constitutional rights for members of an animal species.

The plaintiffs are the five orcas, Tilikum and Katina based at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida., and Corky, Kasatka and Ulises at SeaWorld San Diego. Tilikum, a six-ton male, made national news in February 2010 when he grabbed a trainer at the close of a performance and dragged her underwater until she drowned.

Captured nearly 30 years ago off Iceland, Tilikum has enormous value as a stud and has fathered many of the calves born at SeaWorld parks.

The lawsuit asks the court to order the orcas released to the custody of a legal guardian who would find a “suitable habitat” for them.

“By any definition, these orcas are slaves — continued on page three

n his excellent book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell shows how becoming super rich has as much to do with timing as it does anything else. For example, 14 of the richest men who ever lived were all born within nine years of one another. Rockefeller, Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and Philip Armour were all born at nearly the same time and this allowed them to participate in “the greatest transformation in history.”

Fast forward to today and you have the exact same thing happening. One could argue that we are living through “the greatest transformation in history” in which the computer has reshaped the world. It’s not just a coincidence that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were both born in the same year (1955).

Gladwell lists another chunk of the 75 richest men who ever lived and they all happened to be born in the mid 1950s. If they’d have been born in the 1940s they’d have never used a computer in school, and if they’d have been born in the sixties the easy gold had already been found!

I believe that we in agriculture are on the cusp of another period that historians may one day point to as the “greatest transformation in history.” At least we’d better be. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not but this world of ours is getting pretty crowded. And I’m not just talking about the aisles of Wal-Mart on the day Social Security checks arrive. I think there are several great fortunes about to be made in cow chips, not computer chips. After all, people are going to need food a lot more than they do Windows 7, Facebook friends or an iPad. And I say, IT’S ABOUT TIME! I’ve long felt that we have it backwards and that the farmer who works a 168-hour work week should continued on page four

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A Bad Deal

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to own property, especially large chunks of it like ranchers do.

They believe that the government should manage and control everything, this despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of endangered species are found on private property, not government lock-ups. Yes they want the same people who were running 4,900 head of bison on a range in Yellowstone National Park in 2006 when their own people told them the carrying capacity was 350 head! They want management by the same bureaucrats in D.C. cubicles who are running 69,000 feral horses on western ranges that by their own admission should only be running 24,000. Yeah, that’s what we need more of.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was enacted almost 40 years ago and since then it has become the biggest boondoggle ever foisted on the American taxpayer. Although it’s been a huge failure in saving species, it has been the greenies best tool for the destruction of property rights. As U.S. Representative Mike Simpson said, “Today the ESA is a tool for controlling land and water, not for preserving species.”

The ESA has been a huge success for green groups because it has allowed: the taking of property without compensation; the elimination of logging and ranching over wide areas which destroyed many western communities; the cancellation of needed public works projects to “save” flies and toads; the death of citizens due to flooding caused by bushes growing on a dam that were “needed” for an insect; the elimination of big game herds for wolf food; and the elimination of thousands of miles of stream sport fisheries for an undesirable trout. In short it has become the greatest tool ever devised for environmentalists to shut down this country. And for what?

To “save” 21 species, many of which were undercounted to begin with, or were subspecies and subpopulations. As Mike Simpson said, “Nearly 2,000 species have been listed as threatened or endangered, but only 21 have been recovered.” By my math, that’s a one percent success rate. “Any other program with such a poor success rate would long since have been terminated,” said Simpson.

Naturally, the greens, two groups in particular, the WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity, want the failed program doubled in scope.

Let’s all be stupid twice as fast!

A Deal With The Devil Here’s how the system works, or in this case, doesn’t work.

First the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS), usually after lawsuits filed by the greens, designates a species as “candidate” for protection under the ESA. After further study FWS can then

continued from page one

either take them off the list or declare them “threatened” or “endangered”.

Since 2007, green groups have filed countless lawsuits to list more than 1,230 species, nearly as many as were listed during the previous 30 years.

This buried Fish and Wildlife officials under mounds of paperwork and the greenies got tired of waiting for the bureaucrats to act, so they went to court to force the issue. And so, on May 10 of this year, the Fish and Wildlife entered into a deal with the WildEarth Guardians.

It was a deal with the devil.

Since 2007 the WildEarth Guardians have petitioned on behalf of more than 700 species and have filed over 30 lawsuits on behalf of these species.

Instead of fighting those lawsuits the feds rolled over and cried “Uncle.” Fish and Wildlife agreed to put the entire process into hyper-speed and promised the WildEarth folks that they would complete the initial petition findings for over 600 species and issue proposed listing rules, or not-warranted findings, for 251 species. Although this settlement does not guarantee that the subject species will be listed as threatened or endangered, it does promise that the backlog of species will be declared one way or the other.

The WildEarth Guardians weren’t the only ones playing this game. On July 12 of this year the FWS reached a similar deal with the Center for Biological Diversity. Under the terms of that agreement, the FWS agreed to make petition findings and final listing decisions for more than 700 species by 2018.

It seems everyone, except the taxpayers who’ve paid for this mess, got what they wanted. A WildEarth Guardian spokesman said, “The agreement will insure that the Service takes action on species that deserve protection.

They were stuck in purgatory – now they may have a path out.”

“This has been one of the highlights of my career,” gushed the Center for Biological Diversity Executive Director, Kierán Suckling. ”Certainly one of the most important achievements of the Center for Biological Diversity.”

Environmentalists who were in mourning because an Alaskan song sparrow and a Texas salamander may have gone extinct while Fish and Wildlife was trying to deal with all the greenie’s lawsuits, can now be optimistic that more plants, weeds, snails and fairy shrimp can finish the job of putting the West out of business.

On September 9, 2011, Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington, D.C., approved the agreements.

Under the terms of the deal Fish and Wildlife must make a final ruling on the “endangered” status for 252 candidate species by September 2016, and nearly 700 continued on page three

“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”

November 15, 2011 more species will be considered under a streamlined timetable.

Smiling Sea Slugs So everyone’s happy. The greenies and all the little sea slugs, weeds, cinnamon jugas (whatever that is), Chelan mountainsnails and masked duskysnails are tickled pink, but what did the Obama Administration get out of the deal?

The two groups promise not to file any more lawsuits until March 31, 2017. If the feds don’t act fast enough in creating endangered species the groups can go back to court as soon as 2016. The two green groups also agreed not to petition the government for more than 10 species listings per year for the term of the agreement. The government completely capitulated and agreed to manage the Endangered Species Act according to the priorities of the WildEarth Guardians and Center for Biological Diversity.

Doesn’t all this sound a bit like blackmail? Or, in this case, greenmail?

Here’s a little publicized part of the deal: the settlement doesn’t prohibit other green groups from filing new lawsuits against Fish and Wildlife in the same manner. And they’re going to want to when they find out how profitable it is. In fact, such groups will spring up everywhere, like a bunch of spotted owls in new growth forest, because the icing on top of the environmentalist’s cake is that under the terms of this agreement the FWS agreed that the plaintiffs, WildEarth Guardians and Center for Biological Diver-

sity, won their lawsuits, and so the feds agreed to pay all their court and lawyer costs. The amount is to be negotiated, but seeing what a bad deal the feds negotiated on this deal we can only imagine the bill the greenies will be handing the American taxpayers.

So what do the Feds and the American taxpayer get out of all this? The feds get a little less paperwork and harassment.

Maybe. Even that is questionable because if Fish and Wildlife decides that one snail, mollusk or slug does not qualify for endangered status, that decision can still rendered mute due to yet another lawsuit filed by who else but the WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity. As for the taxpayers, as usual they get to pay for everything.

In other words, this was the world’s worst trade!

The Extinction Crises Starting to get a little hot under the collar? Wait, it gets worse. Keep in mind that authorization for the Endangered Species Act ended decades ago but the Appropriations Committee continues to fund the unconstitutional mingle-mangle. Then there is the fact that our government is flat broke, in debt to the tune of trillions of dollars, and we’re already on the hook for more than 1,800 species already protected under the Endangered Species Act. And yet we’re about to commit large sums of cash to support communities of frecklebelly madtoms, purple Lilliputs, sicklefin redhorses, spathulate seedboxes, sub-globose snake

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pyrgs, thin-wall quillworts, Waccamaw fatmuckets, western chicken turtle, San Bernardino flying squirrels, beardless chinch weeds, White Bluffs bladderpods, Sierra Nevada yellowlegged frogs, ashy storm petrels, Mexican garter snakes, Rosemont talussnails, Lemmon’s fleabanes, yellow-billed loons and Tucson shovel-nosed snakes.

All this while communities of taxpayers are suffering through the worst financial times since the depression.

What’s it all going to cost, a reasonable person might ask?

Who knows? Fish and Wildlife says it cost them an average of $3.5 billion a year since 1989 to fund the ESA. But that doesn’t include other federal expenditures, state costs or the cost born by the private sector, which, some estimate could be ten times higher than those paid by Fish and Wildlife. I suspect it’s a lot higher but, really, no one knows how much time and money has been wasted.

At the risk of being unpolitically correct, I must ask, will the world really be that worse off if we lose the spatterdock, cave obligate isopod, ciliate-leaf tickseed or corpulent hornsnail?

Although the greenies blame the “extinction crises” on logging, road building, grazing, and other “extraction industries,” may we remind everyone that extinction is nature’s way of saying it’s time to go. Yes, one day even the WildEarth Guardians will go extinct, although, not soon enough. The feds can spend every last taxpayer dollar and they still won’t stop it. But you can bet YOUR last dollar they’ll try.

Give Us Your Bifid Duct Pyrgs The feds have already started holding up their end of the bargain. The Obama Administration has approved 374 new species for possible ESA inclusion including the ever popular green floater mussel. And as if we don’t have enough problems of our own, the feds have also announced that we’ll also take care of other country’s endangered species too. When the Mexican government releases five radio collared wolves in northeastern Sonora USFWS officials say that if the wolves cross into the United States they will be granted full protection.

Perhaps we should change the inscription on the Statue of Lib-

Page 3 erty to read: “Bring us your poor, and your huddled masses of distal gland springsnails, Tippecanoe darters, acute elimias, basalt jugas, black-bract pipeworts and jumping slugs.”

Any one of which, we would remind everyone, could wreak the same kind of havoc and financial devastation as the spotted owl and the delta smelt have.

At the same time we’re cutting budgets for school kids, letting our nation’s infrastructure decay and postponing Social Security, we’re going to give lifelong social security to the eastern hellbender. Although I really don’t know if that’s a snail, a slug, a politician, an ex-hippie environmentalist, a mollusk or a crossbred fairy shrimp.

PETA Lawsuit kidnapped from their homes, kept confined, denied everything that’s natural to them and forced to perform tricks for SeaWorld’s profit,” said Kerr. “The males have their sperm collected, the females are artificially inseminated and forced to bear young which are sometimes shipped away.”

SeaWorld, which is owned by private equity firm Blackstone Group LP, said any effort to extend the 13th Amendment’s protections beyond humans “is baseless and in many ways offensive.”

“SeaWorld is among the world’s most respected zoological institutions,” the com-

continued from page one

pany said. “There is no higher priority than the welfare of the animals entrusted to our care and no facility sets higher standards in husbandry, veterinary care and enrichment.”

The statement outlined the many laws and regulations SeaWorld is obliged to follow, touted the company’s global efforts to promote conservation of marine mammals, and said the orcas’ performances help give the public a better appreciation and understanding of these animals.

SeaWorld and other U.S. marine parks are governed by the Marine Mammals Proteccontinued on page four

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PETA Lawsuit

continued from page three

“People may well look back at this lawsuit and see in it a perceptive glimpse into a future of greater compassion for species other than our own,” Tribe wrote in an email.

Tribe noted that some Americans might find it bizarre or insulting to equate any treatment of animals to the sufferings of human slavery. But he argued that the 13th Amendment was written broadly, to address unforeseen circumstances, and could legitimately be applied to animals.

An African-American constitutional expert, Nicholas Johnson of Fordham University School of Law, said he could understand why some blacks might be insulted by the lawsuit, but didn’t share that reaction: “I’m more entertained by it in the legal context than I am offended by it.”

PETA addressed this issue in the suit, noting that repeated Supreme Court rulings have applied the 13th Amendment to many forms of involuntary servitude beyond the type of slavery that existed during the Civil War. “The historical context is undeniable,” said Jeff Kerr, the PETA lawyer. “But that’s not what this case is about. It’s about the orcas in their own right, not whether they are or aren't similar to humans.”

The five orcas are represented in the case by PETA and four individuals: Ric O’Barry, a longtime orca and dolphin trainer; Ingrid Visser, a New Zealand marine biologist who has studied orcas extensively; Howard Garrett, founder of the Orca Network, an advocacy group in Washington State; and Samantha Berg, a former orca trainer at SeaWorld Orlando.

The lawsuit details the distinctive traits of orcas, the largest species within the dolphin family, including their sophisticated problem-solving and commu-

tion Act, which allows public displays of the creatures if permits are obtained and the facility offers and education/conservation programs for the public.

Overall, under prevailing U.S. legal doctrine, animals under human control are considered property, not entities with legal standing of their own. They are afforded some protections through animal-cruelty laws, endangered-species regulations and the federal Animal Welfare Act, but are not endowed with a distinct set of rights.

However, the field of animal law has evolved steadily, with courses taught at scores of law schools.

Many prominent lawyers and academics have joined in serious discussion about expanding animal rights.

Rutgers University law professor Gary Francione, for example, contends that animals deserve the fundamental right to not be treated as property. Law professor David Favre of Michigan State University has proposed a new legal category called “living property” as a step toward providing rights for some animals.

Favre was skeptical that litigation seeking to apply the 13th Amendment to animals would prevail.

“The court will most likely not even get to the merits of the case, and find that the plaintiffs do not have standing to file the lawsuit at all,” he said by email.

“I also think a court would not be predisposed to open up that box with fully unknown consequences.”

Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, who in past writings has proposed extending legal standing to chimpanzees, also expressed doubt that the courts were ready to apply the 13th Amendment to animals. But he welcomed the PETA lawsuit as a potentially valuable catalyst for “national reflection and deliberation” about humans’ treatment of animals.

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nicative abilities and their formation of complex communities.

The suit alleges that captivity in the “barren tanks” of a marine park suppresses the orcas’ abilities and relationships, and subjects them to stress. This sometimes leads to instances where the orcas injure themselves, other orcas or humans that interact with them, according to the suit.

Naomi Rose, the Humane Society’s marine mammal biologist, said there’s a growing body

November 15, 2011 of research suggesting that whales, dolphins and porpoises have the cognitive sophistication of 3-to-4-year-old human children.

As for the orcas at SeaWorld, she said, “They don’t seem to adapt to captivity. I would say they’re miserable.”

At SeaWorld San Diego, visitors are shown a film touting the park’s rescue efforts that have saved thousands of sea creatures.

During the main performance,

Riding Herd

trainers point out how much the orcas are similar to humans: The babies cry before moving on to babbling and finally imitating the crackling sounds of the adults' voices.

Jenny Raymond, 47, who was visiting from Switzerland, said she was delighted by the show and does not buy the argument that the orcas are slave laborers.

“I think they are in better conditions here than in the wild,” she said.

continued from page one

make more money than the commodities broker who sells corn he wouldn’t know how to grow, or even recognize if he drove past an Iowa field of it. After all, who should profit most, the hedge fund trader who produces nothing of value, or the farmer who grows foods that sustains life? One day a hungry world will wake up and the 82 year-old multibillionaire futures trader with the 28 year-old girlfriend who lavishes his money on liberal causes (George Soros) will one day be replaced on the Forbes 400 by an Indiana or California farmer, who will then celebrate by buying his wife of 40 years a brand new dishwasher to make her life a little easier.

Ranchers who feed folks deserve to make more money than the government bureaucrats and environmental lawyers who are trying to stop them. It’s just not right that the paperpushers in soft shoes are paid more money per year than the hard working ranchers they are over-regulating. Cowboys ought to be paid more than the CEO’s and lawyers of groups like the Sierra Club, Earth First and PETA because they’ve done far more for the environ-

ment, and for the welfare of animals. The next batch of billionaires for sure will own lots of stock. . . of the four-legged variety.

Large animal veterinarians deserve to make more money than NFL lineman because they get hit just as hard and don’t wear any pads.

And they’ve actually graduated from college!

Cattle feeders ought to make more money per animal for owning it for 120 days than the trader who owns it 20 minutes. And the trucker who delivers a load of cattle from King City, California, to North Platte, Nebraska, much faster than the Post Office can send a letter over the same distance, ought to at least make as much money as the retired Postal Service employee does each month.

It’s just not right that celebrities make more in a minute doing a milk commercial than those prisoners of lactation, the dairymen, do in a year. And while we’re on the subject of slave labor, journalists who write about cows for a living ought to make at least as much as “reality TV” script writers! Okay, so now I’m getting greedy. But I’m telling you, my farm and ranch friends, OUR TIME HAS COME!

Western Legacy Alliance Takes Tax-Payer Fight To Congress estern Legacy Alliance (WLA) Chairman Jennifer Ellis, Blackfoot Idaho, joined by Lowell Baier, Boone & Crockett, and others exposed the reality of tax payer funded “environmental” litigation before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law, October 11, 2011, held a hearing on H.R. 1966, the Government Savings Litigation Act. H.R. 1966, which was introduced by Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), will prohibit non-profit organizations with a net worth exceeding $7 million from filing for EAJA funds; require that EAJA filers show a “direct and personal monetary interest” in the action to be eligible for payment; and cap the attorney fees environmental activists claim to be owed.

Despite claims to the contrary, the legislation does not affect the ability of individual citizens and small businesses to utilize EAJA when defending themselves against the federal government, says WLA attorney Karen BuddFalen, Cheyenne, Wyoming.

It was Budd-Falen’s research on behalf of WLA that uncovered the literally tens of millions of

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dollars that have been pouring into the coffers of multi-millionaire groups like the Sierra Club, the Defenders of Wildlife and countless others.

The current Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) allows plaintiffs to recover attorney fees and other expenses from the federal government when they prevail or settle cases against the government.

“Government funding of groups suing the federal government has literally become a cottage industry in the so-called environmental community,” according to Ellis, who traveled to Capitol Hill to testify on behalf of natural resources users.

Budd-Falen’s research indicates that over the past decade, just 12 environmental groups have filed more than 3,300 lawsuits, recovering more than $37 million in EAJA funds.

“Because the federal government stopped keeping records on these payments in 1995,” BuddFalen explained, “this is just the tip of the iceberg in payments.

There are hundreds of groups who are using the courts to remove productive use of lands and getting paid for their actions, often regardless of whether they win or not. The mere filing of a

suit often results in payments.

“As a rancher, I pay for this litigation three times,” Ellis told the Committee. “My tax dollars fund the federal lawyers and agencies to participate in this litigation; I am forced to hire an attorney to protect my own interests, and my tax dollars fund those using the courts to drive my family from the land.”

The October 11, 2011 hearing is just a small step in correcting a problem that has not only been costly for every American, but has been devastating to those who utilize and enjoy natural resources including energy production, mineral production, livestock production and recreation, said Budd-Falen. A similar measure has been introduced in the U.S. Senate. A measure must clear both houses and gain the signature of the President before the problem will be solved.

H.R. 1966 is supported by numerous state and national organizations including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the American Sheep Industry Association, the Public Lands Council, the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association, the New Mexico Wool Growers, Inc. and the New Mexico Federal Lands Council.

November 15, 2011

“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”

WildEarth Guardians Targets Dangerously Dusty Skies in Eight Western States n late October the WildEarth Guardians petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to rein in dangerous levels of particulate matter air pollution in 21 areas in eight western states, including Arizona, Colorado, Montana,

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California student named National Agriscience Student of the Year ary Steves of Escalon, Calif., a senior at Escalon High School in Escalon and member of the Escalon FFA Chapter, conducted research comparing the immune responses of Barbados Blackbelly hair sheep and Suffolk crossbred sheep to gastrointestinal nematodes. Her study concluded that hair sheep produce a greater immune response. Now this research has also won her top honors.

Steves was named Agriscience Student of the Year Friday at the 84th National FFA Convention during an onstage ceremony and was presented with a scholarship.

“Knowing there is a difference in resistance, future studies may include performing the same research on offspring from a cross of hair sheep with typical wool-type sheep breeds European in origin, such as the Suffolk, which would hopefully generate data that might be useful for sheep producers looking to increase parasite resistance and decrease losses from parasite infections by a more practical and more economical means through crossbreeding,” she said.

Steves is currently serving as the 2011-12 California Association FFA state secretary and after high school plans to attend California State University at Chico and major in animal science. She is the daughter of Lisa and Rob Steves, and her FFA advisors are Jennifer Terpstra, Stacy Ingalls and Bruce Campbell.

The National FFA Agriscience Student of the Year program recognizes high school students who, through scientific research and reasoning, find creative solutions to challenges within the field of agriculture. Eight national finalists are selected for the student of the year award.

Those competing to win the honor develop hypotheses, conduct research and develop theories pertaining to an agricultural issue and report findings to a panel of judges with a detailed application, written report, display, presentation and an interview.

To qualify for the honor, FFA members must be a junior or senior in high school or a freshman in college majoring in an agriculture-related field and heir research must have been initiated while in high school.

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The National FFA Agriscience Student of the year is sponsored by Monsanto as a special project of the National FFA Foundation.

Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming.

“We need the EPA to step up and put these areas on the path to clean up,” said Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy Program Director for WildEarth Guardians. “These dusty skies are not only dangerous, they’re a sign that air quality throughout the West is at risk. We need relief.”

Air quality monitoring data for the 21 areas shows that healthbased standards limiting particulate matter less than 10 microns in diameter, or 1/7th the width of a human hair, also known as PM10, are being violated.

Breathing PM-10 can lead to a number of adverse health effects, including irritation of the airways, coughing, or difficulty breathing, decreased lung function, aggravated asthma, development of chronic bronchitis, nonfatal heart attacks; and premature death in people with heart or lung disease (see the EPA’s website, www.epa.gov/air/ particlepollution/health.html).

Under the Clean Air Act, if an area violates any ambient air

quality standard, the EPA is required to ensure States clean up the air pollution. Despite violating PM-10 standards, the EPA has yet to put the 21 areas on the path to clean up.

The areas violating PM-10 standards, by state, include: Arizona: Douglas, Nogales, Tucson, and Yuma; Colorado: Alamosa, Durango, Grand Junction, Lamar, Pagosa Springs, and Parachute; Montana: A portion of Jefferson County south of Helena.

Nevada: Pahrump; New Mexico: Anthony, Chaparral, Deming, Las Cruces, and Sunland Park; Oklahoma: Tulsa; Utah: Salt Lake and Utah Counties; and Wyoming: A portion of Sweetwater County near Point of Rocks.

An interactive Google Earth map showing the location of these areas and the air quality monitors can be viewed at http://climatewest.org/pm-10dirty-air-areas-targeted-forcleanup/.

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Under the Clean Air Act, if an area violates PM-10 standards, the EPA is required to designate the area as “nonattainment,” which triggers deadlines for States to clean up the air pollution and protect public health.

Where an area that is already designated as “nonattainment” violates PM-10 air quality standards, the EPA must reclassify its designation as “Serious,” which imposes more stringent clean up requirements. In this case, WildEarth Guardians called for 15 areas to be designated as “nonattainment” and for six additional areas to be reclassified as “Serious”nonattainment areas, including Douglas, Ariz., Nogales, Ariz., Yuma, Ariz., Anthony, N.M., Salt Lake County, Utah, and Utah County, Utah.

The sources of PM-10 pollution in these areas include dust blown from disturbed lands, mining operations, coal-fired power plants and oil refineries, dirt roads, and other kinds of burning (e.g., wood stoves, industrial boilers). For example, in Salt Lake County, copper mining at Kennecott Utah Copper’s Bingham Canyon Mine and coal-fired smelter have con-

tributed to violations.

“These air quality violations are a sign of out control air pollution,” said Nichols. “These sources — whether they be coalfired power plants or dusty roads — need to be reined in. It’s time for clean air to come first in these areas.”

In some cases, violations of PM-10 standards have been ongoing. For example, Salt Lake County, which includes Salt Lake City, has violated PM-10 standards every year since 1999.

A violation of the PM-10 standards occurs whenever the threeyear average of the number of exceedances of the standards exceeds 1.0. The PM-10 standards are exceeded whenever concentrations exceed 150 micrograms/cubic meter over a 24-hour period.

WildEarth Guardians petitioned the EPA under the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that provides any citizen the right to petition the government to issue a rule. In this case, Guardians petitioned the EPA to issue a rule to ensure PM-10 pollution in the 21 areas is cleaned up. The petition calls on the EPA to respond within 90 days.

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Page 6

November 15, 2011

Unpacking the HSUS Gravy Train (2011 Edition) from WW.HUMANEWATCH.ORG

he Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is a private organization, but thankfully its tax returns are required to be public. They give a small glimpse into America’s most deceptive animal rights group. And we’ve just gotten a copy of HSUS’s latest tax return, covering 2010.

HSUS’s tax returns have served as a backbone for startling discoveries, such as that the organization gives less than one percent of its budget to pet shelters (the real humane societies); that HSUS puts more money

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into lobbying than it does petshelter grants; and that HSUS even contributes more to its pension plan than it gives to needy shelters.

So how did HSUS fare in 2010? Veteran readers won’t be surprised. Here are some lowlights: ■ HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle’s total compensation package was $287,786, up roughly 7 percent from the previous year.

■ HSUS stuffed $2.6 million into its pension plan, bringing the total since Pacelle took over to about $14 million.

■ HSUS spent $3.6 million on lobbying. (If you see an HSUS

ad showing an abused and malnourished lobbyist, let us know.)

■ HSUS had 636 employees, including 49 who earned more than $100,000.

■ HSUS’s contribution/grant revenue increased by $34 million. This was boosted by a $12million increase in noncash contributions (e.g. free ads) and a $11.7 million grant from a single donor.

■ HSUS’s All Animals magazine had a circulation of about 450,000. That’s a good estimate of HSUS’s true membership size (versus the 11 million they like to bandy about when they are on Capitol Hill), since the magazine

USDA takes next step with GIPSA rule

by STEWART DOAN, © Agri-Pulse Communications, Inc.

he USDA decided to abandon some of the most controversial provisions of the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) proposed rule to reform livestock and poultry marketing practices, Agri-Pulse has learned.

The Department plans to forward the so-called GIPSA regulation to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review on November 4, according to industry sources who were briefed on the matter on the 3rd.

They offered conflicting accounts of which portions of the rule, as originally proposed, would be subject to OMB scrutiny, and whether a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis conducted by USDA Chief Economist Joe Glauber would accompany the submission.

Some sources indicate that USDA will recommend “final rule” status for language that addresses livestock and poultry contracting concerns raised

by Congress in the 2008 Farm Bill. These provisions cover undue or unreasonable preference or

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advantage; reasonable notice to growers prior to suspension of delivery of birds, required facilities upgrades; termination of production contracts; and the use of arbitration to resolve a dispute.

Others say that USDA will not define preferential treatment.

The Department, according to our contacts, will recommend that a section of the proposed rule that deals with tournament pay systems in the poultry industry be implemented as an interim final rule with a request for public comment.

But some additional provisions sought by USDA to “ensure the marketplace is fair and competitive for producers,” as USDA described them in a June 2010 press release announcing the proposed regulation, have been dropped. They include prohibitions on packer-to-packer sales and exclusive arrangements between packers and dealers, and a requirement that packers must retain records.

All other parts of the original proposal will remain at USDA for further debate, including a section that contains USDA’s interpretation of competitive injury.

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is included with a $25 membership.

■ HSUS’s Kind News magazine reached 644,000 kindergarten to 6th grade students.

(Targeting kids seems right out of PETA’s playbook.)

■ HSUS spent a whopping $47 million on fundraising-related costs, or about 37 percent of HSUS budget.

■ HSUS’s pet-shelter grants totaled just $528,676, or 0.418 percent of HSUS’s budget.

Read those last two bullet points again: The “Humane Society” of the United States spends almost 90 times more on fundraising than it spends on pet-shelter grants. If that doesn’t show you the real priorities of this “factory fundraising” operation, nothing will.

In 2009, four-fifths of one percent of HSUS’s budget went to pet-shelter grants; this year is about half of that. It’s even worse than 2008. It may even be the lowest percentage ever.

Has HSUS no shame?

For the sake of openness, we’ve posted a copy of our

accounting of HSUS’s grants at www.humanewatch.org.

Feel free to quibble with us, but we’re confident of our accuracy.

Helpfully, HSUS’s accountants listed the purpose of each grant. We counted grants that were labeled as “animal shelter aid” (or something similar). We included grants that HSUS made to shelters caring for rescued animals. And we also counted grants to care for horses, since there’s a huge horse welfare problem that HSUS helped create.

But despite the $528,676 of good that HSUS did, there’s a long way to go for HSUS to earn the “humane society” in its name. Memo to Wayne Pacelle: It’s time to stop feeding lobbyists and factory fundraising machines at the expense of needy pets.

If you think HSUS’s financial malfeasance warrants a closer look from the IRS, contact the United States Treasury Inspector General at 800/366-4484 (press 5) and respectfully request that case number 55-1005-0025-C be brought to conclusion.

SOURCE: http://humanewatch.org/index.php/ site/post/time_to_call_the_feds/

Montana Railroad Rights of Way Owners May be Eligible for Payments under Class Action Settlement lass Counsel in Amunrud v.

Sprint Communications, No. 1:10-cv-00057-RFCCSO, announced that preliminary approval of a Proposed Settlement was granted by the United States District Court for the District of Montana. The lawsuit involves fiber-optic cable and related telecommunications equipment that has been installed in railroad Rights of Way. Persons who own or owned land next to or under railroad Rights of Way in Montana may be eligible to receive benefits.

Sprint Communications, the Defendant, is a telecommunications company. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Sprint or its predecessors buried fiber-optic cable and installed related telecommunications equipment within railroad Rights of Way in Montana.

A railroad Right of Way is a strip of land on which a railroad company builds and operates a railroad. The Defendant entered into agreements with the railroads that own and occupy the Rights of Way, and under those agreements paid the railroads for the rights to install the fiberoptic cable and related telecommunications equipment within the Rights of Way. Plaintiffs allege that, before installing the fiber-optic cable and related telecommunications equipment, the Defendant also was required to obtain consent from those landowners who owned the land under the Rights of Way. The Defendant contends that the railroads had the right to allow them to use the Rights of Way without the need for further permission from the adjoining

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landowners and deny any wrongdoing.

Class Members include current or previous owners of land next to or under a railroad Right of Way, at any time since the cable was installed, in the following counties: Broadwater, Custer, Dawson, Gallatin, Granite, Jefferson, Lake, Lewis & Clark, Missoula, Park, Powell, Prairie, Rosebud, Sanders, Stillwater, Sweet Grass, Treasure, Wibaux, or Yellowstone. Class members can find out when fiber-optic cable was installed in a particular Right of Way by visiting www.MontanaFiberSettlement.com or calling 1-866-6801707. Class members will have an opportunity to claim cash benefits if the Court approves the Proposed Settlement.

The Proposed Settlement will provide cash payments to qualifying class members based on various factors that include: ■ the length of the Right of Way where the cable is installed, ■ the length of time they owned the property, ■ how the railroad got its property rights, and ■ how many people co-own the property.

The Proposed Settlement will also provide the Defendant with a permanent Telecommunications Easement, which gives it the right to use the railroad Rights of Way for its fiber-optic cable and related telecommunications equipment, if it doesn’t already have that right.

For more information regarding the Class Action visit www.MontanaFiberSettlement.c om or call 1-866/680-1707.

November 15, 2011

“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”

Cow/Calf Calculator: attlemen’s The Know your Cost of TOO BOX Production

by PAUL H. GUTIERREZ, CASEY DANLEY and JERRY HAWKES

ecord keeping and planning is an important management function for any business, particularly for one as unpredictable as the cow-calf business. However, good record keeping and planning will not lead to improved profits unless the records are used to identify management opportunities, costs savings, and/or improvements. The current drought in New Mexico and throughout the Southwest has the potential to become a long-term condition.

Identification of opportunities and improvements may be critical to maintaining margins and staying in business.

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A good way to start looking for production, marketing and other management opportunities and improvements is by taking a hard look at production costs, such as cow costs. Analysis of production costs provides important benchmark data for planning and insights into being “a low-cost producer,” even during a drought. To avoid unintended consequences, cutting cow costs must be examined carefully.

According to Integrated Resource Management (IRM) data, low-cost producers have lower annual cow-carrying costs, lower winter feed, and total supplement cost, and lower interest on debt. In addition, low-cost producers have higher reproductive rates and heavier weaning weights than high-cost producers. IRM data also identified a few cost areas such as pasture, bulls and herd health where lowcost producers spend just as much as high-cost producers.

These are areas where spending less often causes a potentially larger drop in herd productivity and ultimately raises all costs.

One of the best tools for evaluating cow costs is the enterprise budget. The enterprise budget can be thought of as an expanded version of the cow-calf profit formula, where: Profit or loss = Revenue – Expenses, or; Profit or loss = (price x production) – cost of production, or; Profit or loss = [((%calf crop x weaning weight) x price) +((%cull livestock sales x weight) x price)] – costs per cow.

Many beef cattle enterprise budget formats are available; web links to several cow-calf enterprise budget formats are provided at the end of this article, including the sample budgeted presented here.

In this sample cow-calf enterprise budget, (Table 1) a net profit or returns above total operating costs is estimated for a 200 head cow-calf, spring-calving enterprise. Assumptions such as herd size, death loss, replacement rate, weaned calf crop, weights and price of market livestock are shown at the bottom of the budget. Values and costs are reported on a per cow and a total basis. To create a similar set of estimates, use values from your record system, farm loan application or Schedule F (Profit or Loss Form Farming) tax form or both. Be sure to adjust these figures from your records or Sched-

ule F to reflect costs for the cowcalf enterprise only.

Initially, identify all possible cost categories for your cow-calf enterprise and report a value.

Adjustments can then be made to initial cost allocations. For example, if fuel and oil costs are reported for cattle and crops, then a portion that reflects the approximate fuel and oil costs for the cow-calf enterprise should be allocated to cattle. If costs for hay and cattle production are combined, and all or a portion of the hay is fed to the cows, then an equivalent portion of hay production costs should be charged to the cow-calf enterprise.

Lines 6 through 33 report the cost categories for our budget example in Table 1. Feed, the first major item is reported in lines 6 through 10 (also reported on line 18 of your Sch F). Total feed costs for our example are $37,920 or $189.60/cow (line 11, $37,920/200 cows). Of the total operating costs reported, $93,486 (line 33), feed accounts for 41% of the total.

Depending on the year and the individual ranch forage and management situation, feed costs typically will account for 25-50 percent of total cash operating costs, often the difference between a low cost and high cost producer. In drought years it is not uncommon for feed and pasture cost to exceed 50 percent of total operating cost for many producers. However, drought or no drought, if feed and pasture costs exceed 60 percent of total cash operating costs, an in-depth analysis of feed production, purchasing and management should be made.

Cowherd productivity goals (i.e. weaning weight, cow size, milk production) should be synchronized with the ability to maintain least-cost supplement and rations as well as sufficient forage availability. The primary physiological value of cattle is their ability to utilize forages.

Therefore, to lower and efficiently “manage” feed costs, the focus should be on the amount of supplemental feed beyond the nutrient value provided by grazed forages, which typically determine the competitiveness of cow-calf enterprises. The most profitable cow-calf producers have the lowest feed costs relative to their less profitable contemporaries.

Lower cost producers are not poor nutritional managers. They

focus on grazed, renewable forage resources instead of expensive purchased or mechanically harvested feeds. Grazing management is the most important factor for successful and sustained range livestock production in any economic or environmental climate. Ultimately, livestock producers are in the business of forage production. A management plan or strategy is intended to keep producers in business.

Some specific strategies to lower feed costs include: ■ Know production costs ■ Minimize feed waste ■ Test harvested feeds for nutritional value ■ Feed heifers separately from cows ■ Feed low-condition-score females separately ■ Minimize dependence on fossil fuels, when possible ■ Cooperate with fellow producers to buy bulk supplemental feed to lower per unit cost ■ Do NOT use nutritional “quick fixes” or “cure-alls” ■ Price feed by nutritional basis, not weight ■ Evaluate alternative feed sources (i.e., crop residues, processing by-products) ■ Avoid additional debt from equipment and machinery purchases ■ Let the cattle harvest the forage ■ Avoid selection for extremes in mature weight and/or milk production, and ■ Match the breeding system to the forage management plan.

Labor, in larger operations, is often a high-cost category. Labor costs exceeding $55 per cow should be evaluated, not including labor of the ranch owner, which could be three to four times as much as hired labor costs. Still an objective evaluation should be made for hired labor.

Other cost categories that can be problem areas are: 1. Repairs/maintenance (line 13) 2. Supplies purchased (line 15) 3. Fuel, oil, lubricants (line 17) These three categories are often used as a “catch all” for the many different trips to town for a $20 part. A penny here, a few dollars there — it all adds up. In the example budget, total other operating expenses were $32,866 or $164.33 per cow (line 23).

(The cost or value per cow is the total cost divided by cow herd size.) Cowherd size is the beginning year inventory of breeding heifers and cows (200 head in the example).

Indirect or overhead costs are those that must be paid whether or not a calf is produced. These costs include real estate taxes, insurance, utilities, interest and

Page 7

depreciation. In some operations, interest can be a significant part of indirect costs.

Depreciation, although a noncash cost, is a good indicator of the level of capital investment. A very high depreciation figure per cow would indicate lots of new paint or expensive purchased breeding stock.

It is important to examine the level of return being received relative to the dollar amount invested. Total indirect cost for this example was $22,700 or $113.50 per cow (line 29). Total direct

costs and indirect operation cost were $467.43 per cow (line33).

This $467.43 per cow is our estimate of our annual cost to maintain a cow and is very useful information as we evaluate production and marketing and related drought management strategies. You are encouraged to determine what your annual cow cost is.

Drought management strategies can help take the guesswork out of decision-making. Decicontinued on page thirteen

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Livestock Market Digest

Page 8

$20,000 in beef scholarships CAB’s Colvin Fund helps education dreams come true ursuing a passion for agriculture through further education — that’s the top requirement for the Louis M. “Mick” Colvin Scholarship offered by the Certified Angus Beef® (CAB®) brand.

This year, $15,000 will be split among five undergraduate scholarships, in the amounts of $5,000, $4,000, $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000.

College juniors and seniors who have shown commitment to the beef industry, either through coursework or activities, are

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encouraged to apply by the December 2 deadline. Applications are evaluated on involvement and scholastic achievement, communication skills and reference letters.

A new opportunity, an additional $5,000 graduate level scholarship will also be given to a full-time masters or doctorate student conducting research related to high-quality beef production. Applications for that award are due Jan. 13, 2012.

“The graduate level scholarship will build on what the Colvin

Scholarship has always done,” says Mick Colvin, who co-founded Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB) in 1978 and served as president for 22 years. “We will be able to groom the next great scientist supporting premium beef.”

The funds given have more than doubled since 2009.

“It’s very, very gratifying to see the amount we’ve offered grow over the years,” Colvin says. “Our partners have really pitched in and they’ve made this scholarship what it is today.”

Those supporters raised a

FFA named Kansas student national Star in Agricultural Placement hile working with his father on his commercial cow and crop production operation, Alex Goeckel of Washington, Kan., became interested in the livestock industry. This interest continued to grow and now has won him top honors.

Goeckel, 21, a graduate of Washington High School in Washington and a member of the Washington FFA Chapter, competed against three other finalists to be named the Star of Agricultural Placement competition at the 84th National FFA Convention recently in Indianapolis.

Each year at convention, 16 national finalists vie for the organization’s top awards — the American Star Farmer, American Star in Agribusiness, American Star in Agricultural Placement and American Star in Agriscience. Four finalists compete in each category. The Star awards honor students who have developed outstanding agricul-

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tural skills and competencies, demonstrated high management skills, earned an American FFA Degree — the organization’s highest level of accomplishment and met a host of other agricultural education, scholastic and leadership requirements.

Each finalist was interviewed by a panel of judges that ultimately named the winner of each Star award. Winners were revealed during the eighth general session at the national FFA convention on October 22, 2011 where they received recognition and an educational award of $4,000. Runners-up received $2,000 each.

Goeckel grew up on a swine farm. In high school, he worked for two large swine production operations and his experiences helped him as a student at Kansas State University land a position with the university’s Swine Research Unit.

“I’ve been working at the Swine Research Unit since I was a freshman and have had many

responsibilities, including record keeping, feeding, vaccinating, artificial insemination and disinfecting the facility,” he said. “I’ve been trusted with the training of all new student workers and am the person left in charge of managing weekend operations and part-time employees.”

Today, as he continues pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in feed science, he is serving an internship at Suther Feeds as a sales agent.

The American FFA Degree recognition programs are cosponsored by Case IH of Racine, Wis.; Farm Credit Systems of Washington, D.C.; Pioneer HiBred of Des Moines, Iowa; DTN — The Progressive Farmer of Omaha, Neb.; and Syngenta of Greensboro, N.C., as a special project of the National FFA Foundation.

Goeckel is the son of Douglas and Teryl Goeckel. He is studying grain science at Kansas State University. His FFA advisor is John Kern.

Western Legacy Alliance Research Spurs Congressional Action on Exposing Taxpayer Funded Lawsuit Racket of Radical Environmentalists I am/our organization is committed to protecting the open spaces, private property, private businesses and ensuring the responsible use of public lands.

Please list me/my organization as a member of the Western Legacy Alliance.

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November 15, 2011 record $92,000 in scholarship monies at a golf outing and auction held during the brand’s annual conference this year in Sunriver, Ore. The dollars go into an account that generates the interest proceeds used to fund these scholarships each year. That ensures the longevity of the program and its impact on the industry.

The 2012 golf outing sponsorship was purchased by Palmer Food Services/G&C Food Distributors, Rochester, N.Y. The following companies also supported the live auction: Holten Meat Inc., East St. Louis, Ill; Cargill Meat Solutions, Wichita, Kan.; Tyson Fresh Meats Inc., Dakota Dunes, S.D.; Sysco Columbia LLC, Columbia, S.C.; Cattleman’s Choice Feedyard Inc., Gage, Okla.; Niman Ranch, Denver, Colo.; and from Canada, Retail Ready Food Products Inc., Mississauga, Ontario; GFS Montreal and Quebec; and

Boucherville Quebec.

The top two recipients also win an all-expense-paid trip to the 2012 CAB Annual Conference, September 19-21 in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. This is an opportunity to interact with leaders throughout the production, packing, retail and foodservice industries.

“I can’t say enough good about the past winners,” Colvin says. “They’re great, great students and I’m proud to be associated with them.”

The Colvin Scholarship Fund began in 1999 when Colvin retired as CAB executive director. The scholarships recognize his role in making dreams a reality and inspiring others to be their best. Colvin co-founded the CAB program in 1978, leading to establishing the world’s leading brand of fresh beef.

For more details, interested students should visit www.certifiedangusbeef.com/press/colvin/.

www.baxterblack.com

Baxter ON THE EDGE OF COMMON SENSE

BLACK

Thanksgiving Thoughts ot everyone has a car, owns a home, carries a cell phone, can swim, knows the 18th president and can hum “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain.”

But everyone in this country, rich or homeless, conservative, liberal, gray, green, black, white, brown or yellow eats what we in agriculture produce; everyone, no exceptions.

Do those of you who farm and ranch think about the lives you touch? Steve Jobs invented Apple computers, Oprah Winfrey had a talk show that reached 7.4 million people five days a week, J.K. Rawlins sold 450 million Harry Potter books, and 111 million watched Superbowl XLV . . . talk about reaching out! But everyday, every person eats something you produce. Your contribution to their well-being exceeds Hollywood, the Nobel Prize or their psychiatrist. The public’s dependence on your ability to keep them fed is deeper than their need to text, jog, work, play golf, or go to school. You are more essential to their lives than their bookie, their broker, their drug dealer, their teacher, their boss, or even . . . their best friend!

This month we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s still a real holiday, you can tell because most of the work force gets the day off! I think of it as a time when we thank God for the blessings we have been given.

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Usually the Thanksgiving table is covered with food. Food, that we in agriculture produced. Even the needy in soup kitchens, home-alone-bachelors, single mothers, on-duty soldiers, and orbiting astronauts will eat something we grew; a piece of ham, canned peas, a drumstick, a Happy Meal, or pumpkin pie.

Regardless of what is on their plate it started in some farmer’s pasture or plowed field.

I don’t mean to be boastful. I don’t even expect the average urban Thanksgiving diner to remember the farmer’s contribution to their day. Many praises will fall upon the one who cooked the meal. That is due, but without mentioning the farmers who grow it is like praising the painter of the bridge while the man who designed and constructed it, stands in the shadows.

It is common to hear that farming is a “Noble Calling.”

Thatis flattering but its importance is much more profound. I agree that what we who work the land do, is noble, but more, it is as vital to their lives as air and water.

What they eat is the gift of our labors and somewhere down deep as they sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, they might conjure up a picture of a farmer leaning on a hoe, or a cowboy on a horse. That thought might just be the connection that helps them understand where their food comes from . . . real people.

“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”

November 15, 2011

Page 9

Farm American ready to bring FFA on track in 2012 s the National FFA Organization celebrates a record-setting year this week at the 84th National FFA Convention, an agreement with Farm American and Furniture Row Racing has put agricultural education on the fast track in 2012.

Together, FFA and Farm American announced today that the National FFA Organization will become a communications partner with Farm American for the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Season. FFA and Farm American will work hand in hand in furthering American agriculture by telling the story of agriculture’s important role both today and tomorrow.

The National FFA Organization, on the heels of announcing major increases in nationwide

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membership in the past year, will support Farm American’s effort to grow the role the of American agriculture because of the basic connection it has with the goals of FFA and agriculture education.

“FFA is all about making a positive difference in the lives of our members by expanding their leadership and career horizons,” said National FFA Organization COO Bill Fleet. “By working with Farm American to increase the stature of American agriculture, we’re hoping to increase their future career possibilities while also assisting American agriculture as a whole.”

The Farm American program promotes the importance of U.S. agriculture, which employs directly and indirectly more than 22 million people in the Ameri-

can workforce. The details and schedule of the 2012 FarmAmerican program are still being worked out and will be announced at a later date.

“Furniture Row Racing is humbled to have earned the support of the National FFA Organization,” said Furniture Row Racing general manager Joe Garone. “Farm American is about preserving and protecting – an effort to bring awareness to the importance of keeping America’s food supply produced in the United States. FFA members are our future farmers, ranchers and teachers and our future soil, crop and livestock scientists and future political decision makers. There is no greater beneficiary of the Farm American program than FFA members across this country.”

Grazing research could influence wildfire strategies A multi-university research project looks at the benefits of targeted cattle grazing in reducing the risks of catastrophic wildfires.

by JAY RODMAN, New Mexico State University Writer

ccording to Derek Bailey, New Mexico State University (NMSU) rangeland specialist, overgrazing and 20th century fire-suppression strategies have laid the groundwork for some of today’s “catastrophic” wildfires. In some areas, the grasses that fueled normal and periodic low-intensity surface fires in the past have been replaced by densely packed trees and brush that fuel the raging prairie and forest fires seen in recent years, including record-setting 2011 fires in the Southwest.

Bailey, a professor in the Department of Animal and Range Sciences and the director of NMSU’s Chihuahuan Desert Rangeland Research Center north of Las Cruces, is among researchers engaged in a three-year study investigating the benefits of targeted grazing by range cattle to significantly reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. The project is funded by a $363,000 grant from the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI).

Titled “Integrated Approaches for Targeting Cattle Grazing to Improve Ecosystem Services,” the project also includes NMSU professor and ag economist Allen Torell; Larry D. Howery, a University of Arizona Extension rangeland specialist; and Maria Fernandez-Gimenez, Colorado State University specialist in the ecological and social dimensions of rangelands.

Their study is based on the premise that cattle tend to graze unevenly. Their natural tendency is to stay close to water sources, which can lead to deterioration of riparian plant life, while leaving an abundance of forage material in more rugged areas or areas away from water. In some cases, the neglected forage exacerbates fire danger.

“Behavior of wildfires is affected by the abundance of what we call ‘fine fuels,’” Bailey says. “Our assumption is that moderate levels of grazing can strategically reduce the levels of fine fuels and correspondingly limit impacts and economic losses of wildfire, by reducing fire risk and rates of fire spread and allowing for the establishment of fire barriers.”

The targeted grazing approach employed by the researchers at four locations in New Mexico and Arizona involves manually herding cattle into the more rugged and remote areas of fine fuel build-up and determining if the availability of forage, along with the strategic positioning of protein supplement blocks, encourages the animals to spend a higher percentage of their time away from the

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overgrazed areas around their water source.

GPS collars are being used to monitor where the cattle in both the control group situation and the experimental group situation spend their time.

Where the cattle graze and wander is only one element in evaluating the targeted grazing strategy.

Researchers must also determine the extent to which the fine fuels are being consumed by cattle and incorporate that data into a computer model.

Bailey says preliminary results suggest the combination of herding and strategic supplement placement can effectively reduce biomass of fine fuels.

“In Arizona, we were able to reduce the abundance of fine fuels in the desired target area by half, even though the site was located in steep, rugged terrain and was almost two miles from water,” he says. The research will continue over the next two years at all four study sites to determine if the successes observed thus far can be repeated, he adds.

Torell’s role in the project is to examine the economic feasibility of using targeted cattle grazing to manage fine fuels and other potential ecosystem services. He will develop a cost/benefit analysis on whether the costs of herding cattle and providing supplements are offset by the potential benefits of reducing the intensity and rate of spread of wildfires.

Assuming the answer is “yes,” the next question is who should bear those additional herding and supplement costs the grazing strategy would entail.

Torell points out that a good portion of the recent economic loss from catastrophic wildfires has been from the destruction of homes owned by people other than ranchers. “This means some type of cost share and incentive program will be needed to promote adoption of the targeted grazing practice if the practice is found to have economic potential,” he says.

If targeted grazing is shown to be effective and cost-effective in managing wildfires and their damage, effective communication will be needed to change the behaviors of individuals and organizations responsible for management policy and practices, the researchers say.

Fernandez-Gimenez is assessing how familiar ranchers and public land managers are with the concept of targeted grazing and their level of willingness to incorporate it into their management plans. The information will eventually be used to develop the outreach and Extension portion of the project under the terms of the AFRI grant.

Denver, Colo.-based Furniture Row Racing team spearheaded the Farm American program in 2010 with a special paint scheme at selected races on its No. 78 Chevrolet driven by Regan Smith. The program continued at select races in 2011 — most recently at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Kansas Speedway Oct. 9. Smith finished 7th in the season-opening Daytona 500 in February and won

the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway in May. “FFA members are the future of agriculture and there’s no better validation of the Farm American program than to have the future of food production join our efforts to connect agriculture messaging to NASCAR fans,” said Regan Smith, driver of the No. 78 Farm American Chevrolet for Furniture Row Racing.

“We want our agriculture jobs and food to remain here in the United States.”

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Livestock Market Digest

Page 10

November 15, 2011

Can Ecological Corridors Heal Fragmented Landscapes?

Conservationists have long called for creating corridors that would enable large mammals and other wildlife to roam more freely across an increasingly developed planet. But now scientists are taking a closer look at just how well these corridors are working and what role they might play in a warming world.

by JIM ROBBINS, http://e360.yale.edu

he rugged Cabinet Mountains of northwestern Montana are an island of wild country with a population of fewer than 30 grizzly bears, their existence tenuous because they are cut off from others of their kind by distance, roads, and other development. Biologists are concerned about the small number of females, since they reproduce only every three to four years. So in recent years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has occasionally caught a sow near Glacier National Park, trucked it to the Cabinets, and sent it running off into the woods to increase the number of females.

But the Fish and Wildlife Service is pinning its hopes for the long-term survival of this population on a different strategy: the protection of an ecological corridor that would connect the marooned Cabinet grizzly bear population with a larger, more intact ecosystem, 50 miles to the south. That ecosystem is the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, some 600 square miles of rugged bear habitat now devoid of bears because they were wiped out to protect sheep.

The Cabinet bears could make it to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness under their own steam, but standing in their way is the formidable obstacle of Interstate 90 — six lanes of concrete, with more than 8,000 vehicles a day zooming past at 75 miles per hour. Some tunnels exist under the highway to allow wildlife to bypass the road, but in the last few years only one grizzly bear has apparently made it to the other side, and he was shot by a black bear hunter. Biologists aren’t sure grizzlies will even make the trip but they are currently studying options for preserving land for a corridor; in August, a non-profit group bought a key, 71-acre parcel of land to expand the grizzly bear

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corridor near the Cabinet Mountains.

“We can’t make them move,” said Chris Servheen, recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We can only provide the opportunity.”

Connecting the Cabinet Mountain grizzlies to the Selway-Bitteroot wilderness — part of the larger “Yellowstone to Yukon” corridor project — demonstrates the challenges involved in efforts to link up isolated populations of wildlife by establishing ecological corridors.

With the planet increasingly carved up by human development, biologists and conservationists have for decades realized the importance of establishing ecological corridors that will enable remaining populations of animals — particularly large mammals — to have the room they need to thrive. Now, numerous studies are underway and the effectiveness of corridors remains an open question, especially as the climate, and natural systems, shift in unpredictable ways.

“We’ve studied the small ones, a couple of hundred yards [wide], and they work,” said Paul Beier, a conservation biologist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and an expert on wildlife corridors. “We think the bigger ones will work too, but we don’t really know that.”

Still, the creation of corridors is moving ahead. In Germany biologists are planning to protect or create thousands of miles of corridors to connect national parks and conserve a range of species, especially the imperiled European wildcat. In India, conservationists have raised money to resettle several villages in the Tirunelli-Kudrakote corridor, a critical 2,200-acre swath that connects elephant habitat between two preserves that are home to roughly 6,300 elephants, the largest population of Asian elephants in the world.

This summer, residents of a fourth village in the corridor agreed to abandon their land for new homes elsewhere.

In the Amazon, conservationists and international organizations are working to create corridors for animal and plant migrations upslope as the climate continues to change.

“Extinction estimates for the Amazon Basin are terrifyingly high,” said Miles Silman, a Wake Forest biologist who is gathering baseline data on Andes ecosystems as the region warms. New fragmentation is unceasing; Peru and Brazil completed a massive construction project this year, the Interoceanic Highway, which slices through the protected tropical wilderness of both countries.

In Central America and South America, conservation groups such as Panthera are attempting to create a web of jaguar corridors in many of the 18 countries where the great cats live. The corridors will include parks and wilderness, but also agricultural areas and other human-dominated landscapes through which jaguars can pass without fear of being hunted by local residents.

In western North America, conservationists are hoping that bears and other large animals in the northern Rocky Mountain region will eventually be linked by the Yellowstone to Yukon corridor, which would connect major parks and wilderness areas and allow the flow of species across hundreds of miles of the wildest landscape in North America. “These are large blocks of public land separated by mountain valleys with private land,” said Servheen. “We want to reconnect all the blocks of public land.”

The textbook example of the perils of isolating populations of large mammals is the Florida panther, whose numbers dwindled to just two dozen individuals due to habitat fragmentation and resulting genetic impoverishment; the big cats were dying, in part, because of a heart defect related to inbreeding. But by introducing eight mountain lions from Texas — the same species, even though they have different names — and by building highway overpasses and tunnels that have reduced mortality from cars and trucks, the Florida panther has been pulled back from the brink of extinction. Roughly 100 to 160 exist today.

A critical element of conservation is the need to keep large mammals on the landscape, especially predators. And essential to protecting the large mammals is the preservation of their migration routes, whether they’re moving for food and water, for breeding, to make seasonal changes, or, more recently, to follow preferred habitat as a changing climate causes shifts in plant communities.

Some ecologists question, however, whether corridors are the panacea that conservationists make them out to be. Dan Simberloff, an ecologist at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, said that some corridors will work, and some won’t — it’s site specific because habitats are so different. But he thinks they are a compromise that avoids the real problem, and diverts critical funds. “A general concern I’ve had with the corridor bandwagon is that it perpetuates the notion that we can somehow have conservation on the cheap by providing a technological solution to the problem of habitat destruction and fragmentation,” he said.

“It’s seductive, but unlikely to work in many cases. Unfortunately to conserve biodiversity we have to conserve habitat.”

A study published in late Sep-

tember in Ecology Letters suggested that global warming could occur so rapidly that some creatures, including certain amphibians, might not be able to adapt, even with the aid of ecological corridors. “Our work shows that it’s not just how fast you disperse, but also your ability to tolerate unfavorable climate for decadal periods that will limit the ability of many species to shift their ranges,” said Dov Sax, assistant professor of biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University. “Ultimately this work suggests that habitat corridors will be ineffective for many species and that we may instead need to consider using managed relocation more frequently than has been previously considered.”

Few studies exist on the conservation effect of corridors on large mammal populations, but there is some good data on small- to medium-sized species.

The longest-running study of corridors has gone on for 18 years at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, South Carolina, a 310-square-mile federal nuclear reprocessing facility that is also a National Environmental Research Park. Nick Haddad, a professor of biology at North Carolina State University has investigated the impact of a restored corridor 150 meters long and 25 meters wide between fragments of native mixed longleaf pine and savannah. Haddad and his colleagues have done painstaking work, capturing butterflies and small mammals, marking them, and then recapturing them to see which creatures made the trip across the corridor. They have also dusted plant seeds with fluorescent powder, and then found those seeds again in bird waste on the other side of the corridor.

The verdict? “Corridors work as a superhighway for plants and animals and they use them a lot,” Haddad said. Of the 20 species studied, 18 moved more frequently with a corridor, some even ten times as much as species with no corridor. Areas connected by corridors also had 20 percent more plant species than those without according to a 2009 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists have shown that highway overpasses for wildlife on Arizona Highway 260 and in Banff National Park are well used and have reduced the number of large animals killed by traffic by more than 90 percent.

They are widely considered to be a success, and similar structures are being built around the West.

The question, though, is whether less road kill has an appreciable effect on a species’ long-term viability. A 2003 study along the 16-lane Santa Monica Freeway, used by 150,000 vehicles each day, found that bobcats and coyotes used the existing underpasses. But they also crowded the animals’ home ranges together

and newcomers were fiercely challenged and did not stay long enough to breed.

Other studies say there is little or no effect from corridors. A 2002 study found, for example, that corridors did not offset the impacts of logging-caused fragmentation in the boreal forest in north-central Alberta, Canada, on most bird species.

Thomas Hoctor, a professor of conservation biology at the University of Florida, and a colleague, Reed Noss, drew up a connectivity plan for their state in the 1990s called Ecological Greenways, which proposed purchasing corridors from the coast to inland habitat. In the last few years, that project has become integral to the state's plans for adapting to climate change. Sea levels are projected to rise by as much as three to six feet in the next hundred years, and much critical habitat will likely be inundated, forcing species to migrate away from the coast. Over the past decade, the state bought hundreds of thousands of acres for corridors, but funding for the program was eliminated this year under the administration of conservative Republican governor, Rick Scott. Still, said Hoctor, the land that has already been purchased could help some species make the journey inland across the state’s densely developed landscape.

Oswald Schmitz, an ecologist at the Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, is investigating climate change and the movement of species across large landscapes.

He thinks the jury is still out on the efficacy of corridors. “The hypothesis is there, but there hasn’t been a lot of empirical work done,” he said. “We don’t know if species will use the corridors we think they will.” What is important about corridors, he said, is that “they create a dialogue and awareness that these are things we need to pay attention to.”

To some, the notion of preserving and creating corridors seems obvious, especially as a warming world will put more pressure on species to move.

“Dozens are being created, and it will become hundreds quickly,” said Beier.

But other scientists are less sanguine. University of Minnesota ecologist Craig Packer, writing in Science in 2010 about the Florida Panther, said, “Once the entire planet reaches the same state of economic development and urbanization as the United States, wildlife managers all over the world can look forward to carting rare species from one park to another until the end of time.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jim Robbins is a veteran journalist based in Helena, Mont. He has written for the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and numerous other publications. In earlier articles for Yale Environment 360, he wrote about the Alberta tar sands pipeline controversy and explored how a great forest die-off occurring across western North America is linked to climate change.

“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper�

November 15, 2011

Page 11

North Dakota student receives Star Farmer award at 2011 National FFA Convention hat began as a two-acre onion crop in 2005 has since expanded to a 640-acre diversified crop farm for Cole Vculek. It could be just the beginning, as he hopes to farm up to 5,000 acres by the time he turns 30.

This entrepreneurial spirit has now earned the 21-year-old Crete, N.D., resident the title of 2011 American Star Farmer from the National FFA Organization. American Star Farmer is one of the organization’s highest honors. He competed with three other finalists at the 84th National FFA Convention Oct. 19-22 in Indianapolis.

Each year at the national FFA convention, 16 national finalists — four in each category — vie for the organization’s top awards: American Star Farmer, American Star in Agribusiness,

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American Star in Agricultural Placement and American Star in Agriscience. These awards honor students who have developed outstanding agricultural skills and competencies through their supervised agricultural experience (SAE); demonstrated outstanding management skills; earned the American FFA Degree — the organization’s highest level of accomplishment; and met other agricultural education, scholastic and leadership requirements. Each finalist was interviewed by a panel of judges, who ultimately named the top candidate in each area. The winner was announced in an onstage convention ceremony and received a plaque and an award of $4,000. The runners-up also received plaques and $2,000 each.

For his first few years, Vculek

rented land from neighbors. His first crop consisted of two acres of red onions. He quickly added more land and began growing potatoes. In 2009 he added more than 200 acres for a corn and soybean rotation, and he has also added navy beans to his operation. Recently Vculek purchased a 640-acre farm from a neighbor.

He hopes to continue adding more cropland and also wants to add sugar beets as another part of his business.

Vculek is a fifth-generation farmer and currently operates on the land his great-great-grandfather homesteaded. He says the guidance his family has given him has been very beneficial in his success, and he also credits his involvement in FFA. “The experience I have gained through FFA has allowed me to be more confident, set goals and

be willing to try new things,�

Vculek said. “I have seen the importance of being involved and giving back to my community and organizations.�

Vculek was a member of Oakes/Sargent Central FFA in Oakes, N.D. Vculek is a graduate of North Dakota State College of Science with a degree in Farm Management. His parents are Brian and Julie Vculek, and his chapter advisor was Daniel Spellerberg.

The American FFA Degree recognition programs are cosponsored by Case IH of Racine, Wis.; Farm Credit Systems of Washington, D.C.; Pioneer HiBred of Des Moines, Iowa; DTN — The Progressive Farmer of Omaha, Neb.; and Syngenta of Greensboro, N.C., as a special project of the National FFA Foundation.

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“Swords into Plowshares and Spears into Pruning Hooks . . .�

Grant Award helps Veterans return Home to Farm and Ranch hile some veterans returning home have jobs waiting for them, many do not and are returning to rural areas where jobs can be scarce. The USDA Risk Management Agency has awarded the Center for Rural Affairs, Farmer-Veteran Coalition, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union and eight additional partner organizations with funding intended to introduce new veteran farmers and ranchers to various areas of agriculture, and thereby find solutions to the employment and economic challenges facing so many rural veterans. “The long-term goal for this project is to help new veteran farmers and ranchers successfully establish farms and ranches in Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico� said Kathie Starkweather with the Center for Rural Affairs. “Farmers Union is thrilled to be able to offer assistance to returning veterans. No one is more deserving of spending a rewarding life on the land than those who have willingly helped to defend the United States of America,� said Richard Oswald, President of Missouri Farmers Union. “We will do our best to repay them.�

According to Starkweather, the project will allow veterans to learn strategies and implement plans for farm/ranch start-up, including financing, land access, and business development. Veterans will also learn to access the resources available to them for technical assistance, production and marketing information, and mentoring.

For more information on beginning farmer and rancher programs and for future developments of this project, see [http://www.cfra.org/renewrural/ farm]. The organizations partnering in this project are the Center for Rural Affairs, Farmer-Veteran Coalition, Swords to Plowshares, Kansas Farmers Union, Missouri Farmers Union, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, Kansas AgrAbility Project, Nebraska AgrAbility Project, and Missouri AgrAbility Project.

Rural America has experienced a chronic exodus of family farmers and ranchers out of agriculture. That fact, coupled with a lack of young families going into agriculture has changed the landscape of much of rural America, physically and demographically. The 2007 Census of Agriculture revealed that the average American farmer is 57 years old and climbing, with 35 percent of all farmers over age 65.

Rural America’s small cities and towns are, how-

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ever, less prepared to absorb returning veterans than many urban centers. The Iraq and Afghan Veterans of America have noted that veterans returning to rural communities were having the hardest time reintegrating into civilian life as these communities lacked both viable employment opportunities and access to needed veteran services. The Carsey Institute noted that only 24 percent of employed young adults, ages 18 to 24, hold fulltime jobs in rural communities.

Starkweather believes that several of these economic and demographic challenges may also be opportunities. Farmers who are at or approaching retirement age control half of all farm and ranch land in rural America, meaning that most of those farmers and ranchers will be looking for ways to transition their operation into younger hands in the not-too-distant future. Traditional rural employment in farming, logging, mining, fishing and small manufacturing have been declining for decades.

Nonetheless, the smallest of farms have increased in the past decade, coincident with the great consumer interest in locally grown, organic and specialty foods. This demand creates unique and exciting opportunities for beginning farmers — and the veterans who would become farmers. “The participation rate of young rural Americans in the military is and has been far above the national average for at least two decades. When veterans receive training and secure agricultural employment in rural communities, rural America is strengthened, all of America is strengthened,� said Starkweather.

According to the grant application, veterans can build on their discipline and sense of service and use farming or ranching to reintegrate into society gracefully and fruitfully. They can also repopulate and re-energize rural communities. Some assistance to launch a new generation of veteran farmers and ranchers can help ensure their successful entry into farming and ranching and a successful return to their country.

The Center for Rural Affairs and its partner organizations will hold educational workshops in Nebraska and Kansas to provide information and introduce resources on specialty crops, livestock, land access, financing, crop insurance, production & marketing high value crops, and resources for beginners, veterans and the disabled.

The project will also include farm tours of sustainable grain, vegetable and livestock operations, as well as presentations on organic certification, production techniques and marketing.

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Livestock Market Digest

Page 12

November 15, 2011

War on the West: A Report from the Front Lines

by RENA WETHERELT, canadafreepress.com

ongress never appropriated funds to introduce an “experimental species” of wolf, but during the Clinton Administration’s so-called War on the West, the Interior Department was undeterred. In 1999, Don Young Alaska’s Congressman, asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to audit the Pittman-Robertson Fund.

The GAO audit revealed that in the mid-90s $60,000,000 dollars or more in excise taxes collected from sportsmen on their firearms and ammunition purchases had been used unlawfully

by US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS). Among other things the money was used to pay bonuses to top people, open a California office and to travel to Canada, trap and relocate arctic wolves into the Northern Rockies ecosystem. It turns out the FWS not only pilfered funds, even import laws were broken as wolves were brought across the Canadian border.

Ranchers and local people on behalf of their livelihoods and the native timber wolf, using their own resources, filed lawsuits to stop FWS from releasing the Canadian wolves — to no avail. A federal judge allowed the record of hundreds of wolf sightings to be ignored. The pleading of livestock producers was dismissed.

Over two years, with help from Defenders of Wildlife, scores of what turned out to be diseased wolves were released around the region using sportsmen’s funds without congressional appropriation. Over the last 15 years, eating their way through once healthy deer, black bear, grouse, moose, bighorn sheep and elk populations, the wolf has spread death, terror and spores of a potentially deadly wolf worm to a five-state area.

Anguished locals watched the destruction of pets, livestock and what was a national treasure, the great game herds of the northern Rockies.

Local people now come face to face with packs of 15 or more monster-sized wolves, showing no fear. Under-counting by tribal, state and federal agencies, regulatory goal-post moving and judicial activism from the federal courts kept outdoorsmen from controlling the wolf population or even protecting their livestock on private property without prosecution. Use fladry, they were told! Grown men cried in public, telling what they had seen.

Earth Justice, the law firm which holds Consultative Status to the United Nations, sued the Department of the Interior twice to prevent the experimental wolf’s removal from the Endangered Species List, using the Citizen Suit Provision of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Their bill for attorney’s fees amounting to around a half a million dollars

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was paid by the American taxpayer. Defenders of Wildlife, the lead plaintiff, whose Executive Vice President was the head of FWS during Clinton’s Administration and dozens of other “environmental groups” receive taxpayer dollars in the form of “relief” awarded by federal judges when they win these lawsuits. Karen Budd-Falen says she has found billions.

Congressional action in response to outcry from the rural people finally ended the Court’s and FWS’s control of the experimental wolf in parts of Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington

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just this year, yet wolves are listed as endangered in the rest of the nation. These wolves were never endangered. They are a Species of Least Concern. They have done untold damage to our once healthy ecosystem. The machine that put wolves here was criminal.

With enormous Canadian wolves running rampant through populated areas, people must be free to defend themselves and their property, their pets and livestock. Sportsmen must be allowed to take to the field to reduce wolf numbers. The poor Russian people, once they were

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Nurse Rachett’s of the political set are using the ESA as a bludgeon against their fellow countrymen, destroying private property rights, putting forested communities at risk, even sending our neighbor’s kids overseas to die instead of producing our own oil. No amount of suffering

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is going to be too much for them. The media watchdog has been asleep, allowing this scandal. Let’s repeal the ESA, and the state legislation categorizing wolves as anything other than a menace that can be shot on sight.

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“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”

November 15, 2011

Packer says cooperate, moderate technology f national trends are the equivalent of a beef industry report card, then ranchers and feeders are making the grade.

But Glen Dolezal, of Cargill Meat Solutions, warns that they need to pay attention to stay at the top of the class.

“Beef quality has been up each of the last three years, but we do have some concerns,” he said during a presentation at the Feeding Quality Forum. The company’s assistant vice president of business development and field sales leader outlined both the bright spots and challenges at the meetings in Omaha, Nebraska, and Garden City, Kansas, in late August.

“Beef demand is linked to the great taste of beef,” Dolezal said.

“We like to think of it as a threelegged stool made of tenderness, juiciness and flavor. If any one of them is broken, the eating experience doesn’t work.”

Trying to ensure that consistency, three out of every four carcasses in Cargill’s plants are destined for branded programs, and the increased quality of the past few years has helped them fill those orders.

I

“We think a lot of that is related to changes in genetics,” he said. “We’re seeing a high percentage of black-hided cattle entering our facilities.”

Dolezal talked about a Colorado State University study that evaluated eating experience at several different marbling levels.

He noted that as the researchers selected carcasses with trace amounts of marbling or Standards, only 49 percent were “Astamped,” denoting “Angustype” at the plant. Compared to 92 percent of all moderately abundant (Prime) that received the same classification.

Cattle feeders are also using more ethanol co-products to economically extend days on feed.

“We think all of this is positive to beef quality,” he said.

What’s not? The increased intensity of implants along with the use of strong beta-agonist feed additives.

“At Cargill, we won’t buy cattle that knowingly have been fed zilpaterol [beta-2 agonist],” Dolezal said.

“Our point of view is that if we get too aggressive (with regard to growth) throughout

the animal’s lifetime it can have an impact on the consumer attributes of size, quality and tenderness,” he said. “So we need to find a balance. The message there is that we ask you to be careful.”

As cattlemen make genetic and management decisions, it’s important to have good data to compare year-to-year.

“If you were trying to make genetic change or changing an implant program or feeding ration and you drew a grader that required more marbling to call it Choice, you’d think your cattle aren’t very good,” he said.

“But on a different day you could draw a grader that required less, and you’d think you had really good cattle.”

The USDA and packers worked together for many years calibrating and testing camera systems before implementing them to call marbling scores.

Currently about 10 plants in the U.S. use the technology to determine quality grade.

“The cameras have been a big win, a big success story,” Dolezal said. “Our customers have been very pleased with the consistency

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sions must be made in a proactive, rather than a reactive manner to minimize negative effects on rangeland and or livestock production during prolonged periods of drought.

The cow-calf enterprise budget is a good management tool for evaluating the production and financial implications of various drought management strategies.

The enterprise budget presented here is one tool for determining cow cost. Being a “low-cost producer” will be critical to survival during this prolonged drought. This will require good management,

continued from page seven

which is a goal-directed activity. It takes time, energy, and effort to be a good manager.

Below is a list of additional cow-calf enterprise budget resources that can be used to determine annual cow costs.

For additional Cow-calf enterprise budget information and methodology visit: • NMSU COOP EXTENSION: http://aces.nmsu.edu/ drought/index.html • TEXAS A&M AGRI-LIFE: http:// agecoext. tamu.edu/?id=954 • IOWA STATE EXTENSION: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/ agdm/livestock/html/b1-21.html • OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY: http://beefextension.com/new%20site %202/cccalc.html

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together, we’re going to put out a greater product and more of it to compete with other proteins or even the vegan diet,” he said.

“We have to be on the same page to promote beef and grow demand for it for every segment to be profitable into the future.”

The Feeding Quality Forums were co-sponsored by Pfizer Animal Health, Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB), Feedlot Magazine and Purina Land O’Lakes.

More information and proceedings are available at www.CABpartners.com.

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they’re getting box to box, based on marbling levels and other traits.”

Cattle producers should be happy, too.

“Data for grid payments and pre-harvest decisions are more accurate, consistent and repeatable,” he said.

Dolezal said that each part of the beef industry needs to rally together to continue pleasing the consumer.

“We’re all in this together, and if we can ever get in the same spirit on the same page, working

Digest

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Page 13

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Livestock Market Digest

Page 14

The Brangus Advantage

by HOLLY FOSTER, reprinted from Frontline Beef Producer, International Brangus Breeders Assn.

hat is the perfect breed or crossbreeding program for your operation? It’s a question best answered with the noncommittal response of “it depends.�

But, what it depends on primarily is your environment and your marketing outlet. Those two factors dictate the type of breeding program you should be pursuing.

Commercial cattlemen operating in the humid Gulf Coast or arid regions of the southwestern United States know just how important the adaptability of Brahman influenced cattle can be. But, marketing those cattle can become a challenge. How do commercial breeders take advantage of the only free lunch in the cattle business, better known as heterosis, and still raise calves that fit today’s marketplace? For many, Brangus may be the answer. “The advantages you get when

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you cross a Brahman influenced animal with an English or Continental influenced animal are more dramatic than when you cross different breeds among straight English or Continental cattle,� says Dan Moser, associate professor in the Department of Animal Science and Industry with Kansas State University. “There are biological differences between Bos indicus and Bos taurus cattle that when crossed, gain you clear advantages in fertility and longevity. The adaptability you get is also an advantage during droughts, in harsh climates and in areas where feed resources are limited. Those advantages don’t just apply in the southern half of the United States, but can be universal across many regions of the country.�

Todd Thrift, an associate professor with the University of Florida agrees with that sentiment. “We have data going back 50 years that supports the advantages of hybrid vigor on adaptability, but that advantage becomes greatest in sub optimal

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environments,� he says. “In other words, the worse the environment, the more some of those adaptability traits are expressed and the better those cattle do compared to their English or Continental counterparts.�

According to Thrift, the advantages in weaning productivity of a Bos indicus/Bos Taurus cross is unequaled, especially in hot, humid or arid climates. “The ability of that Brahman influenced cow to stay in your herd longer is also enhanced because of differences in calving ease, resistance to parasites and even the fact that her teeth last longer.�

Brahman crossed cattle definitely have an advantages when it comes to adapting to harsh environments, but when it comes to marketability, hide color and breed type can hurt you. That’s where the Brangus breed becomes a potential solution. “Straight Brahman cattle have challenges when it comes to carcass traits and there is data to support that,� says Moser. “But, if you use Brangus to infuse heterosis into your English or Continental influenced cattle, then you get the Brahman concentration down to 3/16 and differences in carcass quality become less significant.�

Cattle with a visible Brahman influence can be discriminated against by cattle buyers, but Moser says that by using Brangus as your heterosis hole card, it makes it less likely that a buyer

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November 15, 2011 will pick out those differences. “It’s important for producers to understand that the perception is often not the reality. With Brangus cattle, the data demonstrate you can get an advantage in carcass traits over other Brahman crossbreeding programs,� says Moser. “Being homozygous black for hide color can also be beneficial as it may qualify Brangus-sired calves for certain branded beef programs.�

What may come as a surprise to many commercial producers is that Brangus actually perform much better on the rail than you might expect.

According to Moser, the large amount of information available about Brahman cattle versus the limited amount that is available about Brangus-sired cattle has added to the perception that using any Brahman influence in your crossbreeding program can be detrimental to carcass quality.

sired by different breeds are benchmarked against an Angus and Hereford base,� says Moser. “When fed in Nebraska, the Brangus-sired steers yielded carcasses comparable to Continental breeds for shear force, marbling and percent USDA choice.

You almost have to wonder if the cattle were fed in a harsher climate, such as the Panhandle of Texas in the summer, would they have done better due to their environmental adaptability?�

Marker assisted selection represents a great opportunity for Brangus breeders to help dispel some of the perception that just because their cattle have a little ear that they won’t stack up as well against their British or Continental counter parts. “Tenderness is a highly heritable trait and represents one of the best opportunities for improvement through marker assisted selection,� says Moser.

The only free lunch in the cattle business: heterosis. “We know from years of data that Brahman cattle have higher shear force values and lower marbling scores,� says Moser. “In the 1990s research identified the role of calpain and calpastatin enzymes on tenderness and Brahman cattle have significantly higher calpastatin activity, which is detrimental to tenderness.

However, research shows that once you reduce the Brahman influence to 3/8 as in Brangus cattle, or to 3/16 as in Brangussired calves, that reduction makes a huge impact on lowering calpastatin activity and increasing calpain activity, thus increasing tenderness.�

A 1997 University of Georgia study that evaluated straight Angus, straight Brahman and crossbred Angus steers with either a 25, 37.5, 50, or 75 percent Brahman concentration showed that the 37.5 percent Brahman (3/8 Brahman-5/8 Angus) calves had the most favorable ratio of calpastatin and calpain, the lowest shear force values and were essentially equivalent to purebred Angus when it came to tenderness.

The Germplasm Evaluation program at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center has been characterizing cattle breeds representing diverse biological types for decades and according to Moser, the research indicates that Brangus-sired calves compare very favorably to Continental-sired calves. “These studies represent large numbers of cattle and years of data where calves

“The frequency of tenderness genes in Brangus cattle is essentially equivalent to what you see in Continental breeds.�

Graham DuBose, a commercial producer from Camden, S.C. knows firsthand the advantage of using Brangus in his breeding program. DuBose was a purebred Brangus breeder until about 1990, so the majority of his cowherd has a lot of Brangus influence. He has been using a two-way crossbreeding system of Angus and Brangus to improve the marketability of his calves, while still maintaining the advantages from heterosis that the Brangus breed brings to the table. “Heterosis is the motivation for me to use Brangus in my breeding program,� says DuBose. “In my mind, the real advantage to Brangus is on the female side and their mothering ability. The breed’s strength lies in the value of heterosis and the impact it has on calf performance, and the merits of Brangus females.� Using Angus bulls on his predominantly Brangus-influenced cowherd has worked well for DuBose, as he’s selling full load lots of feeder cattle via video sales and has been more than pleased with how his cattle have done.

When you boil it down, using Brangus affords a commercial breeder the opportunity to achieve significant increases in cow efficiency while maintaining a largely Angus-based gene pool, which is certainly favorable in today’s marketplace.

FIGURE 1. FREQUENCY OF FAVORABLE ALLELES FOR TENDERNESS (Source: National Beef Cattle Evaluation Consortium)

“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”

November 15, 2011

Page 15

Border Patrol Plan to Triple Base Size on Arizona-Mexico Border Puts Endangered Wildlife, Fragile Lands at Risk he Center for Biological Diversity criticized a new environmental analysis by the Department of Homeland Security that fails to adequately assess the effects of its border-security and enforcement activities along the U.S.-Mexico border, including tripling the size of its base in the desert. In comments submitted to the Department, the group called on Homeland Security to produce a

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thorough, realistic analysis of the impacts of its activities on the fragile and diverse landscapes of the border region, home to a range of threatened and endangered species.

“In its slipshod analysis of the impacts of tripling the size of its forward operating base near Organ Pipe National Monument and Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, Homeland Security seems to condone ongo-

ing damage to these precious public lands and their wildlife,” said the Center’s Cyndi Tuell.

“For imperiled species like Sonoran pronghorns, this lip-service study is a death knell.”

Organ Pipe and Cabeza Prieta lie adjacent to each other along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona and have been significantly hurt by off-road vehicle use in recent years — much of the damage has been the result

Managing Price Risk is More Important Than Ever

by BRETT CROSBY

ecent market volatility in the cattle complex serves as a reminder that cattle prices can change quickly, and effective managers are wise to have marketing strategies that protect against violent price swings. Such strategies may include one or more risk management tools such as forward contracts, futures, options, or insurance. While there is no single marketing strategy that is universally perfect, one thing is clear — the understanding and effective use of marketing strategies and tools is more important now than ever.

Volatility in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Feeder Cattle futures contracts has increased in recent years.

Since 2003 the trading range within a given contract has increased significantly. Analysis of closing price data substantiates this observation. Between

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1991 and 2002, the average difference between the high closing price and the low closing price over the life of each of the 12 January feeder cattle contracts was $13.09 per cwt. Since 2002, the average difference between the high and low closing price of the eleven January feeder cattle contracts has been $23.43 per cwt.

While price variations within a given contract have reflected wider ranges, the price variation between contracts (i.e., from year to year) has changed very little.

Note that, with the exception of a substantial change in 2011, the average daily closing price of the life of contracts in recent years has been remarkably stable. All of this suggests that, in recent years, profitability may have varied dramatically between operations depending on the point in time that calves were priced in any particular year.

Several risk management tools

can protect producers against short-term price fluctuation. Forward contracts offer flexibility in pricing dates and allow producers to price calves during favorable market conditions. Futures contracts provide an offsetting investment that can soften or eliminate the blow of market downturns. Options and price insurance (i.e., Risk Management Agency’s Livestock Risk Protection) can be used to create a price floor. These tools can each be used individually or combined to create an effective marketing strategy in a volatile environment.

Above all, the important thing to remember is that price volatility has clearly increased in recent years. Such volatility can increase the payoff for producers who develop and employ effective, risk-reducing marketing strategies. The volatility can also deliver harsh consequences to producers who fail to recognize and address its impacts.

of Border Patrol vehicles riding roughshod over wilderness areas.

“For an agency devoted to securing the border, the Border Patrol does an awful lot of offroad driving 15 to 20 miles north of the border, through extremely sensitive habitat for a range of species,” said Tuell. “Sonoran pronghorn are especially vulnerable to this kind of disruption, which can stop them from raising their fawns or getting enough to eat.”

Surveys and satellite data show that nearly 8,000 miles — and some estimate up to 20,000 miles — of illegal, “wildcat” roads now exist on the Cabeza Prieta, some of which were created by illegal cross-border vehicle activity, but an increasing percentage of which have resulted from misguided enforcement strategies.

“A memo of understanding between Homeland Security and the Department of the Interior was signed to create protocols for border-security activities on our precious public lands,” said

Tuell. “In many places it works well, but on Organ Pipe and Cabeza Prieta, Homeland Security routinely ignores it.”

“The Department of Homeland Security should focus its enforcement efforts closer to the border to prevent damage to America’s public lands before it encroaches so far into the United States,” said Tuell. “And it needs to work more closely with land managers on the ground in these areas to reduce the damage caused by their activities.”

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November 26 & 27, 2011 Happy people, happy cattle

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GOOD CATTLE AT A PRICE YOU CAN AFFORD!

“If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” urely you’ve heard that phrase and get what it means: If the household caregiver isn’t in a good mood, it trickles down to the rest of the family.

At a recent seminar, a management consultant applied that same concept to animal caretakers.

When they’re not happy, the herds aren’t happy.

When ranchers or feedlot employees are unhappy or feeling stress, how much pride can they take in the job they’re doing?

Call it mammalian empathy or stress-related errors of management, but those bad feelings are contagious across species. And a growing body of research says cattle that never have a bad day do better all the way through to the packinghouse.

From an animal’s perspective, what exactly does that mean, never having a bad day?

There are variables that no caregiver can completely control, like weather or sickness. But that doesn’t mean a herdsman is helpless; there is much you can do. Approaches like strategic windbreaks or bedding cattle can make them more comfortable in the winter months. Sprinklers and shade can ease the sweltering summer heat.

Vaccinations, good nutrition, minimal stress — these can all aid in keeping critters healthy.

Then there are all those details where the caregiver has much greater control: weaning, feeding, animal handling and so on down the list.

Planning ahead and doing everything possible to

S

ease cattle from one transition phase to the next helps. Consistency is another key. Moving animals in a calm and collected manner (as much as is humanly possible), avoiding “hot shots” and hollering, and focusing on the natural tendencies of the animal can make even the most stressful days seem like good times to those cattle.

You care. Those animals are your lifeblood.

You’re entrusted with their wellbeing and they’re your profit center. But if you have employees, either family or outside hired help, do they feel the same way? Is that passion coursing through their veins?

This management consultant suggested those folks keep their purpose top of mind. They’re not just feeding cows and processing calves. They’re helping to feed the world. Ask them for suggestions and input — an outside perspective never hurts and they might be happier if you show that you value their opinions.

Make sure they know that how well they do their job matters — not only for today, but in the long-run bigger picture. Do they realize that the way calves are handled affects performance, both in the feedlot and on the rail?

Many hurdles to happiness for man and beast can be overcome with more communication, more planning. That may not come naturally to every “get your hands dirty” type of manager, but it’ll be worth it in the end.

Especially if, by keeping those calves happily gaining and grading, you make life better for them, for your family and for millions of consumers.

That’s sure to put a smile on momma’s face, along with all those others.

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Livestock Market Digest

Page 16

Cattle Prices: Poised For Strength

by BRETT CROSBY, CAS, INC.

attle prices have reached historically high levels and appear poised to stay there for the foreseeable future.

The domestic beef cow inventory numbers remain in decline, which leads to a smaller calf crop and tighter supplies for feedlots and packers. Slaughter weights, while historically high, cannot add enough supply to the market to make up for lower inventories.

Further, demand is strong in both the domestic and export

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markets. Finally, there is no sign of heifer retention that would lead to herd rebuilding. This all points to high prices that will likely stay high for at least two more years.

Cattle prices reached record levels in the last part of 2010 and have stayed there for most classes of cattle during the first half of 2011.

The nearby charts show that feeder cattle have held record levels, while live cattle have given back a little ground but continue to stay in record territory seasonally.

Healthy export demand, domestic consumers’ willingness to pay more for beef, and smaller cattle inventories, appear to be the primary drivers supporting cattle prices. U.S. beef exports continue to be strong and, barring a global economic slowdown similar to 2008, are well positioned to break the previous record for beef exports set in 2003.

Domestically, retail prices reached an all-time high in April, and remained at those levels through June, which reflects con-

If you are planning on selling bulls this fall, or next spring . . .

You better be placing your ad in the Livestock Market Digest! The most likely bull buyers for fall 2011 and spring 2012 will come from where it has rained.

sumers who are willing to pay for beef. Moreover, less beef is being produced now relative to years past because domestic beef cattle numbers continue to decline.

Domestic beef cows num-

cow herd to expand. If heifer retention falls below 17 percent, inventory usually falls the next year. This year’s estimate for heifers retained for replacements is 5.4 million, or 16.7 percent of the beef cow inventory, which

Slaughter weights cannot add enough supply to the market to make up for lower inventories. bered less than 31 million head (30.86 million head) in January, 2011 for the first time in over 40 years. Foreign and domestic demand for U.S. beef, which has become more and more scarce, has kept packers offering attractive prices as they struggle to satisfy demand. Feedlots have likewise bid up feeder cattle in an effort to keep lots full. This has been good news for cow-calf producers, and the good news will likely continue for the foreseeable future, as there is no sign of herd expansion.

Historically, heifers retained for replacement have had to equal or exceed 18 percent of the total herd for the US beef

suggests that the US beef cow herd will be even smaller in January, 2012.

A smaller inventory means a smaller calf crop, which points to higher prices for cow calf producers through at least 2012, and possibly later. While this is good news for cattlemen, who have struggled to maintain profitability, they are keenly aware that higher production costs have accompanied higher prices.

Thus, prudent managers should continue to monitor the market and look for opportunities to lock in profits. In subsequent articles we will consider the continuing importance of price risk management.

HORSES FOR HEROES – NEW MEXICO, INC. COWBOY UP!

Where is that?

The West Coast and Northwest.

Where does the Livestock Market Digest cover the most?

The West Coast and Northwest!

A 501 (c) 3 Non-profit Program for our Combat Warriors

You’re invited to our 2nd Annual

Cowboy Christmas Dinner and Dance!

Friday, Dec. 9, 2011 • 6pm

The Livestock Market Digest has readers across the nation, and a great number of those readers are in California, Orgeon, Washington, Montana and Wyoming!

Call TODAY to reserve space for YOUR BULL SALE ad!

November 15, 2011

Contact MICHAEL WRIGHT at: michael@aaalivestock.com or at 505/243-9515, ext. 30.

Or, email CAREN COWAN at: caren@aaalivestock.com

Hosted by HILTON OF SANTA FE 100 Sandoval St., Santa Fe, NM 87501

Cocktails, Silent Auction, Dinner, Live Auction and Dancing (Hand-carved Prime Rib and Oven-roasted Turkey with all the trimmings)

Tickets

$100

per person If you cannot attend, please consider purchasing a ticket for one of our warriors.

Hilton is offering “Take the Elevator Home” Stay the Evening for just $79. Contact the Hilton to reserve your room. 505/988-2811.

•••

For Cowboy Christmas Tickets, call Rick at 505/670-2059 or Nancy at 505/577-1294 or purchase through our website, www.horsesforheroes.org.

Entertainment by

Joe West & Friends