LMD Sept 17

Riding Herd

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

by LEE PITTS

– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

September 15, 2017 • www.aaalivestock.com

Volume 59 • No. 9

A Mother’s Plea

Beware The Reducetarians I L

BY LEE PITTS

Published market prices are (by definition) based on your competitors’ self-reported prices. So if you are religiously relying on USDA or another published price, aren’t you in effect letting your competitors price your product?

Another common approach is talking with customers to “see what the market is doing.”

In that case, aren’t you by definition allowing

’m not in the mood today to try and be funny. Normally I don’t believe writers should use their privilege or their podium to preach to people. In most cases I don’t have the qualifications or the credentials.

This column is in response to a plea from a long and loyal friend. I’ve written about Carole Levitz before. She’s the daughter of one of the greatest magicians who ever lived, The Great Cardini.

As an amateur prestidigitator myself, I’ve always had a “magical” bond with Carole.

Besides being a great auction clerk Carole is also a mother and grandmother, although today her brood is greatly diminished. One minute Carole’s daughter and granddaughter were alive and well and the next a drunk driver killed them both.

If you needed further proof that life isn’t fair, as often happens in such tragedies the drunk wasn’t seriously injured. And hear this, it was his fourth drunk driving offense.

Writing a sympathy card to Carole was some of the hardest writing I’ve ever done. And I’m a writer! I got a lovely note back and Carole enclosed the memorium they handed out at the funeral.

As I perused the cover with a dozen photos of Carole’s beautiful family celebrating life’s goodness, I felt my throat tighten and what felt like a tear in my eye. Nah, it couldn’t be, big boys don’t cry.

Inside the pamphlet were two photos of Raeleen and Raegan, next to each other in print as they were in life. By the time I’d read the unfinished story of Raegan I was angry enough to kill the idiotic driver myself. Because of one of life’s lowest creatures never again will Raeleen call her mother, because there is no cell service in heaven.

Carole will never get to see her beautiful granddaughter Raegan walk down the aisle in a wedding dress.

When I’d finished reading about Raegan, by all accounts a shooting star who was loved and respected by

continued on page three

continued on page fifteen

BY LEE PITTS

et’s put something in proper perspective here, shall we?

To hear the vegetarians talk you’d think they were a majority of our population but there is the same percentage of vegetarians in the United States as there are black people in Alaska, Asians in Arkansas, Muslims in China and gay people in the United States.

They comprise the same amount of folks in this country as natural redheads do, and I can go weeks at a time without seeing one of them. But then I don’t get around that much. But you get the point... they are an extremely vocal mini-minority at best.

I find it ironic that there are roughly the same number of vegetarians in this country as there are farmers and ranchers, and you know how outnumbered we are.

To listen to the Hollywood crowd and the liberal left tell it, vegetarianism is growing rapidly as people give up steaks for salad and hamburger for humus. But the lie they tell that vegetarianism is growing rapidly while meat consumption is falling is just one of the many mistruths they tell on a regular basis. Beef may have been on the ropes five years ago but as more and more people tasted tofu for the first time, or tried to choke down vegetarian lasagna, they have quickly and very quietly come back to beef.

Beef’s Dark Decade

NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING

It’s true that for a long time

May your belly never grumble, may your heart never ache, may your horse never stumble, may your cinch never break.

meat consumption was on a downward spiral and vegetarianism was on the rise. In 2014 for instance, Americans ate 19 percent less beef, 10 percent less pork, and 1.5 percent less chicken than they did in 2005.

In 2009 it’s estimated that only one percent of our population identified themselves as vegetarians or vegans. (A vegan not only doesn’t eat meat, they use no animal products of any kind.) Although the veg heads claimed that 5 percent of our population were vegetarians, most surveys now put the number between two and three percent. Still, if we accept the three percent number that rep-

resents 300 percent growth in a decade’s time. That’s a growth number we usually see only associated with tech stocks and government debt.

Probably at its peak 16 million people in this country were vegetarians. Forty two percent of them became vegetarians because they saw an educational film, 69 percent said they were vegetarians to support the ethical treatment of animals, and 45 percent said they had further transitioned into veganism. 52 percent of all vegans said they had been eating vegan for less than 10 years.

Vegetarianism seemed to really appeal to two groups in

particular: women, and to be more precise, young women. In 2009 when only 1 million people were total vegans, 79 percent were women. That number has stayed the same while 59 percent of the larger vegetarian group are women. Forty two percent of vegetarians are age 18 to 34 years old. But the fact still remains, vegetarians are an extremely small minority.

Looking in the rear view mirror, there were several reasons for beef’s fall from grace such as animal agriculture being blamed for climate change, water and air pollution, antibiotic resistance, cruelty to animals and for the general ill health of all Americans.

According to a report from the always suspect National Resources Defense Council, Americans cutting their beef consumption was due to Americans finally waking up to the environmental damage that cows were wreaking. Back in 2012 continued on page two

It’s Not 1870 & Prices Won’t Win the Long Game MEATINGPLACEGUEST.COM

Pie Growth Mindset

GUEST BLOG BY JANETTE BARNARD

Having a fixed pie mindset in a growing pie era is crippling. When you lower prices to gain market share, you are foregoing profit. This isn’t hypothetical lost profit. If the market is at $2 per pound and you sell at $1.75 per pound, then you can calculate how much it cost to buy the market share you were chasing.

Was it worth foregoing that profit when you could have gained market share by adding value and differentiating to bring in new demand rather than just (expensively) reshuffling existing demand in the short run? Because that market share will have to be bought again and again if that’s your tactic.

T

he Wild West gets the glory, but Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday have nothing on the industrial tycoons of the late 1800s.

The rapid development of the oil, steel, railroad and related industries is enough to make your head spin, especially when you layer on the fast and loose ways the tycoons took hold of entire industries and bent them to their will.

Basically 1860-1890 is just a single story on continuous loop: a guy buys controlling interest in a company, drives down prices to take market share and bleed competitors, buys controlling interest in competitors, raises prices across the board, then buys a yacht or ten.

Rinse, repeat.

The main storyline — regardless of the commodity — is gaining market share by competing on price. That is the path to empire building. Or at least it was back then.

But it’s not 1870.

You are not John Rockefeller.

And in the modern meat industry, you have far more profit inducing levers to pull than just lowering price.

Three levers other than price:

You are not a price taker; do know who is pricing your product?

www.LeePittsbooks.com

Page 2

Livestock Market Digest

September 15, 2017

BEWARE spokespeople for the NRDC crowed on the morning talk shows and in glossy magazines and said that cutting back on our beef consumption by 19 percent reduced as much pollution as taking 39 million cars off the road!

Then there was the war our own government had been waging on beef for the past 20 years as study after study blamed beef for America’s bulging waistline, increased incidences of cancer and cardiac arrest.

The year 2012 was probably our darkest hour. The Meatless Monday crowd insisted that they deserved much of the credit for beef’s apparent demise. A June 2012 survey discovered that 50 percent of American adults said they were aware of the Meatless Monday campaign and 27 percent of those folks said that as a

continued from page one

result they were actively reducing their beef consumption.

Beef Is Back Then the dark clouds parted and we could see quite clearly the real reason Americans had cut back on eating beef.

To quote the trite phrase that James Carville created for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential run against President George H.W. Bush, “IT’S THE ECONOMY STUPID.” Americans didn’t cut back on beef because they had lost a taste for it, they did it because they could no longer afford it.

For beef’s darkest decade, 2006 through 2015, beef prices went up 50 percent! Chicken and pork prices rose too but not as quickly, nor by as much. In the language any chicken could understand, beef made pork and

poultry look cheap cheap.

As we tried to get back on solid footing as an industry Rabobank’s William Sawyer wrote a report that gave us all hope that we were turning the big ship around. In that report he predicted that meat consumption would soon be reaching all time highs. He wrote that American meat consumption increased by five percent in 2015 – the biggest increase in 40 years. He further described 2015 as “a momentous year for U.S. animal protein… the largest increase in U.S. meat consumption since the food scares of the 1970s.”

According to the USDA, Americans ate an average 55.6 pounds of beef in 2016, up from 54 pounds in 2015. And we’re expected to eat even more in 2017. “We’re in a much better place now than we were 10 years

ago when we had the recession,” said Altin Kalo, an economist with Steiner Consulting.

Just as beef’s dark days could be blamed on several factors, so too could our rebound. A front page story on the cover of USA Today reported, “After a decade-long decline, low prices, strong disposable incomes and a guarded thumbs up for the healthiness of red meat have combined to give beef a resurgence. As backyard grills fire up this summer, one thing is clear: Americans no longer have a beef with beef. Thanks to lower prices, more disposable income and a guarded thumbs-up from the wellness community, the once-maligned meat is now seen by many shoppers and diners as an ingredient in a well-balanced and even trendy diet.”

All of a sudden dieters discovered the problem was not protein, it was carbohydrates making their waistlines expand.

It was discovered that half of the fatty acids in a serving of beef are heart healthy monounsaturated fatty acids, the same type of fat found in olive oil. And beef, pound for pound, was found to be one of the better protein sources. If not the best. Another study showed that an optimal diet would include four to 5.5 ounces of lean beef per day as the primary protein source. Such a diet would lower LDL cholesterol levels and improve blood pressure.

Folks who had grown weary of tofu, lentils, and beans were suddenly free to eat beef again.

People were dining at steakhouses and, heaven forbid, putting real butter on their baked potatoes. It turns out Americans never lost their love for beef... they just couldn’t afford it. Some are predicting that we stand on the precipice of what could be a worldwide golden age of meat in general, and beef in particular.

It must be very demoralizing to the veg heads that the U.S. still ranks amongst the world’s biggest beef eaters. Uruguay consumed the most beef per capita in the world in 2016 followed by Argentina, Hong Kong and the United States. They’ve tried every which way to decouple Americans from their beef but it simply tastes too great to give it up for good.

Sore Losers CAREN COWAN.......... Publisher LEE PITTS.................... Executive Editor CHUCK STOCKS......... Publisher Emeritus RANDY SUMMERS...... Sales Rep LYNN MARIE RUSAW...Sales Rep

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The veg heads are not taking this news well. They blame it all on “hippie values losing out to materialism.” If you eat beef you must be a Republican who voted for Trump.

According to “your source for green living,” a web site called Treehugger, “Unfortunately, it appears that the reason why people weren’t eating as much meat was because they couldn’t afford it, not because they were concerned about its environmental impact. Prices were high and supplies were tight; but now, since last year, the cost of beef has come down 22 percent, pork 7 percent, and chicken five percent, and it’s once again easy and cheap to maintain a meat-cen-

tric diet.”

You could almost hear the tears in Treehugger’s voice, “So much for all those Meatless Mondays. The message that it’s important to cut back on meat is not getting through to Americans, who continue to pound back the pounds of beef, chicken, and pork at an exponential rate. In bad news for environmental, health, and animal welfare advocates, the latest numbers show that U.S. meat consumption is on an upswing, thanks to dropping prices.”

“It’s hugely frustrating,” said Treehugger, “that the ‘go meatfree’ message has largely been ignored. All those documentaries, the books, the online lectures, the op-eds, the campaigns and pledges, etc. haven’t really worked, if meat-eating is on the rise once again.”

In summary Treehugger said, “There’s a roller-coaster effect here, and we are about to start an upswing. All those U.S. consumers that got priced out of the beef market are going to be able to come back to a price level that they haven’t seen for five to six years.”

Don’t be so down on yourselves vegetarians. There is another reason why vegetarianism didn’t go mainstream that hasn’t changed in 200 years. Author Marta Zaraska explained, “Nineteenth-century vegetarians were often considered too radical, too naïve, or, simply speaking, wacko. They were called “halfcrazed,” “sour-visaged,” “infidels,” and “food cranks.”

It seems some things never change.

Waving The White Flag Asking people to give up meat was just asking too much.

It always was a hard sell to anyone who had fully functioning taste buds. There is evidence the veggies saw this coming, so they lowered the requirements for anyone wanting to identify with the vegetarian movement. First came the flexitarians. These were vegetarians who occasionally eat meat, which is an oxymoron if I ever heard one. Flexitarianism was voted one of the top five consumer health trends for 2012 and veg heads had high hopes for it. It meant backsliding vegetarians were still welcome at their veggie potlucks. You could eat meat but just be real careful who saw you wolfing down a Big Mac. The whole flexitarian deal fizzled faster than a five cent Chinese firecracker in the San Francisco fog and today a flexitarian is harder to find than D.B. Cooper.

Oh well, back to the drawing board. Next came the semi-vegetarians, these were people who ate no red meat or fish. The latest group of folks who seek to rid the world of red meat are the reducetarians.

Get ready for flexitarianism part two.

A Word of Advice Reducetarians are part of the hyper-materialistic reductionism continued on page three

BEWARE movement, whatever that is.

Author Brian Kateman coined the term reducetarian which referred to a person who is deliberately reducing his or her consumption of meat. “And a global movement was born.” Or so says the promo for his book, The Reducetarian Solution: How the Surprisingly Simple Act of Reducing the Amount of Meat in Your Diet Can Transform Your Health and the Planet.

Wow, I’ve written books shorter than his title!

The book made its debut earlier this year and contains essays from influential thinkers on how the simple act of cutting 10 percent or more of the meat from one’s diet can transform the planet. Some of the authors are such luminaries as Seth Godin, Victoria Moran, Joel Fuhrman, Jeffrey Sachs, Naomi Oreskes, Peter Singer, and others. With “less meat” recipes from Pat Crocker.

That sounds like a “B” list of celebrities at best and they’ll have to do better than that. Currently the book is the 294,265 most popular book on Amazon.

If a movement really was midwifed by this book the baby was DOA. Kateman is also the cofounder and President of the Reducetarian Foundation and he has appeared in dozens of media outlets including The Washington Post, Vox, National Geographic, The Atlantic, Forbes, Fast Company, Salon, Fox News, NPR and The Daily Mail.

He is also an instructor in the Executive Education Program at the Earth Institute.

Livestock Market Digest continued from page two

According to none other than Deepak Chopra, “This book offers us a path towards a more ecological, sustainable, humane, and compassionate world while improving our own health and well-being.”

Earlier this year the reducetarians got together for the big Reducetarian Summit in New York City whose central question was: “How do we as individuals, organizations, communities, and societies work to systematically decrease meat consumption?”

The moderators included folks from USA Today, Bone Appetit, Time Magazine, The Atlantic and Forbes. The speakers were from the Humane Society of the United States, Greenpeace, Google Food, Treehugger, Climate Nexus, Meatless Mondays, Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth, Animal Equality, Farm Sanctuary, Earth Justice, Veg Fund, and a bunch of other lefty writers. Their topics included the politics of meat, rise of conscious capitalism, impact investing, plant based revolution, psychology and culture of meat, and our broken food system.

We’re pretty sure that afterwards all the participants were bussed to an anti-Trump rally.

I know you’re all anxiously waiting for Kateman’s next book, The Reducetarian Cookbook, but alas, it won’t be out until Fall of 2018. As a fellow cookbook author myself I’d offer Kateman a bit of friendly advice: if you want it to sell better than your last one did, I’d go heavy on the beef recipes if I were you.

Page 3

NOT 1870

continued from page one

your customers to set your prices? There’s got to be a better way that puts YOU in control of pricing.

Information flow in commodity markets Commodity markets are, shall we say, imperfect. One proof is information flow in beef, pork, and poultry markets, where published market prices and real market prices are two distinct numbers. If you know the published market price is only a guideline, how are you leveraging asymmetry of information to establish higher prices for your product?

Strategically low prices were Rockefeller’s weapon of choice during the wild west era of business when the Department of Justice didn’t care how much power one supplier had, public securities markets hadn’t even considered disclosure requirements, and analytics were only as advanced as the #2 pencil.

But the world has changed….has your management?

Janette Barnard is the sales and marketing director for DecisionNext, a prescriptive analytics company that translates forecasts into recommendations to help meat and food companies make better business decisions.

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Page 4

Livestock Market Digest

September 15, 2017

Why the Greens Lost & Trump Won

BY JOEL KOTKIN THEDAILYBEAST.COM

W

hen President Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accords, embraced coal, and stacked his administration from people from fossil-fuel producing states, the environmental movement reacted with near-apocalyptic fear and fury. They would have been better off beginning to understand precisely why the country has become so indifferent to their cause, as evidenced by the victory not only of Trump but of unsympathetic Republicans at every level of government.

Yet there’s been little soul-searching among green activists and donors, or in the generally pliant media since November about how decades of exaggerated concerns— about peak oil, the “population bomb,” and even, a few decades back, global cooling— and demands for economic, social, and political sacrifices from the masses have damaged their movement.

The New Religion and the Next Autocracy Not long ago, many greens still embraced pragmatic solutions—for example substituting abundant natural gas for coal—that have generated large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Rather than celebrate those demonstrable successes, many environmentalists

began pushing for a total ban on the development of fossil fuels, including natural gas, irrespective of the costs or the impact on ordinary people.

James Lovelock, who coined

are cheering Democratic state attorney generals’ long-shot legal cases against oil companies.

The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman has talked about dismissing the disorder of democ-

It’s tough to prevail with an agenda that makes people poorer, more subservient and more miserable. That disconnect is one part of how Trump made it to the White House. the term “Gaia,” notes that the green movement has morphed into “a religion” sometimes marginally tethered to reality.

Rather than engage in vigorous debate, they insist that the “science is settled” meaning not only what the challenges are but also the only acceptable solutions to them. There’s about as much openness about goals and methods within the green lobby today as there was questioning the existence of God in Medieval Europe. With the Judeo-Christian and Asian belief systems in decline, particularly among the young, environmentalism offers “science” as the basis of a new theology.

The believers at times seem more concerned in demonstrating their faith than in passing laws, winning elections or demonstrating results. So with Republicans controlling the federal government, greens

racy as not suited to meeting the environmental challenges we face, and replacing it with rulers like the “reasonably enlightened group of people” who run the Chinese dictatorship.

After Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, China was praised, bizarrely, as the great green hope. The Middle Kingdom, though, is the world’s biggest and fastest grower emitter, generating coal energy at record levels. It won’t, under Paris, need to cut its emissions till 2030. Largely ignored is the fact that America, due largely to natural gas replacing coal, has been leading the world in GHG reductions.

Among many greens, and their supports, performance seems to mean less than proper genuflecting; the Paris accords, so beloved by the green establishment, will make little

impact on the actual climate, as both rational skeptics like Bjorn Lomborg and true believers like NASA’s James Hanson agree. In this context, support for Paris represents the ultimate in “virtue signaling.” Ave Maria, Gaia.

The California Model The cutting edge for green soft authoritarianism, and likely model after the inevitable collapse of the Trump regime, lies in California. On his recent trip with China, Brown fervently kowtowed to President Xi Jinping. Brown’s environmental obsessions also seems to have let loose his own inner authoritarian, as when he recently touted “the coercive power of the state.”

Coercion has its consequences. California has imposed, largely in the name of climate change, severe land use controls that have helped make the state among the most unaffordable in the nation, driving homeownership rates to the lowest levels since the 1940s, and leaving the Golden State with the nation’s highest poverty rate.

The biggest losers from Brown’s policies have been traditional blue collar, energy-intensive industries such as home building, manufacturing, and energy. Brown’s climate policies have boosted energy prices and made gas in oil-rich California about the most expensive in the nation. That doesn’t

mean much to the affluent Tesla-driving living in the state’s more temperate coast, but it’s forced many poor and middle-class people in the state’s less temperate interior into “energy poverty,” according to one recent study.

That, too, fits the climatista’s agenda, which revolves around social engineering designed to shift people from predominately suburban environments to dense, urban and transit dependent ones. The state’s crowded freeway are not be expanded due to a mandated “road diet,” while local officials repeatedly seek to reduce lanes and “calm traffic” on what are already agonizing congested streets. In this shift, market forces and consumer preferences are rarely considered, one reason these policies have stimulated much local opposition—and not only from the state’s few remaining conservatives.

California’s greens ambitions even extend to eating habits. Brown has already assaulted the beef producers for their cattle’s flatulence. Regulators in the Bay Area and local environmental activists are proposing people shift to meatless meals. Green lobbyists have already convinced some Oakland school districtsto take meat off the menu. OK with me, if I get the hamburger or taco-truck franchise next to school when the kids get out.

Sadly, many of these often socially harmful policies may do very little to address the problem associated with climate change. California’s draconian policies fail to actually do anything for the actual climate, given the state’s already low carbon footprint and the impact of people and firms moving to places where generally they expand their carbon footprint. Much of this has taken on the character of a passion play that shows how California is leading us to the green millennium.

Goodbye to the Family An even bigger ambition of the green movement—reflecting concerns from its earliest days—has been to reduce the number of children, particularly in developed countries.

Grist’s Lisa Hymas has suggested that it’s better to have babies in Bangladesh than America because they don’t end up creating as many emissions as their more fortunate counterparts. Hymas’ ideal is to have people become GINKs—green inclinations, no kids.

Many green activists argue that birth rates need to be driven down so warming will not “fry” the planet. Genial Bill continued on page five

September 15, 2017

Livestock Market Digest

Page 5

GREENS Nye, science guy, has raised the idea of enforced limits on producing children in high-income countries. This seems odd since the U.S. already is experiencing record-low fertility rates, a phenomenon in almost all advanced economies, with some falling to as little as half

continued from page four

tion from original sin. In the process, it seems to matter little if we undermine the great achievements of our bourgeois economy—expanded homeownership, greater personal mobility, the ability to rise to a higher class—if it signals our commitment to achieve a more

Not long ago, many greens still embraced pragmatic solutions—for example substituting abundant natural gas for coal—that have generated large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. the “replacement rate” needed to maintain the current population. In these countries, aging populations and shrinking workforces may mean government defaults over the coming decades.

The demographic shift, hailed and promoted by greens, is also creating a kind of post-familial politics. Like Jerry Brown himself, many European leaders—in France, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands—are themselves childless. Their attitude, enshrined in a EU document as “no kids, no problem” represents a breathtaking shift in human affairs; it’s one thing to talk a good game about protecting the “next generation” in the collective abstract, another to experience being personally responsible for the future of another, initially helpless, human being.

Do As We Say, Not How We Live The pressing need to change people’s lives seems intrinsic now to green theology. Without penance and penalties, after all, there is no redemp-

earth-friendly existence.

The left-wing theorist Jedidiah Purdy has noted that “mainstream environmentalism overemphasizes elite advocacy” at the expense of issues of economic equity, a weakness that both Trump and the GOP have exploited successfully, particularly in the Midwest, the South, and Intermountain West. Some greens object even to the idea of GDP growth at a time when most Americans are seeing their standard of living drop.

No surprise then that the green agenda has yet to emerge from the basement of public priorities, which remain focused on such mundanities as better jobs, public safety, and decent housing.

To further alienate voters, many green scolds live far more lavishly than the people they are urging to cut back. Greens have won over a good portion of the corporate elite, many of whom see profit in the transformation as they reap subsidies for “green” energy, expensive and often ineffective transit and exorbitant high-density housing. Most notable are the tech oligarchs, clustered in ul-

Vegetarian Men More Likely to Get Depressed: Study Shows

BY SUSAN KELLY MEETINGPLACE.COM

V

egetarian men showed more symptoms of depression than non-vegetarians, possibly due to nutritional deficiencies, a University of Bristol study said.

Researchers analyzed data from 9,668 men in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children in southwest England, of which 350 identified themselves as vegetarians.

Those who were vegetarian for a longer period of time tended to have higher depression scores.

Deficiencies in nutrients such as iron or vitamin B12

are a possible explanation for the findings, but reverse causation cannot be ruled out, the researchers said. Other possible reasons for the findings include greater consumption of nuts rich in omega-6 fatty acids and lower intake of seafood, factors that may be associated with greater risk of depression, they said.

High blood levels of phytoestrogens, a consequence of diets rich in vegetables and soy, and metabolites of pesticides from high intake of fruit and vegetables also could explain the higher depression risk, the study said.

The research is due to be published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

tra-green Seattle and the Bay Area, who depend on massive amounts of electricity to run their devices, but have reaped huge subsidies for green energy.

The tech oligarchs have little interest in family friendly suburbs, preferring the model of prolonged adolescence in largely childless places like college campuses and San Francisco. Oligarchs such as Mark Zuckerberg live in spacious and numerous houses, even while pressing policies that would push everyone without such a fortune to downsize.

Richard Branson, another prominent green supporter, may not like working people’s SUVs, but he’s more than will-

ing to sponsor climate change events on a remote Caribbean island reachable only by private plane. One does not even need to plumb the hypocrisy of Al Gore’s jet-setting luxurious lifestyle.

In the manner of Medieval indulgences these mega emissions-generators claim to pay for their carbon sins by activism, buying rain forests and other noble gestures. Hollywood, as usual, is particularly absurd, with people like Leonardo di Caprio flying in his private jet across country on a weekly basis. Living in Malibu, Avatar director James Cameron sees skeptics as “boneheads” who will have “to be an-

1937

80

Years

swerable” for their dissidence, suggesting perhaps a shootout at high noon.

In the end, the greens and their wealthy bankrollers may find it difficult to prevail as long as their agenda makes people poorer, more subservient, and more miserable; this disconnect is, in part, why Donald Trump is now in the White House. Making progress on climate change, and other environmental concerns, remains a critical priority, but it needs to explore ways humans, through ingenuity and innovation, can meet these challenges without undermining what’s left of our middle class and faded democratic virtue.

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Page 6

Livestock Market Digest

September 15, 2017

Rural America Rejects ‘Big Wind’

BY ROBERT BRYCE / POSTANDCOURIER.COM

T

he backlash against Big Wind continues. Indeed, entire states are now restricting or rejecting wind projects.

In April, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill that puts an early end to lucrative tax credits that Big Wind was collecting in the Sooner state.

The move will save the state about $500 million over the next decade.

In May, the Tennessee legislature passed a ban on new wind projects until July 2018.

State legislators took action after Cumberland Mountains residents mounted furious objections to a proposed 23-turbine project that would have been built near the town of Crab Orchard.

On June 30, the North Carolina legislature passed a measure placing a moratorium on the development of new wind projects in the state for 18 months. The move was made to assure that operations related to the state’s military bases

are not impeded by 500- and 600-foot-high turbines.

To be sure, you won’t read about this in The New York Times. Indeed, the paper of record hasn’t published a single story on the fact that three counties in western New York — Erie, Orleans and Niagara — as well as the towns of Yates and Somerset, are all fighting a proposed 200-megawatt project called Lighthouse Wind, which aims to put dozens of turbines on the shore of Lake Ontario.

The rural resistance to the land-devouring, subsidy-fueled sprawl of Big Wind doesn’t fit the narrative — endlessly repeated by the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace and their myriad allies in the liberal media — that wind energy is “green.” Nevertheless, the numbers tell the tale.

Since 2015, about 170 government entities from Maine to California have moved to reject or restrict wind projects; this year, 46 government entities have rejected or placed restrictions on Big Wind.

What’s driving the back-

lash? Simple: rural residents are protecting their property values and viewsheds.

They don’t want to see the red-blinking lights atop those massive turbines, all night, every night, for the rest of their lives. Nor do they want to be subjected to the harmful noise — both audible and inaudible — that they produce.

The backlash is so fierce that Big Wind has begun suing small towns to force them to accept wind projects. Since last October, NextEra Energy, the world’s biggest producer of wind energy, has filed lawsuits in federal and state courts against five rural governments, including the town of Hinton, Oklahoma, population: 3,000. NextEra is funding its courthouse mugging of small-town America with your tax dollars. A recent report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that NextEra collected $7.8 billion in federal tax subsidies between 2008 and 2015, making it the 11th most-subsidized company in the U.S. over that period.

The backlash isn’t limit-

ed to the United States. In 2010, the European Platform Against Windfarms had about 400 members in 20 countries.

Today, it has about 1,275 member organizations in 31 countries. In Canada, more than 90 Ontario towns have declared themselves “unwilling hosts” to wind projects.

In 2016, a wind project near Scotland’s famous Loch Ness was rejected because of its potential impact on tourism.

The backlash is happening offshore, too. In New York, the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association and a boatload of fishermen and fishmongers have filed a federal lawsuit to prevent a wind project from being built on top of one of best squid and scallop fisheries on the Eastern Seaboard.

In short, Big Wind is facing a quandary: Producing significantly more electricity from wind will require erecting more — and taller — turbines in rural areas. But as more turbines get built, and the taller those turbines get (the newest designs are more than 700 feet tall) — the more people

will object. More turbines will also mean more dead wildlife.

Wind turbines are a proven killer of birds of prey, including bald and golden eagles.

Last year, two scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey determined that wind turbines are now the largest cause of mass bat mortality. Bats aren’t as popular as eagles, but they are important pollinators and insectivores.

The punchline here is obvious: in the name of climate change, environmental protection has been turned on its head. Rather than advocating for people, landscapes and wildlife, our biggest environmental groups are cheering all-renewable schemes that disregard all three.

As Bonnie Brady, the fiery executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association told me recently, “Destroying one environment in the name of trying to protect another environment makes no sense at all.”

Robert Bryce is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He wrote this for InsideSources. com.

Couple Must Cut Their Sheep dogs’ Vocal Cords

BY TRAVIS M. ANDREWS / THE WASHINGTON POST

A

n Oregon appeals court agreed in late August that a couple must surgically lacer-

ate their dogs’ vocal cords in a procedure known as “debarking” or “devocalization,” following a lawsuit brought by neighbors annoyed by the pets’ “incessant barking.” The ruling upheld a

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lower court order.

The case began in 2002, when Karen Szewc and John Updegraff began breeding Tibetan Mastiffs, large fluffy dogs often employed to protect sheep from predators, at their home in Rouge River, Oregon, about 150 miles south of Eugene.

The married couple’s neighbors, Debra and Dale Krein, quickly grew tired of the dogs’ barking. According to the Kreins, the “dogs bark[ed] uncontrollably for long periods of time while defendants [were] away from the residence,” court documents state.

But they weren’t the first ones to take action against the dog owners. In both 2004 and 2005, Jackson County cited Szewc for violating a county code provision on public nuisance “by allowing two of her dogs to bark frequently and at length,” according to court documents.

Szewc argued the provisions didn’t apply to her because she ran a farm on the couple’s 3.4acre parcel of land, which includes sheep, goats and chickens. Farms fall under different ordinances.

The Jackson County Circuit Court rejected this argument, saying the property was not a farm, ordered her to pay $400 and to debark the two offending dogs or to move them to a different area.

It is unclear if she debarked these dogs, but in 2012, the Kriens filed a lawsuit against Szewc and Updegraff, claiming they had not taken the necessary actions to prevent the dogs from barking. At that point,

there were at least six dogs on the property, all either Tibetan or Pyrenean Mastiffs, the Oregonian reported.

Again, the dog owners argued that they were not subject to the

The dog owners argued that they were not subject to the dog barking ordinance because they were running a farm.

dog barking ordinance because they were running a farm.

The Kreins claimed the dogs often began barking at 5 a.m., sometimes waking the couple. Relatives refused to visit, and their children hated being around the house, according to the Oregonian. They recorded the barking to prove it.

“The dogs are my employees,” Szewc told the Oregonian.

“We do not have the dogs to harass the neighbors. We have the dogs to protect our sheep.”

“The next line of defense is a gun. I don’t need to use a gun, if I can protect my sheep with dogs,” she added. “This is a passive way of protecting livestock.”

In April 2015, a jury sided with the Kreins and ordered Szewc and Updegraff to pay them $238,000 in damages. Also in response to the suit, Judge Timothy Gerking ordered the cou-

ple to debark the mastiffs, since they hadn’t stopped them from barking using other means such as shock collars.

Szewc and Updegraff again argued unsuccessfully that the dogs were necessary because they had a farm.

A three-judge panel of the Oregon Court of Appeals consisting of Joel DeVore, Chris Garrett and Bronson James upheld that ruling, agreeing that the dog owners were not running a farm.

The question of whether debarking is an appropriate remedy was not at issue in the case.

Debarking is a surgical procedure in which parts of a dog’s vocal folds or cords are cut out in an effort to lower the volume of its barks or, more severely, to eliminate the dog’s ability to bark altogether, according to the American Veterinary Medical Foundation.

The procedure is partially prohibited in six states, according to the AVMF. Many animal welfare organizations oppose it, as do some veterinarians.

“Debarking is not a medically necessary procedure,” Jeffrey S. Klausner, chief medical officer of the Banfield Pet Hospital, told the New York Times in 2010. “We think it’s not humane to the dogs to put them through the surgery and the pain. We just do not think that it should be performed.”

Wednesday’s ruling left some animal rights activists reeling.

“We are just shocked,” David Lytle, a spokesman for the Oregon Humane Society, told the Oregonian.

September 15, 2017

Livestock Market Digest

A Monument Fiasco and More BLM Law Enforcement Abuses

E

verything was building up to August 24, the day Secretary Zinke was to send his final recommendations on national monuments to President Trump. That was the day we were to find out, finally, what modifications, if any, were in store for the Rio Grande del Norte and the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks national monuments. The buildup was intense, as many, including this writer, waited with anticipation.

On that fateful day Secretary Zinke issued a press release and a summary report which told us exactly – nothing. A lot of giberrish about the process, listing the monuments he had visited, listing the monuments already taken off the review list and the Secretary saying he had recommended boundary modifications to a “handful” of monuments. Which monuments? We don’t know. The type of modifications? We don’t know. When

will the President act on these recommendations? We don’t know. A White House official said Trump is reviewing Zinke’s “recommendations to determine the best path forward for the American people.”

Rest assured that even though the “report” had no specifics, the enviro groups and their supporters in Congress were highly critical.

League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski says Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s review of the national monuments “has been a complete sham” and a pretext for “selling out our public lands and waters” to the oil industry and others.

Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society, is urging President Donald Trump to “ignore these illegal and dangerous recommendations and instead act to preserve these beloved places.”

Howie Dash with the Southern NM Sierra Club says, “A whopping 99% of the 2.7 million public comments asked the Interior Department to keep these special places intact. It’s clear what the communities surrounding Organ Mountains Desert Peaks and Rio Grande del Norte want. His vague statement makes clear that Secretary Zinke doesn’t care.”

And the cheerleader of the enviros in New Mexico, Senator Martin Heinrich, headed up a press conference in Albuquerque, saying, “New Mexicans have spoken with a loud and unified voice. We like our national monuments like they are.

Any changes that reduce their protection would be disrespectful to everyone who worked so hard to establish them and could put at risk the vibrant economies that we are building around monument recreation and tourism. I will continue to stand up for our nation’s conservation legacy and oppose any effort by the Trump Administration to turn back the clock on the progress we’ve made to protect the places we all own and love.”

I would like to be supportive, or critical if warranted, of the recommendations, but how can I if we don’t know what the specific recommendations are?

It’s frustrating to have to wait even longer, but I will hold fire till then.

Here’s what I do know.

If Zinke strickly follows the criteria set out in Trump’s E.O., he will certainly diminish the boundaries of the monuments.

Let’s take a look at the first cri-

Page 7 teria on the list: (i) the requirements and original objectives of the Act, including the Act’s requirement that reservations of land not exceed “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected”; The Antiquities Act requires the President to identify the objects, the objects then become the national monument, and then the President reserves “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected”.

Even a casual observer knows both New Mexico monuments started out as wilderness proposals, and had nothing to do with protecting historical objects. When it became evident these proposals would not pass Congress, the hunt was on to find objects that would justify the already-drawn boundaries.

In other words, the process was exactly opposite of that envisioned in the Antiquities Act, and both monuments should be diminished accordingly. They don’t even meet the very first criteria.

If Zinke does not follow the criteria, and instead listens to the caterwauling of the politicians and succumbs to the well-funded, madison avenue style media campaign of the enviro groups, then he will do nothing.

My fear is it will be the latter.

sial undercover sting concerning looted artifacts and of the bungled operation at the Bundy ranch. An investigation by the Office of Inspector General found that Love had abused his authority to obtain preferential treatment for his girlfriend and family members at a Burning Man event and that he had improperly intervened in a hiring process to benefit a friend. The report said: We found that the agent violated Federal ethics rules when he used his influence with Burning Man officials to obtain tickets and special passes for his family. He also directed on-duty BLM law enforcement employees to escort his family in BLM-procured vehicles, drove his BLM vehicle with his girlfriend, and directed his employee to make hotel reservations for his guests. We also confirmed the supervisory agent’s intervention in the special agent hiring process to benefit a friend.

The end result? Love was given a promotion and moved to D.C. headquarters Now comes a new Inspector General report saying that Love has mishandled evidence and destroyed documents pertinent to a Congressional investigation.

Ryan Zinke better watch out, as Love may now be promoted to Secretary of Interior.

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

BLM agent misconduct

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

I’ve written before about BLM Supervisory Agent Dan Love. Recall that Love was in charge of the highly controver-

Anthrax Found in Crockett County, Texas Cattle

T

exas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) officials confirmed anthrax in five cattle on a Crockett County premises. This is the first anthrax case in Texas this year.

The premises is located approximately 13 miles east of Ozona and has been quarantined.

TAHC rules require proper disposal of affected carcasses and vaccination of other cattle on the premise prior to release of the quarantine.

“The TAHC will continue to closely monitor the situation,” said Dr. Susan Rollo, TAHC state epidemiologist. “Producers are encouraged to remain vigilant and consult with their local veterinary practitioner if

they suspect their animals are affected with anthrax or are interested in vaccinating their livestock.”

Anthrax is a bacterial disease caused by Bacillus anthracis, a naturally-occurring organism with worldwide distribution, including parts of Texas. Anthrax cases in Texas are historically found in the triangular area bound by the towns of Uvalde, Ozona and Eagle Pass. This area includes portions of Crockett, Val Verde, Sutton, Edwards, Kinney and Maverick counties.

A vaccine is available for use in susceptible livestock in high risk areas.

Livestock or animals displaying symptoms consistent with

anthrax should be reported to a private veterinary practitioner or a TAHC official.

After exposure, it usually takes three to seven days for animals to show symptoms. Once symptoms begin, death will usually occur within 48 hours.

Acute fever followed by rapid death with bleeding from body openings are common signs of anthrax in livestock. Carcasses may also appear bloated and decompose quickly.

Symptoms may include the following: • Acute fever • Staggering • Depression • Difficulty breathing • Seizures

• Dark blood oozing from mouth, nose, and anus • Sudden death Infection is usually less severe in swine, horses, dogs and humans. Although they may become ill, they can fully recover.

If affected livestock or car-

casses must be handled, producers are encouraged to follow basic sanitation precautions such as wearing protective gloves, long sleeve shirts and washing thoroughly afterward to prevent accidental spread of the bacteria to people.

Page 8

Livestock Market Digest

September 15, 2017

10 Mega Myths About Farming & Ranching to Remember on Your Next Grocery Run

BY JENNA GALLEGOS WASHINGTON POST

M

ost of us don’t spend our days plowing fields or wrangling cattle.

We’re part of the 99 percent of Americans who eat food, but don’t produce it. Because of our intimate relationship with food, and because it’s so crucial to our health and the environment, people should be very concerned about how it’s produced. But we don’t always get it right. Next time you’re at the grocery store, consider these 10 modern myths about the most ancient occupation.

1. Most farms are corporate-owned This myth is probably the most pervasive on the list. It is also the furthest offbase. Nearly 99 percent of U.S. farms are family-owned. The vast majority of these are small family farms, but the bulk of our food comes from large family farms.

2. Food is expensive Americans spend a considerably smaller percentage of their income on food than they did in the 1960s. Americans also spend among the least amount worldwide on food as a percent of income. We spend less of our money on food than people in many other developed nations.

Between 10 and 20 percent of the cost of food actually reaches the farmer.

That means when commodity prices rise or fall, food costs remain relatively constant, buffering consumers from spikes in their grocery bills.

That’s not to say that food isn’t difficult for some American households to afford, and nutrition and obesity experts worry about the relatively high cost of nutrient-rich versus calorie-dense foods.

3. Farming is traditional and low tech Self-driving cars are still out of reach for consumers, but tractors have been driving themselves around farms for years. And driving tractors isn’t the only role GPS plays on a farm. Farmers collect geospatial data to monitor variations across a field in soil type, water and nutrient use, temperature, crop yield and more. The average farmer on Farmer’s Business Network, a social media-like platform for farm analytics, collects about four million data points every year.

Artificial intelligence helps sort through all this data and maximize performance

within a field down to the square meter.

The seeds farmers plant are also carefully crafted by years of state-of-the-art research to maximize yield and efficiency.

Gene sequencing and molecular markers help track the best traits when breeding new crops. Chemical mutagens and radiation speed up evolution by introducing new mutations. And genetic engineering enables scientists to move genes between species or turn off genes for undesirable characteristics.

Organic farms are not necessarily any less high-tech. Except for genetic engineering, all the above technologies improve yields on many USDA-certified organic farms.

With all this technology going into modern farms, the demand for skilled workers in the agriculture sector is also rising. In 2015, the United States Department of Agriculture reported that jobs in food and agriculture outnumber degrees granted in those fields nearly two to one. Of those job opportunities, 27 percent are in science, technology, engineering or math.

That’s why I switched from a largely pre-med major to plant biology for my PhD. I grew up in a farm and ranch community on the dry eastern plains of Colorado. There, slim margins prevent many farmers from investing in the newest technologies, so I wanted to help make better seeds more affordable.

4. A pesticide is a pesticide is a pesticide Pesticide is a generic term for a range of compounds. Different classes target certain types of pests: herbicides for weeds, fungicides for fungi, insecticides for insects, rodenticides for rodents.

Some kill very specifically. For example, certain herbicides target only broadleafed plants, but not grasses. Others, like certain insecticides that can also harm larger animals at high doses, cross categories.

Pesticides fight bugs and weeds in organic and conventional fields. The difference is that organic pesticides cannot be synthesized artificially. This does not necessarily mean they are less toxic. Toxicity depends on the specific compound and a person’s exposure to that compound. Some pesticides, especially older ones, are toxic at relatively low levels.

Others are safe even at very high doses.

Pesticides also differ in how quickly they break down in the environment.

Different regulations apply to different pesticides. Permits are required to purchase some agricultural chemicals, and many farmers call on crop consul-

tants to diagnose problems in a field and prescribe the proper treatment.

5. Organic farmers and conventional farmers don’t get along Adjacent farms have to cooperate regardless of how they grow their crops.

For example, potentially damaging herbicides applied to one field can drift onto a neighbor’s crops. Poorly managed weeds or insects can also spread from one field to another.

But many farm families actually grow organic and conventional crops on different fields. Organic and conventional agriculture are different business models. It typically costs more to grow crops organically, but farmers can sell these crops for a higher premium. Some crops are easier to grow organically than others depending on the type of pests they face. Whether a given crop can be grown with more sustainability by conventional or organic methods also differs by crop and by region.

6. A GMO is a GMO is a GMO Farmers and plant scientists find the term “GMO,” or genetically modified organism, frustrating. There are many ways to genetically modify a crop inside and outside of a lab. Yet the term GMO and the regulations that go with it are restricted to particular types of genetic engineering.

Genetic engineering is a tool that can be used in many different ways. The technique has produced virus-resistant papayas, grains that can survive herbicide application, squash unpalatable to insects and apples that don’t brown. Each of these traits can lead to very different outcomes. For example, herbicide-resistant crops allow an increased use of certain herbicides, while insect-resistant crops enable farmers to use less insecticides.

Each GMO food crop currently or soon to be on U.S. shelves (these include canola, corn, papaya, soybean, squash, sugar beets, apples and potatoes) has been individually tested for safety. Collectively, this research spans two decades and nearly 1,000 studies by multiple independent organizations from all over the world.

7. Only meat with a “hormone-free” label is hormone free No meat is hormone-free, because animals (and plants) naturally produce hormones. Use of added hormones is prohibited in all pork and chicken operations. Hormones like estrogen can be used to help cows reach market weight more quickly, but the average man produces tens of thousands of times more estrogen every day than the amount

found in a serving of beef from a hormone-treated cow. For a pregnant woman, that figure is in the millions.

8. Only meat with an “antibiotic-free” label is antibiotic free All the meat in your grocery store is antibiotic-free. An animal treated with antibiotics cannot be slaughtered until the drugs have cleared its system. The label “no antibiotics added” or “raised without antibiotics” means that an animal was raised without receiving any antibiotics ever. Overuse of antibiotics in animals that have not actually been diagnosed with a bacterial infection fuels antibiotic resistance and is a major public health concern. On the other hand, forgoing antibiotic treatment if an animal is sick would be inhumane. Labelsstating “no sub-therapeutics added” or “not fed antibiotics” mean antibiotics were only used as necessary.

9. Foods labeled “natural” are produced differently Natural food labels don’t actually mean anything. Not yet, anyway. The FDA took public comment last fall and will be discussing whether to regulate “natural” in food labels in the future.

Where to draw the line between natural and unnatural is a tough call, and many experts argue it’s irrelevant, because naturalness is not an indication of quality or safety.

10. Chemicals are the biggest threat to food safety Biological contaminants are by far the most common food safety issue. Harmful bacterial like E. coli, salmonella or listeria, viruses and parasites can contaminate meat or produce. Thorough cooking, cleaning, and proper food storage are the best defense against these pathogens. For raw vegetables, washing can reduce but not eliminate threat of exposure. Certain raw vegetables, such as those fertilized with manure and those that grow in warm and humid conditions, like alfalfa sprouts, are a higher risk. Diseases such as mad cow disease can also be a food safety concern, but only in extremely rare cases.

Chemicals make their way into foods much less often. These include mycotoxins which are naturally produced by fungi, industrial pollutants, or heavy metals that are naturally found in soils. The Agriculture Department monitors food for pesticide residues annually and per its latest report, “pesticide residues on foods tested are at levels below the tolerances established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and pose no safety concern.”

California FFA Remains Anchored in Agriculture

BY ANN HESS / WWW.AGDAILY.COM

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O

ne might say the California FFA program has had a rollercoaster of a year so far, but through it all, the second largest FFA association in the nation has remain anchored.

In April, California FFA announced that its state convention had outgrown Fresno and would be moving to Anaheim. In 1994, when the state conference was first held in Fresno, only 1,500 members attended. Today the conference draws more than 7,000 students from the state’s 330 chapters.

“Our event has grown by approximately 2,000 participants over the past five years,” said Josiah Mayfield,

Assistant State FFA Advisor. “One of the main reasons for the growth would be due to the growth in our statewide membership. Over the past five years our membership has grown by over 10,000 students.”

California FFA now boasts an 87,000-strong state-wide membership.

Despite those impressive figures, news broke in May that the California FFA was on Governor Jerry Brown’s chopping block. In his first draft of the 2017-2018 state budget, Brown proposed to completely eliminate the $15 million funding for career technical education programs, such as FFA. And this wasn’t the first time the

governor had taken a swing at the state’s FFA program. In 2014 Brown proposed to cut the $4.1 million Agriculture Education Incentive Grant until hundreds of FFA students from across California gathered at the State Capitol to show how critical the FFA program is to the future of California.

This year California FFA won the budget battle again as Brown ended up reversing that section of his 201718 state budget proposal.

Mayfield said the credit for this year’s budget victory belongs to the lobbying efforts of Jim Aschwanden and the California Agriculture Teachcontinued on page twelve

September 15, 2017

Livestock Market Digest

Livestock Market Digest

REAL ESTATE GUIDE

Bar M Real Estate

SCOTT MCNALLY www.ranchesnm.com 575/622-5867 575/420-1237 Ranch Sales & Appraisals

Bottari Realty Paul Bottari, Broker

775/752-3040 Nevada Farms & raNch PrOPerTY www.bottarirealty.com

HeAdquArters West Ltd. ST. JOHN’S OFFICE: TRAEGEN KNIGHT

P.O. Box 1980 St. John’s, AZ 85936 www.headquarterswest.com 928/524-3740 Fax 928/563-7004 Cell 602/228-3494 info@headquarterswest.com

Filling your real estate needs in Arizona 521 West Second St. • Portales, NM 88130

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

Buena Vista Realty

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

Fallon-Cortese Land

NEW MEXICO P.O. Box 447 Fort Sumner, NM 88119 575.355.2855 office 575.355.7611 fax 575.760.3818 cell nick@ranchseller.com www.ranchseller.com

Socorro Plaza Realty On the Plaza

Donald Brown

Qualifying Broker

505-507-2915 cell 505-838-0095 fax

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

TEXAS & OKLA. FARMS & RANCHES • 100 acres, Kaufman County TX, Long County Rd frontage, city water, excellent grass. $3750 per acre.

• 240 acres, Recreation, hunting and fishing. Nice apartment, 25 miles from Dallas Court House. $3250 per acre.

• 270 acre, Mitchell County, Texas ranch. Investors dream; excellent cash flow.

Rock formation being crushed and sold; wind turbans, some minerals. Irrigation water developed, crop & cattle, modest improvements. Just off I-20.

Price reduced to $1.6 Million.

• 40 acre, 2 homes, nice barn, corral, 30 miles out of Dallas. $415,000.

Joe Priest Real Estate

1-800/671-4548

joepriestre.net • joepriestre@earthlink.com

Page 9

Missouri Land Sales See all my listings at: • NEW LISTING! 167 Acres, Cattle/Horses/Hunting Estate 5000 sq ft paulmcgilliard.murney.com inspired Frank Lloyd Wright designed home. 3 bed, 2 1/2 baths, full w/o finished Paul McGilliard basement, John Deere room, bonus room. This estate is set up for intensive Cell: 417/839-5096 grazing, 3 wells, 3 springs, 4 ponds, automatic waters. Secluded, but easy access, only 22 miles east of Springfield, off Hwy 60. MLS# 60081327 1-800/743-0336 Murney Assoc., Realtors • NEW LISTING! 80 Acres - 60 Acres Hayable, Live Water, Location, Springfield, MO 65804 Location! Only 8 miles west of Norwood, 3 miles east of Mansfield, 1/4 mile off Hwy 60. Well maintained 3 bed, 1 1/2 bath, 1432 sq. ft. brick/vinyl home, nestled under the trees. Full basement (partially finished), John Deere Room. This is your farm! MLS#60059808 • 139 ACRES - 7 AC stocked lake; hunting retreat. Beautiful 2BR, 1BA log cabin. Only 35+ miles northeast of Springfield.

MLS#60031816 • HOBBY FARM Deluxe 30 acres, 3 bed, 3.5 bath, 3100 sq ft custom built, 1 owner home, Webster Co, Rogersville schools, 13 miles from Springfield. RV drive through barn, horse barn, large hip roof barn, kennel, & small animal barn, year-round spring-fed creek. This farm has it ALL! MLS#60043538

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PLEASE CALL our office for details on 34,490 ac. +/- located in Lincoln, DeBaca & Guadalupe Counties, NM. BANKRUPTCY COURT SALE (bottom limit for bidding has been established, the time for additional bidding has been extended. Please call our office for details!) - DVR LAKE RANCH - 22,639.44 ac. +/- ranch (10,254.44 deeded – 12,385 State Lease) - Quay/Harding Co., NM – Located on both north & south shores of the Ute Lake reservoir, Logan, NM. Ranch is watered not only by wells & pipeline but also by the lake itself. Excellent location and access via all-weather roads & pvmt.

UTE LAKE SUBDIVISION – beautiful, new custom built home, over 5,000 sq. ft. on 3.230 ac. +/-, 4 bdrm., 3 ½ bath, 3 fireplaces immaculate w/view from every room, located adjacent to the DVR Lake Ranch.

MINE CANYON ROAD (paved) – Quay Co., NM – 1,063 ac. +/- native grass, well watered w/a good set of pens, located between Ute Lake & Hwy. 54, located adjacent to the DVR Lake Ranch.

BUY THE IMPROVEMENTS – LEASE THE LAND! Union Co. – 640 ac. +/-, nice home w/ landscaped yard w/matured trees, nice shop, cattle pens & modern pivot sprinklers.

EXCELLENT OWNER FINANCING! ABERCROMBIE RANCH – Huerfano Co., CO – 7,491 ac. +/- of choice grassland watered by wells & the Cucharas River, on pvmt.

MESA DEL GATO RANCH – 6,423.45 ac. +/- in two tracts of 3,735 ac. & 2,688.45 ac., all deeded, approx. 7 mi. apart offered as one ranch, broker will assist w/contracts on either or both of the tracts, good country for year-round cow/calf operation or summer yearling grazing, located in close proximity to the Grey Fox

Ranch for addtl. acreage.

GREY FOX RANCH – Guadalupe Co., NM – 2,919.85 ac. +/- of deeded land, all native grass, located in close proximity to the Mesa Del Gato Ranch for addtl. grazing.

ALFALFA & LIVESTOCK – Tucumcari, NM 255.474 ac. +/-, state-of-the-art huge hay barn & shop (immaculate), steel pens, Arch Hurley Water Rights, two nearly new sprinklers, alfalfa established.

AIRPORT DRIVE – Tucumcari, NM – Choice 160 ac. +/-, on pvmt. w/beautiful home, roping arena, steel pens & 139.5 ac. +/- of water rights.

TUCUMCARI VALLEY – 480 ac. +/-, w/292 ac. classified as cropland fully allotted to wheat & milo, 365.9 ac. of Arch Hurley Water Rights, nice, combination farming/cattle operation, presently in grass for grazing.

CANYON VIEW RANCH – 1,533 deeded ac. +/- just out of Clayton, NM, beautiful, good country, well watered, volcanic rock mining operation offers addtl. income, on pvmt.

24 MI. FROM TEXAS/NM STATE LINE – Box Canyon Ranch – Quay Co., NM – well improved & watered, 2,400 ac. +/-deeded, 80 ac. +/- State Lease, excellent access from I-40.

LAKE VIEW RANCH – San Miguel Co., NM 9,135 ac. +/- (6,670 +/- deeded, 320 +/- BLM, 40 +/- State Lease, 2,106 +/- “FREE USE”) well improved, just off pvmt. on co. road., two neighboring ranches may be added for additional acreage!

LITTLE BLACK PEAK - 37.65 sections +/Central NM ranch w/good, useable improvements & water, some irrigation w/2 pivot sprinklers, on pvmt. w/all-weather road, 13,322 ac.+/- Deeded, 8,457 ac. +/- BLM Lease, 2,320 ac. +/- State Lease.

Please view our websites for details on these properties, choice TX, NM & CO ranches (large & small), choice ranches in the high rainfall areas of OK, irr./dryland/CRP & commercial properties. We need your listings on any types of ag properties in TX., NM, OK & CO.

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

WAGONMOUND RANCH, Mora/Harding Counties, NM. 4,927 +/- deeded acres, 1,336.80 +/state lease acres, 2,617 +/- Kiowa National Grassland Lease Acres. 8,880.80 +/- Total Acres. Substantial holding with good mix of grazing land and broken country off rim onto Canadian River. Fenced into four main pastures with shipping and headquarter pasture and additional four pastures in the Kiowa lease. Modern well, storage tank and piped water system supplementing existing dirt tanks located on deeded. Located approximately 17 miles east of Wagon Mound on pavement then county road.

Nice headquarters and good access to above rim.

Wildlife include antelope, mule deer and some elk. $2,710,000

2 center pivots, nice sale barn, 100 hd feedlot. Depredation Elk Tags available. Owner financing available to qualified buyer. Significantly reduced to $550,000 MAXWELL FARM W/HOUSE, Colfax County 400 +/deeded acres with 101.2 water shares. Seller would consider split. $495,000 RATON MILLION DOLLAR VIEW, Colfax County, NM. 97.68 +/- deeded acres, 2 parcels, excellent home, big shop, wildlife, a true million dollar view at end of private road. $489,000. House & 1 parcel $375,000

MIAMI 80 ACRES, Colfax County, NM. 80 +/- deeded acres, 80 water shares, expansive views, house, shop, roping arena, barns and outbuildings. Reduced MIAMI HORSE TRAINING FACILITY, Colfax County, $485,000 NM. Ideal horse training facility, 4 bedroom 3 bathCOLD BEER VIEW, Colfax County, NM 83.22 +/room approx. 3,593 sq-ft home, 332.32 +/- deeded deeded acre, 3,174 sq ft, 5 bedroom, 3 ½ bathrm, acres, 208 shares of irrigation, all the facilities you 2 car garage home situated on top of the hill with need to summer your cutting horse operation out of amazing 360 degree views. Reduced $425,000 the heat and far enough south to have somewhat mild winters. Approximately 6,200 ft elevation. $1,790,000 MIAMI 20 ACRES, Colfax County, NM. 20 +/- deeded acres, 20 water shares, quality 2,715 sq ft adobe MIAMI HORSE HEAVEN, Colfax County, NM. Very home, barn, grounds and trees. Private setting. This is private approx. 4,800 sq-ft double walled adobe a must see. Reduced to $375,000 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom home with many custom features. 77.50 +/- deeded acres with 77.25 water FRENCH TRACT 80, Colfax County, NM irrigated farm shares, large 7-stall horse barn, large insulated metal with home and good outbuildings, $350,000 shop with own septic, large hay barn/equipment COLMOR PLACE, Mora County, NM 354 +/- deeded shed. $1,500,000 acres, I25 frontage, house, pens, expansive views.

MAXWELL FARM IMPROVED, Colfax County, NM. Ocate Creek runs through property. $275,000 280 +/- deeded acres, 160 Class A irrigation shares,

For advertising information contact

Lynn Marie ‘LM’ Rusaw at 505-243-9515 or email AAALivestockMarketDigest@gmail.com

FLORES CANYON RANCH – 3,290 acres located in the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains just 30 minutes from Ruidoso, NM. Access is gated and locked from U. S. Highway 70. Improvements include a sprawling 3 bedroom residence with an enclosed metal shop and equipment shed. Fantastic views of Sierra Blanca and the Capitan Mountain range. For more information or for a color brochure, give us a call. Price: $3,000,000.00.

DOUBLE L RANCH - Central NM, 10 miles west of Carrizozo, NM. 12,000 total acres; 175 AUYL, BLM Section 3 grazing permit; Water provided by 3 wells and buried pipeline. Improvements include house and pens. Price: $1,500,000.00.

JACKSON RANCH - Southeastern NM cattle ranch 40 miles northwest of Roswell, NM on the Chaves/Lincoln County line. Good grass ranch with gently rolling grass covered hills. 8,000 total acres, 200 AUYL grazing capacity. Partitioned into four pastures watered by 2 wells with pipelines. Call for brochure. Price: $2,000,000.00.

RHODES FARM – Southeastern NM on the Pecos River east of Hagerman. Comprised of 480 total acres with 144 irrigated acres. Unique private drain water rights. Call for a Brochure. Price Reduced: $1,000,000.00.

L – X RANCH – Southeastern NM just ten minutes from Roswell, NM with paved gated and locked access. 3,761 total acres divided into several pastures and traps. Nice improvements to include a site built adobe residence. One well with extensive pipeline system. Well suited for a registered cattle operation. Price: $900,000.00.

Page 10

Livestock Market Digest

Stress L g•u•i•d•e angus

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et’s say a busload of Brazillian soccer players came by your place one fine fall afternoon unexpected and took you on a three-day road trip. You didn’t have time to pack your toothpaste or your own saddle! They made you play two games a day and pinochle every night! By the time they dropped you off down by the mailbox you wouldn’t have enough energy to crawl to the house!

You would be suffering from that deadly menace, the Darth Vader of Disease: STRESS! Now put yourself in the place of the 500 pound suckin’ calf this fall. You spend all summer with your mamma drinkin’ cool spring water, eatin’ good green grass and mother’s milk. You got up when you wanted, slept when you felt like it and ate when you were hungry. Suddenly, over the rim come five mounted riders!

The boss, his wife, the neighbor, the banker, the brother-in-law and eighteen dogs! Elbows flyin’, hats wavin’ and chaps flappin’. Scary? You bet your bippy!

You take off to find mamma with the dogs nippin’ at yer heels.

Mamma’s way down the trail.

You catch up and travel five miles in her dust, chokin’ and coughin’. That night you spend in a trap with 240 other cows and

T

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AAALivestockMarketDigest @gmail.com

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calves. Next mornin’ here comes Custer’s Army again! Back on the trail, still scared, hungry and tired. All day you walk behind the bunch, walkin’ eye level with the dust. That night you’re put in a big corral. Mamma’s uneasy.

You don’t get much to drink.

Sunup, the Third Infantry Battalion rides through the corral and pushes you out into the alley with your brothers and sisters. They push you up a little chute. They want you to jump into this big aluminum egg crate.

Next thing you know the ground is moving. Three hours down the road you suggest puling off at a rest stop. NO DICE! (I don’t know how many of you readers have tried to tinkle out the back of a moving pickup, but it’s no easy thing!)

That evening you get unloaded into a feedyard with strange tasting water and something in the bunk that smells like old lawn clippings. Next morning Bobby Benson and the B Bar B Riders drive you and your siblings to

a processing area. You’re too tired to care. (Imagine, if you will, getting down on your hands and knees with your barber behind you and your cattle buyer in front. Everybody’s lined up nose to wallet! Every time you back up to breathe some fresh air, somebody jabs you! Then they trap you in this big noisy contraption, give you an injection (for your own good), stick things in your mouth, your nose and your ears.

Miraculously you are released. You wander into a nice bedded pen with some sort of gourmet dish in the bunk (prepared by a chef who builds his recipe on a computer then looks at the manure to see if you liked it?) Blaagh!

You’re scared, worn out, hungry and hurtin’ all over.

STRESSED. The cattle foreman drives by that evening checkin’ the bunks. “By gosh,” he says, “Thank goodness they’ll get over it pretty quick.” www.baxterblack.com

Anaplasmosis: Not Just a Southern Cattle Producer Problem

BY ANN HESS, WWW.AGDAILY.COM

R.L. Robbs

September 15, 2017

hink anaplasmosis can’t affect your herd? Think again.

While the highest prevalence has generally been in the Southern states, anaplasmosis has been identified in all 50 states, and with increased cattle movement over the last decade the footprint has spread.

It’s something cattle producers should be watching out for now through the fall.

“Since the insect vectors are more active during this time of year, we will see the disease when they are active,” said Douglas Hilbig, DVM, Beef Technical Services, Zoetis. “The symptoms of the disease will start to show up 60 to 120 days after infection, more often in the older and weaker animals first.”

An organism primarily spread by vectors, such as ticks, biting flies, and needles, anaplasmosis invades red blood cells and causes severe anemia. The cattle disease tends to occur most commonly in mature cows and bulls during the summer and early fall.

Hilbig said symptoms usually show up in the old, stressed, and weak first, and can include abortions, weak cows, weight loss, unthrifty cows, and cows that go down and can’t get up.

Sometimes the animals may appear as aggressive due to anemia causing lack of oxygen transport to the brain. Findings on the animals will be pale mucous membranes, icteric appearance of

eyes and mucous membranes, and blood that is drawn will be thin and reduced in red blood cell counts (RBCs) – anemia.

Cattle that are infected with anaplasmosis may recover, but they remain chronically infected carriers and a source of infection to the rest of the herd.

Cattle infected early in life may never show signs of disease, but they serve as a source of infection for herdmates.

In fall-calving herds, heavy bred cows and recently calved cows seem to be at greatest risk of death or abortion. Anaplasmosis causes a rapid onset of profound anemia, and those cows experiencing the extra metabolic requirement of advanced pregnancy, or the stress of early lactation are less capable of managing that anemia. In spring-calving herds, cows are getting bred during the peak of vector season, so bull health and fertility are of particular concern. Cows nursing calves at this time are also at risk.

Since VFD came into place, Hilbig said he has seen cattle producers trying several different strategies to keep the disease at bay.

“Some producers have worked with their veterinarians to continue to include Aureomycin in their feed/mineral for protection of their herds.

Others have tried to include a vaccine to help with protection in their herd or done nothing at all and hoped to have positive results by doing nothing,” Hilbig said. “The risk of the last

two is their cows may have no prior immunity and won’t have idea of disease presence until it is in an advanced state in the herd.”

Hilbig recommends working very closely with your veterinarian on the best choice for your operation. If not working with any veterinarian, find one that can help develop a program to control the disease.

“Many times a control program will include Aureomycin fed to cattle via a hand fed feed/ mineral of an approved free choice mineral,” Hilbig said.

“The ideal level and form to use can be done with your veterinarian, who can then write you a VFD that meets your individual needs.”

Finally Hilbig advises producers to be proactive in their approach to anaplasmosis.

“Anaplasmosis is a subtle, chronic, progressive disease that when a threshold of damage to RBCs has occurred, the animal will appear to have an acute onset of disease. In other words, the onset of disease occurs months after infection happened,” Hilbig said. “Be sure to work with your veterinarian to establish a plan to control anaplasmosis. Also monitor your cattle for changes in your herd or individual animals that display any negative attitude or conditions that may indicate the presence of anaplasmosis. Your veterinarian can diagnosis the disease by examination of the animals and/ or use of blood tests.

September 15, 2017

Livestock Market Digest

Page 11

Federal Report Offers Something For Just About Every Energy Source The U.S. Department of Energy released a much-anticipated report about the reliability of the nation’s electric grid.

BY ROB NIKOLEWSKI / SANDIEGOUNIONTRIBUNE.COM

A

much-anticipated report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) did not deliver body shots to the renewable energy sector that the wind and solar industries had feared.

At the same time, while the 187-page study released in late August offered some hope for the beleaguered coal and nuclear sectors, its analysis of the electric grid’s changes and challenges roughly fell in line with mainstream conclusions.

“I thought it was a fair and balanced report regarding the nation’s energy picture,” said Gary Ackerman, executive director of the Western Power Trading Forum, an organization based in Sacramento whose 90 members in the West buy and sell power.

“It didn’t try to deny that renewables are going to have an enormous amount of growth and impact on the nation’s grid. It didn’t deny any (energy) option.”

The report was commissioned in April by Department of Energy secretary Rick Perry, who directed DOE to look at changes in electricity markets, while addressing long-range concerns about grid reliability and costs.

Supporters of the wind and solar industries, as well as environmental groups, worried the report would not give renewable energy a fair shake.

While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump forcefully supported reviving the fortunes of coal. Perry, the former governor

of oil-rich Texas, earlier this year criticized the Obama administration’s environmental and energy policies.

“No reasonable person can deny that the thumb — and in some cases the whole hand — has been put on the scale to favor certain political outcomes,” Perry said in an interview with Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

An early edition of the report was leaked last month, saying renewable energy did not pose a threat to grid reliability.

The study released did not contradict that finding, although there were some references that underscored the energy priorities of the Trump administration.

It recommended DOE “should continue to prioritize energy dominance,” echoing a White House mantra and in a letter accompanying the report Perry said policymakers should consider the effects of “certain regulations and subsidies,” alluding to tax credits for renewables and Renewable Portfolio Standards instituted by 28 states, including California.

But the study did not call for major overhauls or dramatic policy changes.

Rather than solely blaming environmental regulations for coal’s decline in the country’s energy mix, the report said no new coal plants have been built in the U.S. since 2014 “because new coal plants are more expensive to build and operate than natural-gas fired plants.”

Natural gas production has exploded in recent years, largely due to advancements in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, which have driven down costs, making natural gas much more attractive in comparison to

coal and nuclear.

“There were some code words” in the DOE report, Abigail Ross Hopper, the CEO of theSolar Energy Industries Association said in a letter to members but pointed out the study mentioned how lower-cost solar panels have driven growth in the sector.

“The report said a combination of market and policy forces have accelerated the closure of a significant number of coal and nuclear plants and may potentially harm grid reliability and resilience,” Hopper said. “The report did not, however, lay the demise of coal at the feet of renewable energy, and that is an important finding.”

The wind industry also gave the report a measured nod.

“We agree with DOE that it makes sense to determine how a portfolio of domestic energy resources can ensure grid reliability and resilience,” Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, said in a statement.

Just about every energy segment, it seemed, could take something positive from the report, which some commentators described as an industry-wide Rorschach test.

The study recommended federal agencies accelerate efforts to license and approve grid infrastructure for nuclear, coal and hydropower and the report’s emphasis on ensuring baseload power offered encouragement to the nuclear power industry.

“As the leading clean source of baseload generation, nuclear energy is the linchpin of energy diversity and resiliency, and we must act with urgency to preserve it,” Nuclear Energy Institute president Maria Korsnick

said in a statement.

California has just one nuclear power plant remaining — Diablo Canyon in Northern California — but the plant’s operators, Pacific Gas & Electric, plan to shut down the plant by 2025.

The DOE study came just hours after the coal industry received a rebuff from the White House.

The Trump administration turned down a request from Murray Energy, the country’s largest privately held coal producer, to invoke a little-used federal emergency order to protect coal companies on the brink of bankruptcy.

A White House spokeswoman told reporters that exercising the order “in this manner at this time is not an appropriate use of this authority.”

One of the main points of emphasis in the DOE study centered on the grid’s challenges to remain reliable and resilient.

While natural gas is inexpensive now, it is a commodity with a history of volatile price fluctuations.

Renewable energy sources have grown dramatically, especially in states such as California, but they are intermittent — solar production drops when the sun doesn’t shine and wind energy wanes when breezes stop blowing.

In addition, demand has been flat in recent years, largely due to greater energy efficiency measures.

All those factors lead to challenges for power plants.

Ackerman of the Western Power Trading Forum pointed to retirements of some plants in California, such as the La Paloma power plant near Bakersfield, which is in bankruptcy proceed-

ings.

Plants like La Palmoa are “trying to survive in a world where the wholesale costs are dropping while demand is flat” said Ackerman. “We’re going to have to address that problem because we could end up on the other side — instead of being long on capacity, in a few years we could be short.”

For all its buildup, the DOE grid report does not have the force of law. Energy analysts from Barclays wrote the report was “consistent with market expectations and does little to correct market anomalies.”

Rising Warmth Risks Arctic Dogs’ Survival

BY KIERAN COOKE / CLIMATE NEWS NETWORK

G

reenland’s Arctic dogs, a key part of the massive island’s life and culture, are disappearing.

According to local scientists and specialists in Denmark, the population of the dogs – traditionally used for transporting people and goods across Greenland’s vast snowy landscape and also for sled racing – has fallen by more than 50 percent over the past 20 years.

Professor Morten Meldgaard of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, says global warming and the continuing melt of sea ice in the Arctic region is one of the main reasons for the decline in sled dog numbers.

The ice is not only reducing in area but also becom-

ing thinner; local people no longer venture out on the ice as much as they once did to hunt and fish. Therefore fewer sled dogs are needed, and part of Greenland’s culture is dying.

“Many don’t know how fantastically unique the dog culture is,” says Meldgaard.

“It’s part of Greenland’s identity, over 1,000 years old and the biggest working dog culture in the world.

Other causes “Genetically, sled dogs are also extremely strong and resilient – we can be very proud of having a living sled dog culture and we should take care of it.” It’s estimated there are now fewer than 15,000 sled dogs left in Greenland.

The decline in dog numbers is due to other factors besides changes in climate, says Meldgaard. Motorised

snowmobiles are taking the place of dogs in many parts of the island. The price of food for the dogs has also been rising; fish waste, a traditional part of their diet, is not so plentiful as it once was, as catches decline.

The dogs are also becoming exposed to more infectious diseases. Scientists and medical experts say that rising temperatures in the Arctic and other regions can facilitate the spread of various diseases among both animal and human populations.

In order to save the existing dog population, the Greenland government is investing nearly one million US dollars in a sled dog vaccination programme.

Helping the handicapped Meldgaard and other scientists have put forward a

series of recommendations aimed at halting the dogs’ decline.

“Traditional hunters and fishermen are under pressure, so we should find new ways to use sled dogs”, says Meldgaard. “There are many options; sled dogs can, for example, be used as transport for tourists, as companions to tourists in the field, or to help handicapped children.”

He and his team are also recommending that sled dogs be awarded UNESCO world heritage protection. “The goal is to find some way forward to create a sustainable dog culture”, says Meldgaard.

“The recommendations address both decision-makers and dog sled drivers. The hope is that they can help secure the dog population and the culture’s survival.” continued on page fourteen

Made in the USA

Page 12

Livestock Market Digest

September 15, 2017

Don’t Blame the Calves

BY LAURA CONAWAY |

CERTIFIED ANGUS BEEF LLC

T

hings aren’t always what they seem.

It’s no secret, marbling in harvested fed cattle declines from late February to early May each year (See Chart). That coincides with a seasonal switch from yearlings to calf-feds in the harvest mix, which often gets the blame.

Yet, recent data from the University of Minnesota (UMN) suggests we should reconsider the blame game; or, at the very least ,not let it deter cattlemen from feeding calves a high-energy diet (calf-feds).

“It’s interesting that perception is out there, given there’s knowledge that calf-feds actually marble better,” says UMN animal scientist Alfredo DiCostanzo.

He and PhD graduate student Haley Johnson’s meta-analysis of 32 studies on the effects of pre-finishing strategy (backgrounding or stockering)

on feedlot and carcass performance leaves little room for the long-held belief. Today’s economic conditions, beef genetics and value-based markets certainly favor a calf-fed approach.

Still, thanks to that seasonal pattern, “the opinion is engrained in our business,” says Paul Dykstra, beef cattle specialist for the Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB®) brand. He’s glad to see a summarizing study on calf-fed marbling, “because there’s no doubt they can do it.”

“This analysis matches that of our own feedlot partnership database at CAB,” he says, noting its reach across 2 million cattle records from 80 feedyards in 16 states.

DiCostanzo and Johnson’s data shows cattle fed a high-energy diet in the backgrounding phase achieved higher average marbling scores than cattle backgrounded on winter wheat, those exposed to unlimited forage with a restricted ration, or grazing dormant grass prior to the finishing phase.

“Plenty of feedlot nutritionists agree with these findings because they’ve seen this for a long time themselves,” he says.

So why the contradiction between perceptions, trends and facts? CAB’s Justin Sexten sees answers in the questions.

“It’s a complex system, influenced by many factors,” the brand’s director of supply development says. “Historical data alone won’t show the complete picture, because today’s cattle genetics offer much greater potential than 10 or 20 years ago.”

Yearlings today can gain two pounds on a moderate level of energy. Calf-feds now reach finished weights once unimaginable.

DiCostanzo says his team’s research aimed to explain the mechanisms of backgrounding that enable marbling and permit heavier finished weights, regardless of seasonal trends.

Cattle will always sell on pounds, yet there will be added rewards for marbling.

Producers must ask, “What

am I going to give up so I can get this other thing?” DiCostanzo suggests. “I think the correct mix is somewhere in the middle,” where a combination of weight and marbling achieve the greatest value, particularly when the Choice/Select spread is wide.

“If the spread is favorable, they may consider employing a little more energy into calves’ backgrounding diets or reducing the backgrounding period so that cattle don’t get so heavy,” making them susceptible to discounts.

There’s a long list of reasons why quality grade takes a hit each year. Young calves are more prone to sickness in the early stages of feeding and the first calf-feds harvested are often lighter. Weather and origins come into play, and there are wide differences in genetic potential.

DiCostanzo cites his South Dakota colleague Robbi Pritchard’s findings that, given at least average marbling abili-

ty and enough time, long feeding periods on forage need not derail that marbling potential.

Good genetics provide more options, he suggests.

“You have the best of both worlds if you’re able to background to about 800 pounds (lb.), no more than that, and at that point turn them onto a high-finishing diet, harvesting at 1,400 lb. That should be able to give you both weight and marbling,” DiCostanzo says.

“It should motivate sellers of superior-marbling Angus cattle to consider the typically wider Choice/Select spread, Prime and CAB premiums featured in the spring as a margin-enhancing target,” Dykstra says.

Since both yearling and calffed programs can each work without sacrificing grade, most producers can find ways to reach their optimum target.

“We need to have this discussion to get past that first impression to try and have a more objective conclusion on this,” DiCostanzo says.

The Feds and the Frog: Private Landowners Stand to Lose on 1,500 Acres

BY REED HOPPER & MARK MILLER WWW.NATIONALREVIEW.COM

T

he government estimates that regulatory restrictions could cost one family $34 million. Imagine waking one day and learning that federal officials have declared your private property subject to federal control as “critical habitat” for an endangered frog, even though the frog does not and cannot exist on the property or, apparently, anywhere else in the state.

That is the surreal fate of the Poitevent family, owners of a parcel of land in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, that has been in the family for more than 100 years. The family started a lumber business on the property after the Civil War. The land is still

managed for timber today.

A few years ago, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) declared the property “essential” to the survival of the Mississippi gopher frog, aptly named, as it’s found only in Mississippi. Only later, when federal officials decided to expand the frog’s territory into Louisiana, did they give it the name it bears today: the dusky gopher frog.

But there is nothing apt about designating over 1,500 acres of private land “critical habitat” when the property is not used as habitat, is unsuitable as habitat, and has no direct connection to the dusky gopher frog. Powered

by Federal regulators don’t deny any of this. Instead, they express the hope that the Poitevents’ property can be modified at

Western Trading Post

some point to become hospitable habitat for frogs. This is pure speculation, because the property is tied up in timber leases for decades and may never be usable habitat. Rather than acquire the property so it can be managed for species protection, the government seeks to impose the cost of species conservation on the landowners, who did nothing to put the gopher frog in peril.

Although the property provides no conservation benefit to the gopher frog, the government estimates that the regulatory restrictions on the landowners could cost them $34 million.

A federal district judge took a dim view of this costly land grab, calling it “troubling,” “harsh,” and “remarkably intrusive,” with “all the hallmarks of governmental insensitivity to private property.” Nevertheless, the judge felt “compelled” to defer to the government and allow the “critical habitat” designation to go forward.

Federal regulators have designated private land ‘critical habitat’ when the property is not used as habitat, is unsuitable as habitat, and has no direct connection to the dusky gopher frog. On appeal, a three-judge

panel of the Fifth Circuit also deferred to the government, by a 2–1 vote. However, the dissenting judge argued that if regulators can declare that the Poitevents’ non-habitat property is “critical habitat,” the same could happen to any property owner, anywhere. This outcome defied both logic and the law, the judge insisted.

On an 8–6 vote, the full Fifth Circuit declined to review the panel decision. In a stinging, 32-page opinion, the six dissenters called the panel decision an “execrable” misinterpretation of the Endangered Species Act and said it ran contrary to Supreme Court precedent.

The six dissenters warned that their colleagues on the court had signed off on “unprecedented and sweeping” overreach by government officials, giving them “virtually limitless” power to rope off any parcel in the country as “critical habitat” for one species or another, regardless of whether any endangered species could be found on or near the land. “The ramifications of this decision for national land use regulation and for judicial review of agency action cannot be underestimated,” the dissenters wrote.

CALIFORNIA FFA er’s Association (CATA). Aschwanden serves as the Executive Director for CATA and one of his responsibilities is lobbying on behalf of California Agriculture Education and FFA. “It was through CATA’s efforts that the message was able to reach our supporters, and pressure was then put on Sacramento to add the funds back in to the California Department of Education budget,” Mayfield said. “My advice to other states would be to organize their teacher group,

Emboldened by the Fifth Circuit’s ruling against the Poitevents, the Obama administration developed a new rule that takes this open-ended approach to designating “critical habitat” and applies it nationwide. Now, every landowner, large or small, is in peril of becoming the next Poitevent family, forced to set aside private property as a future home for a species that lives somewhere else.

To protect property owners across the country and enforce constitutional limits on federal power, Pacific Legal Foundation is representing the Poitevents and co-owners, Markle Interests, in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take their case and overturn the panel decision.

The justices will consider the request this fall. To preserve a healthy habitat for property rights, the rule of law, and fundamental common sense in environmental policy, the Supreme Court should hear this case.

Read more at: http:// w w w. n a t i o n a l r e v i e w. c o m / article/450844/federal-regulation-land-private-critical-habitat-poitevent-family-louisiana-fifth-circuit-united-states-supreme-court continued from page eight

and identify someone who can lobby for their needs. Agriculture education nationwide needs a stronger political voice.”

That strong voice is essential for California FFA as membership is only expected to be on the up and up from here on out. Students recently voted to open membership to middle schools.

Mayfield said the association is expecting a 5,000 to 10,000 jump in membership in the next two years due to middle school involvement.

September 15, 2017

Livestock Market Digest

Page 13

Live in California & Buy Eggs?

If voters approve this in 2018, they’ll need to be from cage-free hens

BY PATRICK MCGREEVY SANDIEGOUNIONTRIBUNE.COM

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ine years after California voters decided that egg-laying hens must be given more space, animal-rights activists on Tuesday filed papers for a new initiative requiring the birds to be kept cage-free.

The initiative’s language, submitted to the state by the Humane Society of the United States, addresses the group’s concerns that 2008’s Proposition 2, which required hens to have more room in their habitats, did not achieve the right conditions for farm animals, including pigs and calves.

An economic study commissioned last year by the egg industry for a similar ballot measure in Massachusetts estimated that switching to cagefree farming would add one or two cents to the price of each egg purchased by consumers.

“Californians know that locking farm animals in tight cages for the duration of their lives is cruel and compromises food safety,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive of the Humane Society.

“All animals deserve humane treatment, especially those raised for food.”

The state attorney general’s

office must now approve the initiative’s title and summary before supporters can begin circulating petitions. They need to collect 365,880 signatures within 180 days in order to have the measure placed on the statewide ballot in November 2018.

Egg production is a $1-billion industry in California, with some 15.5 million egg-laying hens producing nearly 5 billion eggs annually, mostly on family-owned farms.

The Assn. of California Egg Farmers said it opposes the initiative as currently written because it requires cage-free compliance by 2022, even though the Humane Society had persuaded many retail and restaurant customers to phase in the exclusive use of cagefree eggs by 2025.

“With this new initiative now calling for full compliance by the end of 2021, HSUS is reneging on the original agreement and this expedited timeline may result in supply disruptions, price spikes and a shortage of eggs for sale,” the group said in a statement.

The ballot measure also was opposed Tuesday by the National Pork Producers Council, spokesman Jim Monroe said.

“NPPC opposes all forms of regulation without representation and this fits the bill,” Monroe said in a statement. “Livestock production practices should be left to those who are

most informed about animal care — farmers — and not animal rights activists. Additionally, changes in housing systems, which come with significant costs that increase food prices, should be driven by consumer purchasing decisions, not the agenda of any activist group.”

The Humane Society worked with the United Egg Producers on the language of the initiative, according to Paul Shapiro, a vice president for the Humane Society.

The United Egg Producers’ board of directors has decided to be neutral on the proposed initiative, according to Chad Gregory, the national trade group’s president and chief executive.

“Our farmer members support all types of hen housing,” Gregory said. “Changes in hen housing are complex and costly, and they require close collaboration with customers.

Our focus remains on proper management of hen health and well-being, and meeting or exceeding all food safety requirements.”

Opposition is still possible from the California Pork Producers Assn., but a spokesman for that group was not immediately available for comment.

Egg farmers, including some who may stay neutral on the new proposal, spent nearly $10 million to oppose Proposition 2.

Activists thought Proposi-

tion 2, which was approved by 63.5% of voters, would result in cage-free conditions when it required that hens, pigs and calves be able to stand up, lie down, turn around freely and fully extend their limbs.

However, the California Department of Food and Agriculture later interpreted the ballot measure and set a rule that each hen had to be provided 116 square inches of space, which allowed some farmers to continue to keep them in cages by putting fewer birds in each cage. As a result, about twothirds of egg-producing hens are currently confined in cages in California.

The new initiative sets the standard initially at 144 square inches per bird — one square foot — which is the level at which a hen is considered by activists to be cage free. By 2022, the hens and other animals will have to be actually cage free, and allowed to roam inside barns.

The initiative would also require, starting in 2020, a calf confined for veal production to have at least 43 square feet of usable floor space, while each pig would have to be given 24 square feet of floor space starting in 2022.

Under a new California law, once an initiative collects 25% of the needed signatures, the Legislature is given a chance to adopt a law that accomplishes what initiative backers

On the Circle of Life & PETA AMANDA RADKE | BEEFMAGAZINE.COM

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recently read a really captivating article written by Drew French for Medium. Titled, “There is no such thing a vegan,” French offers a very real picture of the circle of life, what exactly is involved for us to be able to consume both plant and animal products, and how his life as a butcher and nature lover has allowed him the unique vantage point of truly understanding what is placed on our dinner plates.

While some of his statements don’t ring entirely true to me namely his paragraph that criticized feedlots, the overall theme was positive and could be incredibly impactful to those who make dietary decisions based on ethical or moral reasons.

Here is an excerpt: “The story I believe in is that respect is the key to eating well — respect for the animals and plants and the Earth, as well as our fellow human beings. When we respect all of these things, and understand the cycles of life and death, only then can we eat authentically and from the heart.

“Even if you consider yourself a vegan, know this: the journey that your beans, grains, or vegetables took to get to your plate

involved plenty of suffering and death. Death is an integral part of nature, and we cannot really respect nature until we respect death.”

French’s explanation of the circle of life reminds readers that everything lives (plants and animals alike) and everything dies, and recognizing this circle of life is key to accepting and honoring the vegetation and livestock that had to die in order for us to thrive.

It’s maybe not an easy pill to swallow for some, but for those of us who live and work on farms and ranches, it is part of life. For our urban counterparts who may be shielded from this reality, this is perhaps the hardest story for us to share.

Of course, there are good and bad ways of going about sharing this important circle of life. Recently, a PETA campaign got me thinking about just this topic. In late August, PETA launched a Facebook and Instagram filter that allowed users to frame their profile photos to support the activist organization. The framework read, “Shoot selfies, not animals.”

You may have noticed on social media that sportsmen caught wind of this campaign and decided to do something about it. I saw many hunters posing cheerfully with their

game. Photos of fish, pheasants, deer, turkeys — you name it — were framed by the PETA campaign. It appeared like the activist promotion had backfired, but did it really? Maybe, sportsmen responded exactly how PETA was hoping.

Alex Robinson and Natalie Krebs for Outdoor Life probably said it best when they wrote, “First, consider that PETA isn’t trying to convince hunters to stop hunting: The organization is trying to turn non-hunters into anti-hunters. Second, think about all these hero photos from the perspective of a non-hunter.

“Most non-hunters agree with hunting when it’s put in the right context. Logically they understand the conservation benefits and they appreciate the idea of killing wild game for the table. I think many non-hunters can also relate to the traditions behind hunting (spending time with family and friends outside) and the reverence hunters have for wilderness and public land.

But non-hunters do not agree with ‘trophy hunting,’ even though most probably do not know what trophy hunting is about. Check out this 2015 poll.

“PETA knows these numbers, too. By flooding Facebook and Instagram with trophy shots, we’re putting thousands of dead animal photos in front of

non-hunters who are not asking to view them. If we’re posting these photos just to troll PETA, we’re stripping away the context of the hunt and the whole point of the photo in the first place.

“Most of the ironic posts using the PETA frame have little or no information about the challenge or ethics of the hunt,

want, eliminating the need to put the measure on the ballot.

Humane Society officials hope the Legislature will approve the new standards without the measure having to go on the ballot.

But when the group proposed in 2007 to ban the use of small gestation crates for pigs, opposition from the pork industry resulted in the bill dying in committee. That setback led to Proposition 2.

Brian Moscogiuri, an industry analyst for Urner Barry Publications, which provides market news and analysis for products including eggs, said egg prices spiked when Proposition 2 was proposed but have since come back down to their level before the ballot measure.

One factor in the price fallback was that more of the industry turned to cage-free farms, Moscogiuri said.

Public attitudes have shifted even more in favor of animal rights since Proposition 2.

Citing public demand, Subway, McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Walmart, Target, Costco and other businesses have said they will make a transition to eggs from cage-free hens over 10 years.

In addition, laws banning or restricting cages in egg production have been adopted by six additional states: Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, Michigan, Rhode Island and Ohio.

the beauty of the landscape and habitat, or all the healthy wild meat those dead critters provided. They are mostly just dead animal photos with text that pokes fun at PETA. I don’t think non-hunters are laughing along with us.”

Instead of trolling PETA and continued on page fourteen

Page 14

Livestock Market Digest

The View FROM THE BACK SIDE

Not Judging Livestock

BY BARRY DENTON

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ots of noise and just no view were the first things I noticed about New York City. The other thing was that you had to adjust to breathing the air or lack there of.

In the West when you can’t breathe well you are normally in a high elevation such as fourteen thousand feet. However, in New York City, the elevation is two hundred and thirty three feet. No kidding, it is a typical port city. The air is a little smoggy, but after you are there for a few days your lungs give up and accept it.

Getting around is interesting, as driving is annoying, the trains are crowded, and planes can only get to certain places.

I never felt so much like an old

cow trapped in a cattle truck, as I did that first day in the city. I had landed at Newark Liberty International Airport, in New Jersey and immediately felt like I was on an episode of the Sopranos.

I got my car and had a tough time finding I-95 Express which took me over to the Hempstead Turnpike and into Belmont Park. Do not attempt this without some sort of local to guide you through it. I could see Belmont Park for quite a ways, but it took me forever to get there.

Finally, I found the horseman’s gate and the steward’s office.

The Racing Steward runs the backside of the racetrack and you have to see him to get a pass to go in and work. With my pass in hand I entered the backside and asked an out of

breath groom where the trainer was. He pointed to a large barn about a quarter of a mile away.

I hopped on the back of someone’s golf cart headed that way. If you think that New York City is crowded then do not ever go on the backside of a NYC race track. Not only do you have people going every which way, but horses are mixed in as well. Everyone except me knew exactly where they were going.

I finally arrived at the correct barn where they were waiting for me. We went into the trainer’s office and watched slow motion films of this great horse that I was supposed to shoe. I thought the foot flight problem was obvious and would be quite easy to fix. In no time, I was under the horse just working away.

When I completed the horse they saddled him up and we all went to the training track to see how he went.

Just about that time the owner Alfonso arrived to watch his horse perform. He seemed to be in a terrible mood, but the horse worked great as we had solved the problem. Alfonso asked what he owed me so I gave him my bill. He pulled out the largest wad of $100 bills that I had ever seen. He paid me and gave me a couple of extra hundreds for doing a good job.

My plane did not leave until the next morning, so I needed to hang around a couple of more hours. While hanging the trainer finally asked Alfonso what was bothering him so much.

He replied “tonight is the Annual Downtown Beauty and Fashion Show of which I am the chairman. We lost one of

September 15, 2017 our judges and my secretary has been on the phone all day trying to find a replacement to no avail.” Bobby the trainer said “I bet Mick will do it for you, he does not have anywhere to go tonight.”

Being of Irish decent, everyone on the east coast called me Mick. I had no idea what to say as I knew nothing about the subject. Alfonso looked at me and of course I agreed. He said I would be well taken care of so why not?

Off we went to the tailors for a tuxedo. They got me measured up, made some alterations and I was amazed at what they could do in a short time. When we got to the Industria Hotel, Alfonso handed me off to Gretchen who filled me in on what was expected of me.

Basically, I just had to stay with the other judges and do what they did. We had a minor rehearsal prior to the big event.

The other judges had been there for two previous days and met all the contestants. I even found out it would be televised in the New York area.

What I was most impressed with were the other judges that included a former governor, a world champion boxer, a famous stage actor, and the movie actor that did not show up. It was a treat to meet them all.

The judging was very intense as we had an abundance of beautiful and talented contestants. The winner was by unanimous decision and the runners up varied a little, but not much.

We judged appearance, beauty, talent, and speech. If you are going to be in a “show” you

PETA perhaps creating enemies of the general public in the process, Robinson and Krebs encouraged sportsmen to create their own Facebook profile frames that include positive slogans such as, “Hunters are conservationists” or “I work hard for my dinner.”

They also encourage folks to share a story with a hunting or fishing photo to add some context to the trip. Stories could talk about the memories made,

Take your marketing program to the top!

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need to maintain a presence and these ladies had it.

There was a party afterward and the contestants were indeed, very bright young ladies.

The prizes astounded me such as full rides to universities, and even more rewards upon graduation. It was truly, a worthwhile endeavor.

Just stop and think about this story for a minute. Pretty much everything that is good, in this remarkable true story, is being attacked in today’s mainstream media.

There are extreme groups that do not think horses should be shod. Other groups do not think horses should be raced.

Still others that think there should be no exhibition of any horses or animals. The vast majority of the people promoting this have no first-hand knowledge of animals themselves.

We have groups that think beauty pageants and fashion shows should be banned. Many think that competition of any kind should be banned and that we should all live as equals under the banner of socialism.

What is happening in America is a well orchestrated effort by evil doers to overthrow our superior way of life in this country. For many years we were a freedom based live and let live country.

No matter how much you see it in the news, most citizens want to keep our great country the way it is. Do no let paid protestors and extreme fringe groups erode your rights. Freedom must prevail or we have no America.

continued from page thirteen

how many pounds of meat were harvested for your family or a fact about hunting and its benefits on wildlife, habitat and humanity.

Even if you aren’t a sportsman, those of us in animal agriculture can likely relate to this situation. Too often, PETA uses emotion to build a narrative about the livestock industry that isn’t based on sound science or reality. Then we are left to do damage control, all while won-

RISING WARMTH “Sled racing is central to life in Greenland, especially for our young men. Besides fishing, there are few other activities. The future of our culture is in danger” During an environmental expedition to the Arctic region, this correspondent also saw the impact rising temperatures were having on sled dogs.

In Illulissat, on Greenland’s west coast, packs of dogs roamed the town’s streets; they are used to being worked hard, and without activity they can

dering how PETA gets away with it.

We, just like hunters and fishermen, need to continue to be proactive. Forget trolling PETA. Let’s beat them to the punch by sharing positive stories, beautiful images and personal testimonies from the ranch. The circle of life isn’t always easy to understand, but it’s a story we must tell, so groups like PETA don’t do it for us. continued from page eleven

be aggressive.

Local people take enormous pride in their teams of dogs. Sled racing is a central part of the culture, and the ever-increasing pace of the ice melt means races can no longer be held in many areas.

“Sled racing is central to life in Greenland, especially for our young men”, said a local geologist.

“Besides fishing, there are few other activities. The future of our culture is in danger.”

September 15, 2017

Livestock Market Digest

Page 15

Future Angus Stockmen Scholarship Application Available The American Angus Association seeks college-age applicants for commercial-focused scholarship.

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o ensure the next generation of commercial cattle producers is well prepared with the knowledge and tools to

become successful, the American Angus Association and Allflex USA encourage ambitious young cattle producers to apply for the Future Angus Stockmen scholarship.

The Future Angus Stockman program is aimed toward college-age or recent graduates willing to learn about utilizing expected progeny differences

(EPDs), incorporating DNA technology to make data-driven decisions, developing record-keeping plans using the Beef Records Service (BRS) or Maternal Plus® at a reduced cost and connecting with cattlemen from across the nation.

To be eligible to receive the $1,000 Future Angus Stockmen scholarship, applicants must be

Animal Rights Activists Change Tactics WWW.THEFENCEPOST.COM

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n a change of tactics, animal rights groups are less inclined to target individual farms or change animal welfare laws through legislation. Instead, they are now targeting companies and brands.

Make no mistake: Their goal remains the same: “The speakers at this year’s Animal Rights National Conference made their goals clear — ending all forms of animal agriculture, regardless of how well animals are cared for,” said Kay Johnson Smith, Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA) president and CEO. “Their persistent focus on pressure campaigns targeting restaurant, retail and food service brands is of great concern to the alliance and our members.”

Several alliance staff members attended the Animal Rights National Conference in Alexandria, Virginia, in early August, Smith said. What they found was a continuation of “ends justifying the means” methods to disrupt animal agriculture and the companies that support it.

“Breaking the law can often be a good thing to do,” said Zach Groff with the Animal Liberation Collective. He talked about “confrontational activism” such protests, vigils and open

animal rescues from farms without permission.

“This is a type of activism that can often upset people, it can rile people up.”

A major focus of this year’s conference was placing pressure on restaurant, retail and food service brands to adopt policies that ultimately lead them to stop selling meat and animal products. The reason animal rights groups are focusing on brand activism is that it works, and may be the fastest way for them to achieve their goals.

“We see this approach over and over again,” said Hannah Thompson-Weeman, VP of communications for AAA. There also tends to be less under-cover video being shot on farms because mainstream media is less interested in this type of video. But if activists can tie the video to a household brand name or a company, the activist groups will use it to pressure the company. “It’s the quickest way for them to get attention,” said Thompson-Weeman, and the quickest way to force a company to sever ties with a farm.

Activists also may be moving away from targeting and eliminating only “factory farms.”

In targeting only large farms, small farms are left unharmed. In activists’ minds, all farms are equally cruel and need to be eliminated.

Cows Yield Important Clues for Human Vaccine Research

BY TIM LUNDEEN, FEEDSTUFFS.COM

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ows are leaving the pasture and contributing to the field of HIV vaccine research.

As outlined in a recent study published in Nature, lead author Devin Sok, director of antibody discovery and development at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), reported the elicitation of powerful, HIV-blocking antibodies in cows in a matter of weeks — a process that usually takes years in humans.

The animal model is providing clues for answering important questions at a moment when new energy has been infused into HIV vaccine research.

“One approach to a preventive HIV vaccine involves trying to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) in healthy people, but so far, the experiments have been unsuccessful in both human and animal studies,” Sok said. “This experiment demonstrates that not only is it possible to produce these antibodies in animals, but we can do so reliably, quickly and using a relatively simple immunization strategy when given in the right setting.”

Scientists have known for some time that some people living with chronic HIV infec-

tion produce bnAbs, which can overcome the high levels of diversity of HIV. One type of bnAb — first reported in Science in 2009 by IAVI, The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and Theraclone — uses long, arm-like loops that are capable of reaching concealed areas on the virus’s surface to block infection.

Previous experiments led by bovine antibody expert Vaughn Smider at TSRI showed that cattle antibodies also feature extra-long loops, which researchers thought might access difficult epitopes that human antibodies cannot.

For the study, an alliance of HIV, antibody and veterinary medicine scientists from IAVI, TSRI and Texas A&M University posed the question: What would happen if we immunized cows with an HIV immunogen?

“It’s a remarkably simple and profound idea,” Sok said. “Since we know that some human bnAbs have longer-than-average loops, would immunizing animals with similar antibody structure result in the elicitation of bnAbs against HIV?” One of the many tricks HIV uses to prevent people from developing the right antibodies is to display irrelevant forms of this protein to distract the immune system. Scientists

thought they had overcome this challenge by developing an immunogen called BG505 SOSIP, which closely mimics the protein target.

All four cows immunized with BG505 SOSIP elicited bnAbs to HIV within 35-52 days. In comparison, it takes HIV-positive people multiple years to develop comparable responses, and only 5 to 15 precent develop them at all.

Cows cannot be infected with HIV, but these findings illuminate a new goal for HIV vaccine researchers: By increasing the number of human antibodies with long loops, it might help the chance of eliciting protective bnAbs by vaccination.

There is no doubt that cows’ ability to produce bNAbs against a complicated pathogen like HIV in a matter of weeks has even broader significance, particularly for emerging pathogens.

“Scientific innovations like this are what propel the field forward,” IAVI chief executive officer Mark Feinberg said.

“This surprising set of results warrants further exploration and has potential applications not only to HIV prevention and treatment but to the rapid development of antibodies and vaccines against other infectious diseases.”

enrolled in the Future Angus Stockmen program and must also meet additional qualifications.

“Our goal is to recognize the efforts of a young producer and help them improve their Angus program through genetic tools and an educational scholarship,” says Scott Holt, North American marketing manager for Allflex USA. “The opportunity will un-

doubtedly advance their knowledge of new products and information available to commercial beef producers.”

The scholarship application deadline is September 15, 2017.

The Future Angus Stockmen scholarship will be presented at the 2017 National Angus Convention and Trade Show.

Applications for the Future Angus Stockmen scholarship can be found on angus.org.

RIDING HERD all who knew her, who had a pure and loving heart and was dedicated to improving our nation, there dropped on the pamphlet salty proof that big boys do indeed cry.

In a P.S. to Carole’s letter was one mother’s plea: “Being a writer can you write anything about drunk driving and what this country can do to fix it?”

I owe it to Carole to at least try.

Sadly, drunkeness is something I know something about.

As the son of a mean, raging alcoholic I’ve seen first hand how booze can destroy a family. I’ve never bought into the idea that alcoholism is a disease. If so, it’s a disease you give yourself. I never wanted any part of alcohol and haven’t tasted a drop of it in over 25 years.

So, in Raeleen’s and Raegan’s memory I appeal to the politician’s and the car manufacturers to act. If we can put a man on the moon or design an I phone surely we can make a car that can detect when a person is fit to drive. Beyond that, I would appeal to your good senses. Did you know that a single DUI can cost $30,000? That makes a $20 cab or Uber fare seem cheap by comparison.

continued from page one

I’m no hypocrite on this matter. One reason I couldn’t attend the funeral is because I stopped driving two years ago. That’s because two years ago I had a stroke that impaired my ability to think. (It now takes me three days to write a column that used to take three hours.) Is it inconvenient? Sure. But I’m not nearly as “inconvenienced” as Carole is these days.

I hope you love someone enough to take away their keys, before they take another’s life.

If I can’t appeal to your good sense then let me shame you for the jackass you must be if you drink and drive. If you kill someone with your automobile you are a murderer no different than if you loaded a gun and pulled the trigger. The result is exactly the same whether the weapon is Jack Daniels, Budweiser, Smith and Wesson or a lovely Chardonnay. You do know what our government calls someone who uses a vehicle to kill people these days don’t you? A terrorist.

Is that something you want on your resume?

P.S. Feel free to pass this along. The life you save may be that of YOUR child or grandchild.

1-866-838-3647

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Livestock Market Digest

September 15, 2017

Rainbow Trout’s Days are Numbered in Select National Forest Streams

BY BRIAN MAFFLY WWW.SLTRIB.COM

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he Dixie National Forest is poised to wipe out a sport fishery on two streams to restore native trout to parts of the Paunsaugunt Plateau.

In coordination with Utah wildlife officials, the forest is looking to return populations of Bonneville cutthroat trout, along with native minnows and suckers, to the upper East Fork of the Sevier River, which will require killing all the fish, including beloved rainbow and brown trout.

For the first phase of the project, Upper Kanab and Blubber creeks, just west of Bryce Canyon National Park, will be closed for several days next month while biologists apply the fish-killing poison rotenone.

The project is part of a larger effort to restore cutthroat to 36 miles of interconnected streams above Tropic Reservoir, as well as isolated segments downstream, such as Hunt, Birch and Horse creeks.

“One of the challenges to restoring native trout is finding areas where fish will be able to persist following a disturbance without additional management from us because it requires that species to occupy long distances of interconnected stream,” said Dixie fish biologist Mike Gold-

en. “This project provides us with that opportunity.”

Blubber Creek will be closed Sept. 5 to 7 and Upper Kanab will be closed September 11 to 13.

Bonneville cutthroat is a subspecies whose historic range is confined to the streams that once fed the massive Lake Bonneville that covered northwestern Utah 14,000 years ago.

After the introduction of nonnative trout, cutthroats disappeared from stream after stream until there remained

only six known populations in 1978, according to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR). Since that nadir the number of populations has rebounded to 261.

Richard Hepworth, DWR’s aquatics program manager, said brook and brown trout spawn in the fall, giving those species an advantage over Bonneville cutthroat that spawn in the spring.

Cutthroat restoration projects, including in Salt Lake County’s Mill Creek Canyon, have been pursued all over the West and occasionally get bogged in controversy.

The Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest has initiated an environmental impact study on a similar proposal for the north slope of the Uinta Mountains.

This forest intends to begin poisoning stretches of the West

Fork Smiths Fork drainage next year and restocking them with Colorado River cutthroat trout and other native fish, such as sculpin, speckled dace and mountain sucker, according to a notice posted Friday on the Federal Register.

DWR might also stock tiger trout, a sterile hybrid, to provide sport fishing opportunities while cutthroat populations are getting established. Forest Service officials are accepting comments on the Uinta project through September 25.

Applying toxins to streams can make people nervous, but biologists take numerous steps to minimize collateral damage to non-target organisms, such as small invertebrates and amphibians.

Trout Unlimited supports these efforts and sometimes lends a hand.

“In the inland West, cutthroat are the only native trout.

We love to see our native fish and we don’t want them pushed out by nonnative sport fish,” said Jordan Nielson, a Utahbased project manager for the conservation group. “We don’t want to see any fish end up on the [the Endangered Species Act] list. The more miles we make sure we have for native trout, the better.“ Nielson emphasized that nonnative sport fish have a place in Western streams, but eliminating them from select streams, he said, is in the best interest of the angling community. The best streams for such projects are in high-elevation headwaters, which is why the Forest Service is often involved.

It is also essential that barriers can be installed to keep nonnative fish from migrating back in.

“You’re finding a place with a good cold water stream and good flows, plenty of forage and bugs in the water,” Nielson said.

“You need steeper banks and gradients to put in a barrier. It has to be accessible. Rotenone treatments can get expensive if you need a helicopter.”

Rotenone is especially toxic to gill-breathing organisms, but considered benign to humans and wildlife.

In next week’s application on the Sevier creeks, biologists will use drip barrels to distribute a 5 percent rotenone solution for three to eight hours. The goal is to achieve in-stream rotenone concentrations of 80 parts per billion, a level lethal to fish, but safe for most other aquatic life.

They will apply an oxidizing agent to the creeks that neutralizes the toxin so it won’t harm fish downstream.

The Dixie also plans to install six permanent and three temporary fish barriers in the East Fork drainage to prevent nonnative fish from migrating upstream. Meanwhile, forest officials are pursuing another multiyear Bonneville restoration project on Mammoth Creek tributaries on the west side of the Sevier drainage.

Similar activities are taking or have already taken place across the West.