A Lasting Impressing: Ranching in the Post-Drought Era

I think we all were hurt emotionally by the drought and I think that that one of the things that does is you question whether it's worth it you know you've worked all this time and then then you get wiped out the thing that I see now that it's a secondary effect is the people that were not able to hang onto their cattle or felt like they was just sell and rebuy and now the cattle are so high they can't get back in rain a ranchers livelihood is predicated on it without it grass withers and livestock suffer when rain doesn't fall many facets of the ecosystem are affected but our ecosystem is durable and has survived several climatic calamities and just like our ecosystem ranchers are resilient when it stops raining ranchers must adjust with time the droughts chokehold slowly tightens its grip forcing men and women to take more drastic measures with each passing month of all natural disasters severe drought is the most stressful on a rancher because of it's slow and unpredictable nature droughts take severe economic social and emotional tolls on cattle ranchers and their families but if you have cattle you've got to have water and grass and that's what it boils down to there's no substitute for Mother Nature in terms of growth vegetative growth you know technology's great mother nature always beats the first devastating drought the hit the modern ranching industry came in the 1930s known as a Dust Bowl it parched Great Plains farmlands laid bare by ill-advised farming practices and turned daytime skies into near darkness it obliterated the country when you came through a SAN home sanho was nothing but just just waves and mounds of blown dirt black dirt and the San Hoenn area the Logan area this whole Panhandle country go into Texas and into Oklahoma and off at the same time though in the 1930s there was so much destruction of the native vegetation all the way from North Dakota to Texas that we were kind of laying the ground open to these terrific dust storms that we had and that with the loss of the vegetation and the stronger winds that are associated with droughts we dried up the soil moisture throughout that whole area much more than we've ever seen before coupled with the Great Depression the Dust Bowl dealt ranchers and environmental and economic catastrophe rangelands withered livestock water evaporated and cattle markets plummeted President Roosevelt's New Deal policies for livestock producers were to depopulate animals that were weakened by the persistent dry weather after the paperwork was completed the ones to be killed were herded into the large Corral cows and calves together the stage was set the government man went to his car and took out a pump 22 caliber rifle and lots of shells he carefully loaded his gun smoked his cigarette and stepped into the corral as casually as if he were going for a walk there were a dozen people watching but the only sound was a cow bawling for her calf every eye was glued on the shooter he was standing right below me and I jumped when he chambered a shell into the gun he raised the rifle a sharp crack rang out a cow crumpled and fell on her side legs jerking three seconds later bang another cow went down and another and another within a minute fifteen cows were dying before my eyes I suddenly realized that I was in the wrong place hot water came up in my mouth and I had an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach but I couldn't leave I was afraid I would be called a if I let anyone know this was a terrible thing for anyone to witness especially for a seven-year-old child that happened more than 70 years ago and many times through the years I've shut my eyes and vividly recalled the sound of the shots the bawling of the cattle the fear in the eyes of the animals as they seemed to realize what was happening but most of all the shots ringing out over and over and over the ranching industry was able to survive the harsh conditions and recapture its livelihood as agricultural practices improved then in the 1950s another drought gripped the Great Plains for five years the region dealt with low rainfall and extremely high temperatures it's had a big effect on me personally and I think it has on anybody that went to it I know my granddad in the drought of the 50s he shipped his cattle to Missouri then the drought just followed him to Missouri and he finally had to liquidate them and and he basically went broke during the death of the 50s and never did really recover from it he never felt comfortable with it and he always if you got a good rain he would always say that's just the way the last drought started we had a big rain Ananda quit since the mid-1990s years of good rainfall were followed by longer and harder dry spells in 2010 cattle producers in Texas in the southwest once again found themselves facing another serious drought called El Nino by meteorologists cooling waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean normally provide the Southwest with enough rainfall his counterpart La Nina typically means drought for the region ranchers jaded by mother nature's give-and-take weather patterns feared the worst we got into the El Nino of 1997-98 and that El Nino became so strong that the low pressure in the Pacific approached the west coast cooled off all of the warm water that had been there ever since 1976 and bingo we had ended that regime after the El Nino of 2009-2010 we went into a very strong La Nina pattern we saw some of the coldest sea surface temperatures on record from California to Baja towards Hawaii that's exactly the territory that subtropical jet comes across to deliver moisture into the southern plains with that massive cooling that took place as we got into 2011 with this area already denuded from the drought and then the super cold waters the two came together and that's why the drought really peaked in 2011 you you the severity of the drought reared its ugly head that year and became known as the most severe one-year drought in Texas history in a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 2011 and 2012 became the driest and hottest period that the central Great Plains have ever experienced exceeding the harshness of the Dust Bowl the drought of 2011 helped haunting records in the agricultural industry the total over 12 billion dollars in my opinion this drought is not a three year drought that we so often hear about this drought started in the southern Great Plains in 1996 in South Texas 1992 it just so happened in 2011 was the greatest impact year 2002 2004 who relatively wet years 2010 was relatively wet year the droughts intensity in 2011 forced cattle producers to take drastic measures according to the National climate data center extraordinarily severe drought conditions gripped Texas Oklahoma and New Mexico from October 2010 through all of 2011 in Texas statewide precipitation from September 2010 through August 2011 was a driest 12-month period since 1895 desperation soon turned to panic for many ranchers I never knew it could be that bad I'd heard all the stories but I thought well they the country was over stocked or you know there was reasons why this happened that that it won't happen a year and it happened he was so severe that you can't really describe it if you weren't engaged in it the nation's brood cow herd the economic engine of the beef industry was devastated by the staggering heat and unprecedented dry spell the US beef cow herd went from 32 million had in 2004 to 29 million head in 2014 so of that 3 million had dropped over half of it was in the state of Texas alone the economic health of the beef production infrastructure marketing finishing transportation and processing is dependent upon conditions of the industry's cow calf sector especially 2011 and the first part of 2012 we saw cattle numbers coming to market and harvest plants running at peak capacities over capacities running six and seven days a week they've never seen so many livestock available particularly on the cull cow and bull side of the market and a lot of these plants actually expanded capacity in 2011 well obviously on the back side of that comes where we've been now for the last 12 to 18 months and that being a dramatic shortage in livestock and so we've seen record high meat prices record high livestock prices in Texas particular in 2004 there was five point five million head of mama cows well that number declined by 2014 it was three point nine so a drop of over 1.5 million head very dramatic that's 30 percent drop in that ten-year period the bulk of that drop occurred in 2011 in 2012 in each of those two years of severe drought there's a half a million beef cows were taken out of the herd so you know you can see that two-thirds that drop occurred right at the heart of the drought we had pretty high call cow values you know call cow values our priests out so what you had is incentive so to speak to go ahead and liquidate instead of buying that 250 ton hay to keep the cow going on extra year you went ahead and cashed her out or she moved to another state another region where they had better feed resources so from that standpoint the market even though it was stronger as a trend really almost worked to disadvantage from a liquidation standpoint it gave the cow mana incentives so to speak to go ahead and merchandise those cows you take 30% of your cow herd out in a 10 years period and you 20% you know of the total herd in two years alone so that you know that that kind of migration or that kind of liquidation has very rarely occurred from historical standpoint branch families who have invested years of blood sweat and tears what's the tall's of their labor disappear when they were forced to ship hungry cattle to slaughter or to pastures we're grazing was available but these cows just didn't like Wyoming they didn't like they just didn't adjust they they look terrible our calves weigh good and we sold them at a big auction and then the next year were they were going to leave him there for three years the second year they had a drought and they told us you've got to take your counts back it became a lot more than a financial consideration it's like you have the welfare of all of these cattle is your responsibility and when they'd come walking up to water and there was not a bite to eat and look at you it was like what are you going to do to take care of we started out at 2,500 headed cows and we're down to a thousand plus this 200 head that we were able to save last fall as conditions spiraled out of control rangeland health became a big concern over grazed pastures impact hydrology plant species survival and wildlife habitat and I think coming out of this drought we're going to see plants that have died we're going to lose some subspecies in some areas and on shallow soils and in short grass country I think we're going to see a real slow recovery I think it's going to be a tougher drought to recover from than what we've experienced in the past and so there are people that there just couldn't get Matt to hit around the fact that everything you do is dictated by mother nature be mindful and so since it didn't fit their business model they just continued with their own business models and I saw some really big on ranges really hurt because of that in August 2011 the Texas AgriLife Extension Service estimated Texas's direct agricultural losses from the year's drought at five point two billion dollars livestock loss accounted for 2.6 billion dollars a devastating hit to the ranching economy but it wasn't just ranchers and their families taking the brunt of the drought meat processing plants shutdown forcing thousands of men and women out of work the largest facility to close was a plant owned by the privately held food company Cargill incorporated located in Plainview Texas the plants closing displaced 2,000 employees in a city of only 22,000 Cargill made the decision to shut that plant down because it wasn't it wasn't feasible for them to to keep running it at reduced hours they did everything in their power to try to keep that thing going for the city of Plainview and and and and the Texas Panhandle it was a losing battle for them this because hey the water and be you know mostly the head counts issue you know not having enough to run efficiently everyone knew things were difficult and to see a company the size of Cargill shudder a facility of that magnitude that arguably was the sort of sort of the the lead dog of their of their roster of packing plants it was it was really there a focal point of their company and in the North America at least it was there one of the most modern plants it was one of their largest plants and everything about it and it was almost I would almost liken that to General Motors declaring bankruptcy to see a company like Cargill closed down just walk away from a plant the size of that facility in Plainview that had a capacity of four to five thousand of fed cattle every single day so 20,000 had a week capacity taken offline instantly and hundreds literally hundreds of employees probably close to 2,000 employees left looking for work if we talk about the non-federal cow how plants you know we've lost over the last 18 months about 4pi packing plants they're about six to seven thousand head a day capacity in early 2000 2003 time frame to 2013-2014 timeframe you know we basically harvested about 3 million less cow Packers were having to go further and further to locate livestock and pay more and more for them added freight costs to them and we thought we definitely lost some longtime excellent packing companies Santangelo lost a loss to a packing plant that's was processing five to eight hundred head a day san antonio lost a major Packer that was processing closer to a thousand head of coal cows and bulls a day and that is a major impact on ranchers especially within a region to have that amount of packing capacity for their cull animals to just disappear overnight a gut-wrenching aspect of drought is the uncertainty of recovery since the mid 1990s ranchers have experienced wet years followed by intense dry years capital was spent and risks were taken that often proved to be futile but ranchers adapt and change because of each drought some of those changes made out of necessity became common practice and may prove beneficial in the long run risk management's another thing that we probably will pay more attention to not only for the feedyard standpoint which is extremely important but working back into the stock from the cow-calf side as well with this kind of volatility not only in cattle prices but also an input prices it just makes more sense that would be more in tune to the market and be more conscious of our risk management program one of the challenges to being a young producer is you really buy you really don't know how to prepare because you've never lived it and you don't know you you hear what they say but you don't know how you're going to adapt and you you know you for me you know you go to bed worrying about it you wake up worrying about them on making the right decision is it going to blow up in my face so you know again that that's a huge challenge for for a younger guy and hopefully I stayed open-minded adopt and obviously came out on the other side I think the best thing a guy can do is you know call somebody who's been through it you know somebody who's a generation ahead or two generations ahead and good it get a good idea of of the impacts but history always repeats itself so there's a lot of things that we can learn from from folks who have been there it has tempered my willingness to take on risk which is probably good as you get older or the risk reward ratio begins to change and you want to hold what you've got rather than try to go out and ggressive we make more so age and drought have made me more risk-averse than I used to be through hard times hard lessons are learned and innovations are made and I do think that when we come out the other side of this the surviving industry is going to be better for it even if a rancher is brave enough to give Mother Nature another try the cost of re-entry is staggering cattle prices are at an all-time high and uncertainty about markets makes many ranchers anxious about building new cow herds the future of the industry remains uncertain it's just as important I've found it's just important to have an have have an objective restocking plan as it was to have an objective destocking plan because a lot of people when it began to rain again said I'm going to wait I'm going to wait for a little while maybe these cows will get cheaper and instead they got higher and higher and the net result is that your cows that you sold for $700 you're now having to replace for $3,000 the average producer cow producer and generally speaking most surveys and say they're they're rather old do they want to get back into the business at that age you know for our younger producers again its capital requirements really a limiting factor there's always some tough it was easy everybody did but I think we're in for a pretty good extended period of these kind of pretty high prices I'm optimistic that optimism something most ranchers must have to get through the inevitable dry years and pride pride in the industry the heritage in the future optimism and pride will fuel the continuation of the industry and spur the development of new management techniques to hopefully make the next round a little more bearable I tell you you don't stay in this business unless you're an optimist I mean I think I think you'd lose your mind if if you didn't have a positive attitude about it and it's the only thing we know maybe it's stupidity I don't know but if it's the only thing I've I'm a fourth generation and my grandkids or sixth generation so and so it's so one of those things I really couldn't put a real finger on it has helped me to have the next generation of my family be involved in because I can I like to see their enthusiasm their the fact that they they don't feel overwhelmed about what happened they've still got plenty of youthful enthusiasm and positive attitude and that's been good you you the National ranching Heritage Center is dedicated to preserving the heritage and history of ranching in North America if you would like to become a part of preserving the heritage of ranching you can become a member of the ranching Heritage Association just contact the ranching Heritage Association at eight oh six seven four two oh four nine eight or contact us through Facebook or at WWDC org

Channel: Erica Irlbeck

Views: 64,315

Rating: 4.6963696 out of 5

Keywords: Ranching, agriculture, drought, Texas Tech

Id: 6d9AUgoO-bE

Length: 24min 57sec (1497 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 26 2016