Echo Valley Ranch Cattle Drive: Across the West, ranchers and farmers are adapting to a more unpredictable future.
Image: Flickr/Echo Valley Ranch
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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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BOULDER, Colo. – For western Colorado ranchers, the decision to sell cattle during tough times can hinge on a flower. Local cattle have developed immunity against the poisonous larkspur that live among more edible grasses. So a rancher culling a herd he can't afford to feed faces a problem restocking once economics improve: The replacements may die if they binge on the purple and pink larkspur.
That's the problem confronting Carlyle Currier, who owns a 4,000-acre ranch in Molina, Colo. and is mulling a decision to trim his herd of 500 Angus-Hereford-Charolais hybrids. Basic economics also worry him; he knows that he may well have to pay more later to buy replacement calves if the price per head of cattle rises from today's rock-bottom lows. But like many ranchers across the West and central plains, Currier has little choice. This year's record drought has made his operation untenable.
"This is probably the worst it's been since 1977," Currier says. "We just can't grow enough to feed the cattle ourselves."
Welcome to the new normal.
Pressured ranchers
The drought has pressured ranchers across the West to sell breeding cattle, take on more debt, or seek supplemental work off the farm. Some, particularly in Texas last year during a crushingly severe drought, have even liquidated the whole ranch.
The drought has killed off much of the natural forage on grazing pastures as well as the alfalfa that Currier and other ranchers typically grow, forcing them to dig into savings to buy hay, straw, soybean supplements and other alternative feeds. Supply shortages have sent corn and soybean prices to record heights.
People who make a living off the land are no strangers to risk, whether dictated by Mother Nature, international currency fluctuations or their local banks. But scientists agree that climate change will up the ante considerably by bringing more extreme weather gyrations – searing drought one year, followed by torrential storms that can wash away cracked soil and destroy crops rather than quench their thirst.
"The longer term raises a much more vexing question," says Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union. "What climate scientists really tell us is not so much that it'll be drier and hotter…as it'll be dramatically more variable.”
That, he added, “poses real serious problems for all of agriculture."
Scrambling to adapt
Farmers may not call it climate change, or attribute it to human activity. But many are scrambling to adapt – or make themselves more resilient – to a future of greater uncertainty and risk. Their survival kit consists of a mixture of emerging cattle-breeding technology, sustainable rangeland and farmland practices, and new business plans.
In a survey conducted last year on farm and ranch managers in hard-hit southern Colorado, roughly one-quarter of respondents said they would likely leave the industry if the drought persisted into this year. The number was higher – 36 percent – among operations that included both livestock and irrigated farming. Chris Goemans, the agricultural economist at Colorado State University who led the survey, said he hasn't followed up this year with farmers.
The drought has prompted some ranchers to retire early and sell or lease the ranch, although not in noticeably large numbers, according to interviews with ranching real estate brokers.
“I’m 75 years old and my folks used to talk about the ‘30s, how the river just ran dry,” says Tom Grieve, a rancher and co-owner of Western United Realty in the town of Baggs in Wyoming’s Little Snake River Valley. “What we’ve gone through this year is pretty similar to that.”
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9 Comments
Add CommentThe premise of the article by Susan Moran seems to be completely untruthful. If you look at the data attached you will notice a VERY slight reduction in the annual average rainfall and you will notice that there have always been wide variations in the annual rainfall.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.google.com/imgres?q=colorado+rainfall+trend&hl=en&safe=images&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=832&bih=469&tbm=isch&tbnid=NZOWuDVYhscRtM:&imgrefurl=http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/on-droughts-and-fires-past&docid=CKSc7gs2DqOQ3M&imgurl=http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/images-2/multigraphcolo.png/image_preview&w=400&h=338&ei=utijUN_7Oefq2QWxv4FY&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=187&vpy=134&dur=2028&hovh=206&hovw=244&tx=111&ty=83&sig=114091406124388918232&page=2&tbnh=141&tbnw=167&start=10&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:10,i:131
Unfortunately too many people in the US don't believe in global warming and too many that do believe that it will be sudden. I find it fascinating that the UK, which is if I remember correctly, is far more urbanised has more people observing the subtle changes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi Am thinking about this post.is it true or false?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSisko, I think you misunderstood the point. Re-read this sentence from the article:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"What climate scientists really tell us is not so much that it'll be drier and hotter…as it'll be dramatically more variable."
The data you provide about annual precipitation does not provide the entire story. Variations in rainfall also happen within a growing season. If it's dry most of the growing season, then there is a large storm that seems to "make up" for the dry spell (as in annual rainfall), that's wasted water. It typically just runs off. That was the case this year in the midwest. What is needed is smaller regular rains, not dry spells followed by a deluge.
Sisko,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf only Colorado was involved in the drought....you might have a point about something. 80% of the country was effected?
Crop conditions were quite bad this past summer, though climate change deniers were in full-on denial mode.
Take the corn crop for example. The last USDA crop I collected (week ending Aug 26, 2012) reported the following crop conditions (%) for 18 states (92% of the corn came from these states in 2011):
very poor poor fair good excellent
2012 26 26 26 19 3
2011* 7 12 27 42 12
* the 2011 numbers for at the same point in the year as the 2012 numbers.
See any difference. Most climate change deniers can't see the difference.
Yes, there is variability in temperature, humidity and precipitation year-to-year. As this article states, expect even more variability in the future. Did you not read the article?
"But scientists agree that climate change will up the ante considerably by bringing more extreme weather gyrations – searing drought one year, followed by torrential storms that can wash away cracked soil and destroy crops rather than quench their thirst."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis comment seemed to fly-in-the-face of a decade-long 2001-2011 period of cooling. Granted, 2012 was vastly hotter, on average, the Met had to admit that the trendline from 1997-2012, showed that Global Warming stopped 16 years ago’ aka ‘the pause’,
http://bit.ly/109dyJx
Where will the first food riots in 2013 happen? I am thinking Egypt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA) Extremes of rainfall have not a great deal to do with cooling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisB) What cooling? Please give us something better than a the BS of a x-weatherman without a college degree, who finally did manage to publish some work, only that work refuted his own position on the UHI effect. Seriously, what cooling?
<This comment seemed to fly-in-the-face of a decade-long 2001-2011 period of cooling.>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour comment flies in the face of ALL and ANY evidence as those ten years contained the nine hottest years since the mid 1800s when modern climate records +/- began.
It is rare to read anything that is in the face of all validated research and a general acceptance of the facts as clearly wrong as this, presented with the selfconfidence generally only known from comments showing an exceptionally obvious ignorance of the subject. Or from professional shills.
At worst you should have first searched for "climate change hottest years", it would have saved you the beans. As is you spilled them unretrievably.