Sovrun Cattle - The Sagebrush Saga of Cliven Bundy

[Jeffrey]

Remember that old saying regarding fucking up a wet dream? You couldn't have gotten a more airtight case, they admitted breaking the law, publicized breaking the law, took pictures of themselves breaking the law, and came out looking like oppressed people. Actually made people feel sorry for a bunch of thugs.

I have to wonder if that’s why we’re seeing federal prosecutors playing it safe with a recent event that can’t be mentioned with hundreds of defendants.

[The Observer]

This article appeared last week regarding public-land activists hoping that the Biden administration will address Cliven Bundy's continued trespassing on BLM lands. Much of the article rehashes the history of the standoff between Cliven and Bureau of Land Management and the doings of his sons.

As a way of pointing out how people do not learn from history, the activists hope that the government will seize the cattle and end Bundy's illegal grazing of the land, most of which lies within the Gold Butte National Monument near Bunkerville. This, despite the fact that the previous attempt to seize the cattle ended up as a fiasco and the government backed down to violent threats from the Bundys and their armed supporters. The article acknowledges that the Bundys still assert that they will meet resist any attempt to remove the cattle. So it is hard to see what the activists hope to accomplish if the Biden administration is not interested in triggering a shootout.

And I ran across this article from last year about an historian who wrote a book ("American Zion") that purports to connect the Bundy's being fundamental Mormons and their position that the public lands really belong to them. As a reminder, let's watch any comments about religion that does not bear directly on the Bundys situation.

[The Observer]

I have advocated several times in the past here on this thread that the government should have just secured a court order allowing them to shoot Bundy's cattle on the BLM lands based on the fact that they were an environmental hazard (given that the area in question has a threatened desert tortoise population). Apparently this is a resolution that the government (the US Forest Service, not BLM) is trying to implement elsewhere according to this article.

Of course there are some issues. Local ranchers fear that the government will end up killing their cattle since a helicopter sniper may not be able to tell the difference between their branded cattle and the feral cattle. Environmentalists are worried that the resulting carcasses will end up causing long-term harm to another threated species, the Mexican gray wolf. Previous efforts to round up the stray cattle on the ground has not been efficient. But despite these arguments, which I see as weak and not convincing. After all, why are ranchers' cattle on lands that don't belong to them? Wouldn't the threat of losing several head of cattle be enough motivation for a rancher to get his or her cattle out of there? I suspect that they are on the same monetary path as Bundy in using free grazing to reduce the costs of feeding and watering their cattle rather than having to pay for fodder/water to be delivered. And leaving the cattle unbranded means that they don't have to take any responsibility for the cattle until they want to market them.

I can't help but think that ranching in the southwest US is actually a marginal activity and that these ranchers would have thrown in the towel years ago if the government had been far more proactive in stopping the cattle from invading in the first place.

[eric]

I can't help but think that ranching in the southwest US is actually a marginal activity and that these ranchers would have thrown in the towel years ago if the government had been far more proactive in stopping the cattle from invading in the first place.

Pretty accurate. I'm in beef and grain country, just to the east of me is the absolute marginal, how can you grow anything, Palliser Triangle. Let's do some calculations. Last time they counted the Bundy cattle on federal land he had 940 beefs or so, most with very poor condition scores. To maintain his herd he can only sell 400 roughly a year. If he followed the rules, paying for his leasing rights and buying supplementary feed plus other inputs he would be lucky to net one hundred bucks a head. Unless he gets another job on the side or cheats more than a little he would be out of business.

Drifting off topic, plus some more ag info.... In the 1930's so many farmers around here were foreclosed on, the banks couldn't even sell the land so it reverted to the government. The land was so poor that no farmer could afford to buy enough land (11 acres per cow, you need 500 to 1000 head) to run his cattle on. It all turned into communal pasture - pay just enough for lease rights to get enough pasture and barely get by, but submit to strict government control that basicly says you get so much net income per year for your farm. Welcome to dry land farming...

[The Observer]

Welcome to dry land farming...

And it was dry land farming that can cause real problems if the farmers aren't paying attention to a myriad of factors. People like to think that this was a problem that disappeared with the dust bowls of the '30s, but eastern Washington back in 2009 had a problem due to high winds and extensive dry farming. The resulting dust storm blocked visibility so bad that I-90 and surrounding roads had to be closed.

And I don't even want to go into the upcoming problems we will be facing with the extensive pumping of ground water that has been going on for years.

[Normal Wisdom]

Thanks Eric and The Observer. As a Brit whose only knowledge of the dustbowl is a single lecture at school (which for some reason has stuck in my mind for 50 years) and reading The Grapes of Wrath, your comments were a very interesting modern context.

[JohnPCapitalist]

I can't help but think that ranching in the southwest US is actually a marginal activity and that these ranchers would have thrown in the towel years ago if the government had been far more proactive in stopping the cattle from invading in the first place.

I discovered cousin site Fogbow back when I was casting about for info about the Malheur Wildlife Refuge occupation in 2016. I did a little digging on the cattle ranching industry to try and understand what drove these people to fanatical and doomed attempts to preserve that way of life, and I posted a long missive there. The post was lost when Fogbow irretrievably lost its original content a year ago.

But I recall that one of the major problems is that demand for beef in the US is circling the drain. While overall beef consumption is up somewhat in the last 50 years, the population has more than doubled, which means that the per capita consumption of beef in the US has dropped by half. In other words, they're selling a product that fewer people want, and the trend continues. As a footnote, the hoof-and-mouth and BSE issues 10-20 years ago reduced the attractiveness of American beef on the export market, and while they're able to ship now, a lot of marginal ranchers lost enough business that they went under.

The other major problem is that the monopsony in beef processors means that they can squeeze the ranchers. Today, ranchers get a smaller portion of the wholesale price of dressed carcasses than ever before, because the market for beef processing is controlled by only a couple of companies (Tyson, JBS and a couple others). There's lots of areal concentration, where some regions have slaughterhouses for only one of those companies. In other words, it's a monopsony (one buyer with market power to set prices they will pay), the symmetrical opposite of a monopoly (one seller with market prices to set prices they will charge). I don't recall the exact percentage, but I think it's on the order of 35% to 40% of the dressed side of beef price that goes to the rancher, even though they're taking all the risk and they have a lot of capital tied up in their land.

The Bundy fantasy was that by handing free gifts of land to some ranchers, that it would somehow miraculously save the industry. Of course, that's nonsense, as it would just enrich those who got the free land, and drive others out of business. And I'm sure that if the Bundys had actually given away the MNWR land, by some wild coincidence, most of it would go to their supporters.

Unfortunately, the rural Pacific Northwest has a high percentage of extraction industries including mining and timber. I'd classify ranching as another extraction industry because you don't pay to grow the food the cattle eat, even though it's really agricultural.

Timber is no longer competitive in the Pacific NW because trees grow faster in the Southeast (Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, etc.) so the land is far more productive. Engineered wood beams and trusses mean that tall, clear stands of old-growth timber for roof rafters and glulam beams are less valuable. Restrictions on timbering due to endangered species are far less impactful than good old-fashioned competition from producers that have a sustainable and compelling cost advantage.

Mining is also less competitive, because tons of small mines are closing down as large global mining companies take over at a few dense sites, and their cost advantages make it impractical for little guys to survive. So Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana are basically no longer competitive in mining, despite lots of mining activity a century ago.

It's no wonder that the Pacific NW is a hotbed of anti-government sentiment, given that all three major historical industries are in irreversible decline. Agriculture is, as others have pointed out here, very marginal and it can't replace lumber, cattle and mining, especially now as global warming makes droughts even worse. So that, too, will go away in the arid West and the desperation will increase.

Most ranchers know what a great deal a BLM lease is, and they happily pay their grazing fees. I recall reading at the time of the Bundy Ranch insurrection in 2014 that there are only a few ranchers that owe significant back grazing fees to the government, and Bundy was in a league of his own when it came to the amounts involved. So I'm disappointed but not surprised that the BLM has not made it a priority to make an example of Bundy.

[eric]

The other major problem is that the monopsony in beef processors means that they can squeeze the ranchers. Today, ranchers get a smaller portion of the wholesale price of dressed carcasses than ever before, because the market for beef processing is controlled by only a couple of companies (Tyson, JBS and a couple others). There's lots of areal concentration, where some regions have slaughterhouses for only one of those companies. In other words, it's a monopsony (one buyer with market power to set prices they will pay), the symmetrical opposite of a monopoly (one seller with market prices to set prices they will charge). I don't recall the exact percentage, but I think it's on the order of 35% to 40% of the dressed side of beef price that goes to the rancher, even though they're taking all the risk and they have a lot of capital tied up in their land.

That's the key to understanding the whole problem with the cattle industry. I used to do this for a job so I'm going to give you a ridiculous easy summary, rather than three volumes, including excel formulas. I'm using The big beef province in Canada and last week's prices as an example. Two meat packers in effect control the entire industry. Farmer receives $1.50 to $1.75 per pound live weight so for a thousand pound steer that sounds pretty good. His net though on average is only 5.7% to 6.2%. In other words one hundred bucks per steer. Hard to make a living on that, go big or get out.

[The Observer]

A recent story I ran across explaining the challenges of being a cattleman.

[The Observer]

Another article from late last year regarding BLM and Cliven Bundy.

This one deals with the issue of the establishment of the Gold Butte National Monument and how Bundy is still grazing his cattle within the area. Additionally, the article reveals that Bundy has been digging wells within the boundaries as a way to water his cattle. Given that Bundy has said that he believes "...that land belongs to the state of Nevada, I don’t really believe the federal government has any rights to designate it for anything...", it should not come as any shock that Bundy is violating the law.

“I try to take care of my rights to grazing, water and access,” he said. “I take care of all those things. As long as we’re using it and respecting it, I hope that’s called taking care of it.”

[The Observer]

This article explores the influence of the Bundy standoff in Bunkerville has had on other right-wing groups, such as The Oathkeepers.

[The Observer]

In the meantime, Ryan Bundy (son of Cliven, brother to Ammon) managed to get himself arrested in nearby Mesquite for assault. The issue? He got angry being questioned over not wearing a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Two years later he was found guilty and received a fine for $500. Bundy stated he was going to appeal and that his actions didn't meet the criteria for assault.

“I should have been more Christ-like and held my temper, but I was getting tired of all this COVID baloney,” he said. “I got a little hot, I’ll admit.”

[The Observer]

Cliven is back in the news as a result of an environmentalist group that sued the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as well as the Department of the Interior, and other government agencies. Western Watersheds Project's suit is over the failure to remove Bundy's cattle from the desert tortoise habitat.

This is an interesting development and I assume that the suit is asking the court to order the government to remove the cattle and not asking for money in regards to damages. I have no idea which side of the question that a federal judge will come down on. If a judge backs the environmentalists, then I think we will see another standoff, aggravated by the Bundys begging for armed volunteers to come and protect their cattle. And it might come down to a shooting episode, especially if BLM mishandles the seizure. If the judge comes down on the side of Bundy, then we can give up any hope the government being able to resolve this situation.

[The Observer]

The New York times updates the current situation with Cliven's cattle.

[AndyK]

Requires subscription to view NY Times article

[The Observer]

current situation with Cliven's cattle

The NYT giveth - and the NYT taketh away. I had the ability to read the article when I posted the link. But now I don't. As I recall, the article was short and basically said that Cliven is still shoving his cattle onto BLM lands, the desert tortoise habitat and the land that was set aside for a national monument. BLM is still not sure what to do to get the cattle off the land, despite being sued by a conservation group for not getting the cows off the land.

[Hercule Parrot]

The NYT article - https://archive.ph/rceqQ

Shocking that Bundy is permitted to continue this, and certainly a significant factor in encouraging other armed, anti-gubmint lunatics.

[The Observer]

News item: Ryan Bundy has sued the government over the standoff in Nevada 9+ years ago.

[JamesVincent]

News item: Ryan Bundy has sued the government over the standoff in Nevada 9+ years ago.

Man, talk about speaking for 30 seconds and saying nothing.

The son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy filed a lawsuit against the federal government this week, alleging that he was subject to false imprisonment and malicious prosecution in connection with the 2014 armed standoff near Bunkerville.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Ryan Bundy, his wife, their six children and Ryan Payne, a Montana militia leader who the government alleged helped the Bundys in a conspiracy to assault law enforcement officers near the Bundy Ranch.

https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/cou ... n-2929014/

[The Observer]

Remember the cattle-herd standoff that featured a Bundy supporter taking up a sniper position on an overpass? Well, Eric Parker is back in action after being 19 months in prison while facing two trials for terrorism (he later avoided felony convictions for a plea deal to a misdemeanor charge). He has been actually working within the law to get the Idaho legislature to gut a state law targeting terrorists.