Livestock “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.” – JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL JUNE 15, 2014 • www. aaalivestock . com
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Digest O Volume 56 • No. 6
by Lee Pitts
Education is what you get when you read fine print. Experience is what you get when you don’t.
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Somethings Gotta Give Are males no longer taking animal science at my alma mater because they aren’t interested in studying about animals, or could they not gain admittance because they weren’t smart enough to compete? Either way, it doesn’t speak well for the males of the species, does it? The numbers are a complete flip flop since I went to Cal Poly. Back in the early 1970s life in the animal science department was like the wild, wild west
where the ratio of males to females was 10 to one, and unless the boss had a wife or daughter, a cowboy hardly ever saw a woman. A male in the 1970s had to make a huge sacrifice to be an animal science major because you had about the same chance of having a female friend as a monk entering some foreign outpost monastery. It’s not just Cal Poly either. Women are more than holding their own at animal science departments across the country.
And their dominance didn’t just begin in college. When I was State President of the California Association of the FFA back in 1970 a young woman in a blue and gold jacket was a rare sighting. After all, the National FFA had just voted in 1969 to allow females to enter what was then known as The Future Farmers of America. Today, it’s simply the FFA, and there are 579,678 members in 7,570 chapters in all 50 states. Female membership in the FFA has been on a straight trajectory upward and currently 44% of FFA members are female. In my day we pitied the few FFA girls and thought they'd never be able to compete with us men. How stupid were we? Glance at small town newspapers across the country and you’ll see that FFA judging and leadership teams are skewed heavily to the female side and, continued on page two
Give me cows … lots of cows! Educated Incapacity The trillion dollar hoax BY STEPHEN L. WILMETH
n Texas A&M trials, the unthinkable is taking place. Hamburger from grass fed cattle isn’t safer, healthier, or more palatable than hamburger produced from those corn fed, flatulent launching, confinement lounging fatties that are being accused of poisoning our nation’s clean water supplies. In fact, the opposite may be rearing its scientific, unbiased head. As an example, measured oleic acid (the acid shown to reduce bad cholesterol and increase good cholesterol), has been measured to be 32% higher in the fatties than from the free ranging leanies. The leanies are also producing more saturated and trans-fats. Ohhhhh …
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by LEE PITTS
Trick Questions
A Sex Change s an animal science graduate of California Polytechnic University (Cow Poly) at San Luis Obispo, California, I receive a newsletter called The Stock Report. In the Summer/Fall edition of 2013 there was a photo of the top seven animal science seniors. Six of them were female and an additional young lady was not pictured. There was one male! But wait, it gets worse for the men. In the scholastic achievement category (indicating they were in the top 10% of the university) I counted over 40 females and, again, one male. The token male has now replaced the token female. I also saved The Stock Report from 2011 that showed a photo of the graduating class of animal and dairy science majors for that year. It was a crowded photo so my numbers may not be exact but I counted 121 graduates, only nine of them male. As a man I am overcome with shame. Men are in decline and in the process of being reduced to “honeys, dears and darlings.” Take pity on us, please. What’s next? An equal opportunity program for men? Should the women be given their own Vet Tech major so less qualified boys have a better chance to get into cow college?
Riding Herd
Before all of this gives somebody the heebie-jeebies, though, an article from the March journal Annals of Internal Medicine may throw some cold water on all of it. The entire forced diatribe since 1961 promoting the evils of beef may wind up being not the multi-billion dollar hoax many of us have long known it to be, but more … trillions of dollars.
Educated Incapacity Futurist Herman Kahn invented the phrasing, but Ron Arnold brought it to a broader audience. Arnold, operating out of the Seattle area, used the expression describing liberal journalists who have been “taught to be blind” so they don’t have to look into major issues of our
time that run countercurrent to the standards of their liberal enclaves. Educated incapacity is their chronic ailment. They suffer from this seemingly terminal anomaly. The condition is the “learned inability to understand or even perceive a problem much less (suggest) a solution”. Daily, we are learning of the length and breadth of the cultural gyrations this malady has forced upon us. In an era that education is purported to be continuous and cutting edge, the ability to rationalize anything aside from an entrenched paradigm is largely nonexistent. Arnold used the model of Big Green to expound upon continued on page four
n the front page of our local weekly newspaper there was a photo of a cute little 4-H girl showing what was obviously a goat at a livestock show. The caption under the photo read, “Here is so and so and her SHEEP!" It’s bad enough that a journalist doesn’t know a lamb from a goat but recently a friend of mine asked me, “How many cows are there in the average feedlot?” “None,” I said. “They aren’t cows, they are steers and heifers.” He looked at me like I was the idiot. Another urban friend argued with me and insisted that “mutton” comes from old roosters that can no longer lay eggs. How did we get so stupid? I’d be willing to bet that 95 percent of the urban population couldn’t tell you the difference between a Hereford and a heifer. They think Dutch Belted is a wrestler and Porterhouse is a rapping D.J. Kids today are taking French, calculus and other subjects they’ll never use in life at the same time they are taking NO classes that might teach them anything about what they eat. And a very high percentage of people do eat! This is just wrong. I think every student to graduate from high school ought to have to take and pass a test like the this one I came up with. #1 If you bred a Blonde de Aquitane female with a Tamworth boar you’d have a) a litter of dumb blondes, b) a hog with lofty intentions, c) a miracle. #2 What is longer, a) the shelf life of Spam, b) the gestation period of a Jersey, c) the lifetime of a Southdown, d) the line to the restroom at a bad sushi joint. #3 If you put a mature bull in with some heifers for two years and never got a calf it’s probably because a) the bull was a steer, b) the heifers were spayed, c) the bull was gay. #4 If you walked behind a Jack and jabbed it in the rump with a sharp stick you, a) are dumber than a box of continued on page six
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Livestock Market Digest
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June 15, 2014
Sex Change
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according to the FFA, females is Minnie Lou Bradley of Chilcurrently hold approximately dress County, Texas. For those 50% of state leadership posi- in the animal sciences this is as high an honor as one can get. To tions. be included amongst The women aren’t the 350 plus oil even waiting for high The women paintings that hang school to show their in the Saddle and dominance. I write a aren’t Sirloin Gallery is to column for a magaeven waiting be a member of our zine called The Hall of Fame. National Junior Livefor Lou’s Minnie stock Exhibitor. In it high school to biography shows her are pictures of leadership began at Grand Champion show their an early age. In 1949 steers and heifers dominance she was the first from all over the woman to major in country. At random I picked two typical issues and Animal Husbandry at Oklahoma counted the number of boy and A&M and she was the first girl show ring winners. It wasn’t woman to win the high individeven close. The winning girls ual overall award at the National outnumbered boys by a three to Collegiate Livestock Judging one margin, and that’s being Contest. If Minnie Lou could kind. I could have selected other achieve what she has against issues where it was even more great odds, the sky is the limit lopsided. There are boys in the for the many young ladies winpicture all right, in almost every ning contests and graduating photo there is typically four or with honors today. And how five young men, the fitting team, many more young women will be who appear to be working for inspired when they see Minnie’s the female owner. Perhaps portrait amongst all those men? There is something else at they’d better get used to it. In high schools and colleges across work here and I, as a male, am the land there is a booming sad to report it. In writing this bulge of females who are going story I asked an ag teacher I to be trying to find their niche in know why the females are doing a few years in the male dominat- so well in ag and the FFA. I dided cattle industry. The question n’t like his answer. “The girls are is, will there be a place for them? engaged,” he said, “they have clear goals, are eager in the classRole Models room, and have a clear underThere are many reasons why standing that the workplace males do not hold the domi- they’ll be entering in a few years nance they once did on the tan is going to be very competitive, bark, on judging teams and in and in order to do well, their positions of youth leadership. preparation cannot begin soon One is that women simply were enough. The males, on the other not given the opportunities. hand, are busy playing video They hit the proverbial “glass games. They don’t have a clue.” ceiling”, words first used in 1986 He shook his head and said by two Wall Street Journal while the girls are self-starters he reporters to describe the invisi- finds it almost impossible to ble barrier that blocks women light a fire under the boys. To from upward progress. This was hear him tell it, we are experiabout the same time that female encing the demise of the Ameristarted passing up the males in can male. the show ring and The Million in the FFA. Woman March Because the It seems to livestock business Every five years the this reporter has been a male USDA conducts an dominated field ag census, the last one that females there were artifibeing done in 2012. seem more cial barriers based In typical government willing to on bias that prefashion, the prelimivented qualified nary results of the follow in women from 2012 Census were their parent’s made public in Februreaching their potential. Also, footsteps than ary of this year. From due to the late a female’s standpoint their brothers the results are both entrance of young women into these encouraging, and disdo. areas, there were appointing. In looking very few role modat the following data els for young women entering from both the 2012 and 2007 the profession. That has changed census, keep in mind that the as well. In 1982, Jan Eberly was data are for both farms and elected as National FFA Presi- ranches. n The number of U.S. farms dent, making her the nation’s first female elected as FFA Pres- operated by women nearly ident. Since then the females tripled over the past three have dominated many state offi- decades, from 5% in 1978 to cer teams across the country. 14% by 2007. n Nearly half of female farmRole models are everywhere. As a society of cattlemen we ers are raising livestock — beef have gotten much better at iden- cattle, horses and sheep, in partifying those female role models. ticular. But interestingly, these For instance, the 2014 Saddle & continued on page three Sirloin Portrait Gallery inductee
June 15, 2014
“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”
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Sex Change animals aren’t the biggest earners for women. It turns out that ladies who chose to specialize in poultry, specialty crops, grains or dairy actually generated 72% of sales on all the lady’s farms and ranches. n The states with the highest percentage of female principal farm and ranch operators are: 1. Arizona 2. New Hampshire 3. Massachusetts 4. Maine 5. Alaska. n The majority of farms and ranches run by women have had annual sales of less than $10,000. About 42% of those operations were so small, they had sales of less than $1,000. n 91% of farms and ranches with female principal operators had less than $50,000 in annual sales n The 2012 Census collected data on up to three operators per farm or ranch. The number of principal operators declined 4.3% since 2007. Principal operators are on average older, more likely to be male, and more likely to consider farming their primary occupation. n 44% of all farms and ranches reported having two operators, and 7% reported three operators involved in day-to-day decision making. n 300,000 women own their own farms and ranches and USDA says there are now one million women who are either the principal or secondary managers.
continued from page two n Two thirds of second operators are women, of whom 90% are the spouse of the principal farm operator. One reason the numbers have jumped in the women’s favor is that USDA’s Ag Census only started counting these secondary farm operators — such as women — in 2002. n Women were 14% of principal operators but 30% of all operators. In scanning the data two statistics leapt out at me that are not encouraging from a female standpoint. Of the 2.1 million principal operators in the United States, 288,264 were women. This was a 6 percent decrease since 2007 – larger than the decrease in male principal operators. We keep saying this but at some point in the not-so-distant future there is going to be a huge turnover in the ownership of farms and ranches in this country. The new numbers substantiate that view. For the past 30 years the average age of farmers and ranchers has increased and the results in 2012 were no different. For principal operators, the average age increased another two percent between 2007 and 2012. U.S farmers and ranchers averaged 58.3 years old in 2012, compared to 57.1 in 2007. The big question from a woman’s standpoint becomes, if and when the turnover takes place will, will it be a man, or a
woman, who steps into those cowboy boots?
A Female Invasion It’s not like women aren’t qualified for the job. I know several women who manage ranches by themselves and I know several others who are just waiting to fill the void when their parents die or retire. In fact, it
Women showed their credentials in the cow business as far back as the 1800s. seems to this reporter that females seem more willing to follow in their parent’s footsteps than their brothers do. And every day that passes there are fewer roadblocks in the women’s way. The same government entities that make small business loans and microloans to minorities such as American Indians or Alaskan Natives, Asians, Blacks or African-Americans, Native Hawaiians or other Pacific Islanders and Hispanics now also makes them available to women. And I get press releases every week with headlines such as, “Holistic Resource Management is Empowering Beginning Women Ranchers.” Anyone who doubts that women have the necessary cow-
boy skills should take in a USTRC roping or a Women’s Ranch Rodeo. It’s nothing new, really, women in the cattle workplace. Twenty-five years ago Skinner Hardy, in a show of appreciation, ran a photo of his crew at Western Stockman’s Market in Famoso, California. I went back and counted heads; 14 were male and 17 were female! Women showed their credentials in the cow business as far back as the 1800s when several brave women like Amanda Burks, Sally Redus, Sally Skull and Frannie Morris, bravely rode up the cowboy trail from Texas to points further north. And many did so sidesaddle! Another factor in the women’s favor is that ranching is not as physical as it used to be. Machinery now lifts bales so people don’t have to. And a four wheeler doesn’t know, or care, who is driving. And yet, several parts of our business remain strictly a man’s world. I hope I’m not being just another male chauvinist pig when I say that I don’t know of a single purebred auctioneer, publication field man, ring man, or cow buyer who is female. I have known a couple female auction barn owners and they were great ones, as are the many female horse trainers I know. I do know one female order buyer and she’s a good one, but readily admits it hasn’t been easy. I’ve never had a female vet work on my cattle,
although I’d be more than willing to. It’s just that I don’t personally know one around these parts who works on large animals. I know of exactly one female manager of a large ranch and I’d estimate that 95% of cowboys are just that: boys. It’s been said, no doubt by a woman, “That a woman has to do twice as much as a man to be considered half as good. Fortunately, it’s not all that difficult.” We’re about to find out just how difficult. I wonder, will the new face of ranching be a woman’s? We’re about to find out. The last time I spoke to an animal science class at Cal Poly, which was a few years ago, it seemed the class was 90% women and I’d venture to say that 80 to 90% of them were enrolled in animal science because they wanted to go to vet school. Clearly the vast majority WILL NOT get accepted to vet school because there aren’t enough openings. So the rest, I presume, may try to get jobs in animal industries, which are currently dominated by males. But if the percentage of female animal science students, show ring winners and student leaders is any indication, our world is about to be turned upside down. Invaded, you might say. One way or the other, our business is going to have to make room because, ready or not, here they come!
Nordhausen Joins the American Angus Association Nordhausen to serve as Angus regional manager for Nebraska and Colorado he American Angus Association® welcomes Jay Nordhausen of Grant, Neb., as the new regional manager for Nebraska and Colorado. A talented young professional in the livestock industry, Nordhausen will play a significant role in helping Association members identify herd goals, learn new programs and services, and grow into the future. “The Angus breed and the Association mean a great deal to the beef business,” Nordhausen says. “I look forward to being part of that tradition, and working with Angus cattlemen and their customers in my area.” As a regional manager, Nordhausen will represent the Angus breed at various cattle events, sales, shows and other activities throughout the territory. Breeders are encouraged to ask him questions about Association programs and services, or for help locating Angus seedstock. He can also advise producers on marketing opportunities available through the Association, including advertising through the Angus Journal and other avenues. “Jay will be an outstanding
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asset for Angus breeders across the Midwest,” says Bryce Schumann, Association chief executive officer. “His previous experience is a solid foundation for this new role, and I encourage breeders to reach out to him for the latest in programs and services from the Association.” A native of Nebraska, Nordhausen graduated from the University of Nebraska (UNL) with a bachelor’s degree in animal science, and a master’s degree in animal science and agricultural leadership. He served as a livestock buyer and broker at Wright Livestock Inc. in North Platte, Neb., where his responsibilities included buying and selling feeder cattle and bred cattle, and coordinating delivery dates and trucking accommodations between buyer and sellers. Nordhausen also served as the interim head livestock judging coach at UNL for the 2012-2013 year. He coached students to compete at the highly competitive collegiate level, and coordinated the Nebraska State FFA livestock judging contest for 575 contestants. He also recruited potential livestock judging team members and animal science students within Nebraska and throughout the Midwest.
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Livestock Market Digest
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June 15, 2014
Incapacity the condition, but, universally, the same forces of progressivism permeate all productive deficit disorders of our society. This certainly spans politics. It also includes government, conservation, health, education, journalism, and too much of science. Those who actually create a physical product are becoming the exception and not the rule, and they are the primary targets of… the educated incapacitators.
The genesis The name is Ancel Benjamin Keys. Keys set about studying the dietary conditions that seemed to promote longevity. One phase of his quest was to detail the diet of peasants from the Mediterranean island of Crete. Another was to determine what was taking place in places like Yugoslavia, Italy and Finland that contributed to long lives. The length of time from commencement of the work to conclusion of results spanned from the end of World War II to 1961. It was then Keys landed a position on the nutritional committee of the American Heart Association (AHA). The AHA, of course, was hugely influential and it afforded a stage of gigantic proportions for Keys. There was some skepticism on the part of AHA in the Keys premise that animal fats were the root cause of most afflictions, but the organization succumbed to his hypothesis. Their decision was based largely on the absence of parallel studies defending animal fats. Since there was no rebuttal, the Key work stood without comparative review. The consensus was derived by default.
continued from page one
Fats, most specifically saturated fats, were labeled detrimental to health. Beef was nominated to the unbecoming position as the ultimate vector in the spread of the underlying disease complex. By 1977, the progressive bias was gaining critical mass. It was then a Harvard nutritionist and Keys protégé, Mark Hegsted, convinced a Senate committee to recommend the Keys diet. This was made official and universally emphatic when the USDA adopted Keys based guidelines in 1980. The storm trooping incapacitators were in business and beef was declared public enemy Numero Uno.
The malicious truth Meanwhile, attempts to duplicate the Keys findings were constantly running into difficulties. In fact, a reported one billion dollars was burned trying to duplicate and dissect the premises of his so called research. Troubling findings took place. It started with his work on Crete. The initial, critical Crete research was done on post war island residents when beef was not available because of war induced rationing. The absence of beef was a temporal condition not a permanent one and certainly not a cultural preference. Furthermore, the survey was done during Lent when the islanders were foregoing their limited supplies of meat and cheese for the Easter season. Keys’s assessment was corrupted. He purposefully picked and chose his study groups. He excluded France where healthy omelet and beef eaters drank gallons of alcohol to enhance
their culinary experiences. He also bypassed Switzerland, Sweden and West Germany where abundant fat consumers didn’t suffer from high rates of heart disease. The truth would reveal he picked and chose his study replicates to conform to his own biases and to substantiate a desired outcome. Moreover, the hoax was ultimately predicated not on the data he represented as 655 samples, but a few dozen men. The beef industry was made villainous, the participants slandered, and the United States government underwrote a war on beef of historic proportions. Educated incapacity facilitated the assault, shaped the public perception, and then frolicked and toasted their good work to their like minded fold. “Personal ambition, bad science, politics and bias derailed nutrition policy over the past half-century”, and … it’s killing people.
The emerging science The Texas A&M work is hugely welcome, but it also demonstrates the lingering expanse of corrupted societal norms now emanating from the tenets of false science attached to the entrenched Keys dietary recommendations. In his recent article in BEEF, TAMU researcher Stephen B. Smith makes a statement that highlights the point. His sentence, “Ground beef from grass-fed cattle naturally contains more omega-3 fatty acids than from grain-fed cattle (three times as much), but is higher in saturated and trans fats” subtly suggests the enduring Keys premise that saturated
fats are bad. That is what society has long been led to believe and that is what science has ostensibly blessed in terms of dietary recommendations in order to avoid heart disease among other ailments. That is counter cantering to the revealed study published by the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study also suggests there have been extensive unintended consequences. One example is the outcome of switching from fatty meats to carbohydrates. Excessive carbohydrates have led to epidemic proportions of obesity, type 2 diabetes and the very heart diseases that were blamed on fats. Another outcome is the massive switch to vegetable oils. Studies are now indicating that people consuming large amounts of those oils are more vulnerable to cancer and anomalies like gall stones. They are also more likely to die from suicides. Speculation suggests that psychological behavior disorders might be related to brain chemistry caused by these dietary changes. It may be caused by fatty acid imbalances and the depletion of cholesterol. Vegetable oils are also known to create cirrhosis of the liver and even early death. That outcome was certainly not what Americans bargained for when they were convinced to give up butter and lard. Women may be killing themselves in ever greater numbers by adhering rigorously to these dietary guidelines. One example is the insistence of maintaining low cholesterol levels. Studies now reveal HIGH levels of total cholesterol are equating to longer lives at ages over 50. The long and the short of this
debacle is that Americans are growing sicker and fatter under the nation’s dietary guidelines that trace lineage back to the so called scientists like Keys. The half century of vilifying and foregoing the consumption of beef, eggs, and whole fat dairy products has now become a modern day American deception. Who among us have heard about this nutritional study? The problem we face is the sanctity offered by societal defenses that protect the hordes suffering from educational incapacity. We are also churning these sophisticated automatons out in not just increasing numbers but accelerating rates of increase. There is too much invested in their existence and their reserved fiefdom to expect self correction. Who involved would step up and admit the horrors of this debacle? Who among them would even understand the plight they have wrought? Ron Arnold best expressed the reach of the institutional framework of this new order populated by the likes of Ancel Benjamin Keys. He wrote, “The … movement is a mature, highly developed network of top leadership stewarding vast institutional memory, a fiercely loyal cadre of competent social and political operatives and millions of high demographic members ready to mobilize as needed.” He is right, and … America is paying the absurd price. Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Someday a treatise must be written on the endless endurance and the immensity of societal contribution by the cow. This society is not yet ready to understand those implications.” Posted by Frank DuBois on The Westerner
SEBBA To Host Field Day
The Best of the Bunch
he Southeast Brangus Breeders Association (SBBA) will host a field day at the Draggin’ M Ranch in El Dorado, Ark., Aug. 22-23, 2014. All IBBA members and cattle producers are encouraged to attend. The event will kick off Friday, Aug. 22, with a social and dinner. Evon Crooks, president of the SBBA, said this will be the ideal opportunity for Brangus breeders to meet and exchange ideas on cattle programs. “This is an opportunity to learn about other genetics that are available,” Crooks said. “It’s also an opportunity to network with other breeders, and an opportunity to look at other facilities. I would say those are the three primary things an attendee would get out of attending the field day.” The Saturday program will give breeders the opportunity to listen to speakers discuss how to utilize EPDs more effectively, breeding programs, sire selection, and nutrition. “Nutrition is one of the big issues that is always on the breeder’s mind,” Crooks said. “How
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can they get more pounds for the same amount of feed . . . because that is what it’s all about.” In conjunction with educational material, the participants will have the opportunity to tour the Draggin’ M Ranch and evaluate seedstock, particularly sires. “We’ll have calves by sire groups, so they will be able to see what those bulls can do,” said John Milam, owner of the Draggin’ M Ranch. Milam and Crooks both agree this event will be beneficial for breeders to gain a social network and exchange management techniques to improve Brangus genetics as a whole. Milam said he was looking forward to having the field day at his ranch. The Milams began utilizing Brangus genetics in 2004 and have since grown to 440 registered Brangus cows and 900 total cows in his commercial operation. Milam said he utilizes artificial insemination and embryo transplant to help him raise the best stock he can. “I always strive to improve on techniques, management on any endeavor that I ever involve myself in,” Milam said.
June 15, 2014
“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”
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Mainstream media don’t know Big Green has deeper pockets than Big Oil BY RON ARNOLD, WASHINGTONEXAMINER.COM
he “Kill Keystone XL” crowd isn’t little David up against a Big Oil Goliath. As usual, conventional wisdom isn’t wisdom when the mainstream media ask all the wrong questions with commensurate answers.
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Behemoth Big Green outstrips Big Oil in expendable revenue by orders of magnitude — if you know how to follow the money. The mainstream media don’t know how. Like most liberals, their staffs are afflicted with what 20th century futurist Herman Kahn called “Educated Incapacity” — the learned inability to understand or even perceive a problem, much less a solution. They’ve been taught to be blind, unable to see Big Green as having more disposable money than Big Oil, so they don’t look into it. They would never discover that the American Petroleum Institute’s IRS Form 990 for the most recent year showed $237.9 million in assets while the Natural Resources Defense Council reported $241.8 million. Nor would they discover who started the anti-Keystone campaign in the first place. It was the $789 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund (established in 1940). The fund’s program is elaborated in a 2008 PowerPoint presentation called “The Tar Sands Campaign” by program officer Michael Northrop, who set up coordination and funding for a dozen environmental and anti-corporate attack groups to use the strategy, “raise the negatives, raise the costs, slow down and stop infrastructure, and stop pipelines.” Tom Steyer’s $100 million solo act is naive underclass nouveau cheap by comparison. Mainstream reporters appear not to be aware of the component parts that comprise Big Green: environmentalist membership groups, nonprofit law firms, nonprofit real estate trusts (The Nature Conservancy alone holds $6 billion in assets), wealthy foundations giving prescriptive grants, and agendamaking cartels such as the 200plus member Environmental Grantmakers Association. They each play a major socio-political role. Invisible fact: the environmental movement is a mature, highly developed network with top leadership stewarding a vast institutional memory, a fiercely loyal cadre of competent social and political operatives, and millions of high-demographic members ready to be mobilized as needed. That membership base is a built-in free public relations
machine responsive to the push of a social media button sending politically powerful “educational” alerts that don’t show up on election reports. Big Oil doesn’t have that, but has to pay for lobbyists, public relations firms and support groups that do show up on reports. You don’t need expert skills to connect the dots linking Keystone XL to Alberta’s oil sands to climate change to Big Green. On the other hand, you do need detailed knowledge to parse Big Green into its constituent parts. I spoke with
Washington-based environmental policy analyst Paul Driessen, who said, “U.S. environmental activist groups are a $13-billiona-year industry — and they’re all about PR and mobilizing the troops. “Their climate change campaign alone has well over a billion dollars annually, and highprofile battles against drilling, fracking, oil sands and Keystone get a big chunk of that, as demonstrated by the Rockefeller assault.” Driessen then identified the most-neglected of all money sources in Big Green: “The lib-
eral foundations that give targeted grants to Big Green operations have well over $100 billion at their disposal.” That figure is confirmed in the Foundation Center database of the Top 100 Foundations. But how much actually gets to environmental groups? The Giving USA Institute’s annual reports show $80,427,810,000 (more than $80 billion) in giving to environmental recipients from 2000 to 2012. I checked the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and found $147.3 million in assets while environ-
mental donor Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Foundation posted $5.2 billion. Driessen pointed out another unperceived sector of Big Green: government donors. “Under President Obama, government agencies have poured tens of millions into nonprofit groups for anti-hydrocarbon campaigns.” Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman adds, “The federal government is currently spending $2.6 billion [per year] on climate change research (and continued on page six
Livestock Market Digest
Page 6
June 15, 2014
Paper suggests that climate is less sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously thought BY BEN SPENCER, DAILYMAIL.CO.UK
scientific study which suggests global warming has been exaggerated was rejected by a respected journal because it might fuel climate scepticism, it was claimed recently. The alarming intervention, which raises fears of ‘McCarthyist’ pressure for environmental scientists to conform, came after a reviewer said the research was ‘less than helpful’ to the climate cause. Professor Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading and one of five authors of the study, said he suspected that intolerance of dissenting views on climate science was preventing his paper from being published. ‘The problem we now have in the climate community is
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that some scientists are mixing up their scientific role with that of a climate activist,’ he told the Times. Prof Bengtsson’s paper suggests that the Earth’s environment might be much less sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously thought. If he and his four co-authors are correct, it would mean that carbon dioxide and other pollutants are having a far less severe impact on climate than green activists would have us believe. The research, if made public, would be a huge challenge to the finding of the UN’s Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that the global average temperature would rise by up to 4.5C if greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were allowed to double. The paper suggested that the climate might be less sensitive to greenhouse gases than
had been claimed by the IPCC in its report last September, and recommended that more work be carried out ‘to reduce the underlying uncertainty’. The five contributing scientists submitted the paper to Environmental Research Letters – a highly regarded journal – but were told it had been rejected. A scientist asked by the journal to assess the paper under the peer review process reportedly wrote: ‘It is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of “errors” and worse from the climate sceptics media side.’ Prof Bengtsson, 79, said it was ‘utterly unacceptable’ to advise against publishing a paper on the political grounds. He said: ‘It is an indication of how science is gradually being influenced by political views. The reality hasn’t been keeping up with the [computer] models.
‘If people are proposing to do major changes to the world’s economic system we must have much more solid information.’ Next year the UN hopes to broker an international agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol which would impose legally binding targets on every country. The last attempt, at the Copenhagen conference in 2009, ended in disaster, with recriminations flying and all chances of a deal in tatters. The Paris conference in December 2015 is thought by many politicians to be the last realistic chance for a deal to be made if disastrous climate change is to be averted. A controversy at this stage risks putting the science which underpins the negotiations at doubt, something many – not least politicians in Britain and
Mainstream only those who support the ‘carbon dioxide is a pollutant/major greenhouse gas’ receive funding).” This web of ideological soulmates, like all movements, has its share of turf wars and dissension in the ranks, but, as disclosed on conference tapes I obtained, it shares a visceral hatred of capitalism, a worshipful trust that nature knows best, and a callous belief that humans are not natural but the nemesis of all that is natural. Lawyer Christopher Manes wrote “Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization.” Manes now practices tax litigation from his law office in Palm Springs, Calif., which he has not yet unmade. The legal branch of Big
the US – will be keen to avoid. The publisher of the Environmental Research Letters journal last night said Professor Bengtsson’s paper had been rejected because it contained errors and did not sufficiently advance the science. A spokesman for IOP Publishing said: ‘The paper, coauthored by Lennart Bengtsson, was originally submitted to Environmental Research Letters as a research Letter. ‘This was peer-reviewed by two independent reviewers, who reported that the paper contained errors and did not provide a significant advancement in the field, and therefore failed to meet the journal’s required acceptance criteria. ‘As a consequence, the independent reviewers recommended that the paper should not be published in the journal which led to the final editorial decision to reject the paper.’
continued from page five
Green is varied. Earthjustice, (formerly Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) raked in $133.8 million in the past five years — comparable to many similar law organizations. Highly litigative attack groups receiving federal settlements are numerous and thriving, such as the Center for Biological Diversity ($29.2 million in the past five years). It’s not unusual for heirs of big money to dream of unmaking the source of their wealth: Laura Rockefeller Chasin of the Rockefeller Family Fund once said, “It’s very hard to get rid of the money is a way that does more good than harm. One of the ways is to subsidize people who are trying to change the system and get rid of people like us.” The money reported to the
Riding Herd rocks, b) now have two imprints on your chest in the shape of horseshoes, c) are lucky to still be alive. #5 You reach up to milk a Guernsey and instead of finding a bag with four finger like projectiles you find a sack hanging down with two tangerine sized thingies in it. Should you, a) go ahead and try to milk the “cow” by pulling on the sack real hard, b) go ahead and hook it up to a milking machine, c) run for your life and climb very rapidly the first good sized tree you come to. #6 Jennets, Jennys and Vladimer Putin are members of the, a) Corleone family b) Kardashian family c) Osmond family d) ass family. #7 If you put a Brown Swiss, Suffolk, Poland China, Frenchman, and Santa Gertrudis all in one pen for one month you’d end up with, a) one dead sheep b) a hog with a new craving for milk c) a better smelling Frenchman, d) a Swiss
Federal Election Commission is barely the beginning of what's really happening. It doesn’t show you Big Green’s mobilized boots on the ground, the zooming Twitter tweets, the fevered protesters, the Facebook fanatics or the celebrities preaching carbon modesty from the lounges of their private jets. When self-righteous victims of Educated Incapacity insist that Big Oil outspends the poor little greenies, keep in mind the mountains of IRS Form 990s filed by thousands of groups, land trusts, lawyer outfits, foundations, and agenda-makers, just waiting for America to wake up and smell Big Green's untold hundreds of billions. RON ARNOLD, a Washington Examiner columnist, is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.
continued from page one
Santa. #8 Which of the following would you expect to find to find in a fast food burger? a) Aussie cow b) horsemeat c) Holsteins d) kangaroo e) depends on which fast food joint. #9 Tail biting, cribbing, and cannibalism are often found in, a) animals kept in close confinement, b) the U.S. Congress. #10 Essay question: What are the other three quarters of a Quarter Horse? If any student fails to pass this test they have to go stand in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles for six weeks and retake this test, or one like it, until they can pass it. Anyone scoring less than 60 percent after a dozen attempts would henceforth be forced to live on a diet of vegetarian lasagna, eggplant tacos, and tofu waffles the rest of their pitiful life as they clearly do not deserve, or possess the intelligence, to eat real food.
June 15, 2014
“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”
Page 7
Raiding and trading in the American West BY SHAWN REGAN, PERC—THE PROPERTY AND ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH CENTER
Originally appeared at The American Conservative on May 23, 2014. n 1994, economists Terry Anderson and Fred McChesney proposed a simple theory of violence on the American frontier. Their paper, published in the Journal of Law and Economics, modeled an important choice that white settlers and Indians faced when conflicts arose over land claims: Would the two groups fight or negotiate to resolve disputes? Or to put it another way, would they raid or trade? The answer, they said, depended on the relative costs of raiding and trading. If the costs of fighting decreased, perhaps because one side developed superior weaponry, then disputes were more likely to turn violent. If the costs of negotiation fell, perhaps because a tribe’s land rights were clear and recognized by other tribes, then groups were more likely to bargain to get what they wanted. After all, trade is profitable. Fighting is costly. Looking back through the historical record, Anderson and McChesney found that this straightforward economic logic explained much about Indianwhite relations. But their theory extends beyond just the old western frontier. It sheds light on why we often fight the way we do— especially in the West today. In the century following the American Revolution, life on the frontier gradually evolved from an
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era of peaceful negotiation to one of violent takings. This evolution was reflected in the relative costs of raiding and trading as the frontier advanced westward. For instance, tribes in the eastern United States were primarily agricultural societies with clearly specified rights to land. Because these rights were well defined and respected among other tribes, peaceful negotiation was in fact common between whites and Indians in the East. As the frontier expanded further west, however, Indian land rights became less clear. Plains Indians were more nomadic and reliant on wandering bison herds. This made it difficult for western tribes to enforce land claims, making trading more costly. But perhaps the most important shift from trading to raiding was the rise of a standing army after the Civil War. A standing army dramatically lowered the cost of fighting. It also created military bureaucrats whose careers and budgets depended on continued fighting. “God only knows when, and I do not see how, we can make a decent excuse for an Indian war,” General Sherman complained in 1866. It didn’t take long to find that excuse. More Indian-white battles occurred during the post-war period than at any other time, and raiding quickly supplanted trading on the frontier. The raid-or-trade model can be applied today to a number of areas where groups compete for control over limited resources. The range war brewing on federal lands in the West, witnessed last month in the standoff on Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada, is case
in point. There, where more than half of the land in western states is owned by the federal government, disputes like Bundy’s occur on a near daily basis. In many ways, these federal lands resemble the old western frontier—largely untapped and, at least in a political sense, available for the taking. Mr. Bundy’s case represents just about everything that’s wrong with federal land management today. Environmental groups file endless legal challenges over land management, forcing agencies to declare more and more areas off limits to grazing, timber harvesting, or energy development. Armed with the Endangered Species Act and other regulatory weapons, environmental groups raid the rights of existing federal land users to protect habitats they like and to stop activities they don’t like. The result is a federal land system strangled by what former U.S. Forest Service chief Jack Ward Thomas describes as a “Gordian knot” of litigation and regulation. The dispute on the Bundy Ranch began with a raid of this very sort. In 1993, the federal government—under pressure from environmental groups—forced a reduction in Bundy’s grazing permit, declaring the allotment he used as habitat for the federally protected desert tortoise. Because federal grazing permits are attached to specific private ranches or base properties, such reductions can imply a substantial loss to a base ranch’s value. (Bundy holds title to just 160 acres, so the vast majority of his ranch’s value was derived from his permit to graze cattle on the 158,666-acre Bunkerville Allotment.)
Raids like this are all too common across the West, as ranchers’ grazing permits have been weakened or taken by the feds at the behest of environmental groups. Just as in the Old West, where the rise of a standing army encouraged more raiding of Indian lands, the regulatory institutions of the New West have given rise to a standing army of environmental litigators capable of running roughshod over the rights of existing land users. The raid or trade model provides a simple explanation for why we fight the way we do: It’s just too easy to raid, and too difficult to trade. But it also teaches us that it doesn’t have to be that way. As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal, some environmentalists have begun to trade rather than raid to get what they want. In several cases, environmental groups have paid ranchers to relinquish their grazing permits to protect wildlife habitat. Others have purchased base properties and acquired the federal grazing permits attached to them, spending their own money raised from member donations. Outside of Yellowstone, environmentalists have bargained with ranchers to retire federal grazing permits, compensated ranchers for losses due to wildlife, and negotiated contracts that allow bison to migrate through private land during certain times of the year. Deals such as these are an exception to the raiding that is rampant across the West. But they represent a fundamentally different choice in the raid-ortrade calculus—one that recognizes existing property rights and seeks an honest bargain. Under-
standing how and when these trades occur is an important step to finding ways to lower the costs of negotiation far enough to encourage less raiding and more trading. As I noted in the Journal, the institutions that govern federal lands are ill-equipped to reconcile today’s competing demands in a cooperative manner. They were designed in accordance with the values of an earlier era, and with little regard to the simple fact that values change. Until these institutions evolve as well, trades like the ones I have described are likely to remain the exception rather than the norm. The history of Indian-white relations suggests one important way to encourage more trading: Property rights must be secure and transferable. But as Mr. Bundy discovered when his permit was sacrificed for the sake of tortoise habitat, grazing permits are far from secure. The Taylor Grazing Act, the 1934 act that regulates grazing on federal lands, refers only to “grazing privileges,” and recent regulations have continually weakened the security of those privileges. Trading will prevail only when grazing privileges are recognized as secure property rights. (Of course, the best way to encourage trading is for federal rangelands to be privatized completely. This is unlikely to happen any time soon, so it is useful to find intermediate solutions that promote trading. In order for that to happen, grazing permits must be treated as property rights to the fullest extent possible.) Even if grazing rights are well continued on page eight
Livestock Market Digest
Page 8
Raiding defined and respected, they must also be transferable. Federal grazing rules, however, generally prevent ranchers from trading permits to environmentalists who do not intend to run livestock on the land. As one environmental group in Arizona found out when they purchased a base property in 2005, the associated grazing permit required them to graze cattle or lose the permit. Such a requirement clearly raises the costs of trading for groups that want to use rangelands for purposes other than grazing. Several of the deals that occur today are less than ideal due to such trade barriers. Environmental groups pay ranchers to relinquish their permits but then must convince the BLM to temporarily retire the allotment to keep other ranchers from claiming it as unused. In a grazing regime like this—with weak property rights and restrictions on the transfers that are allowed—it’s no wonder most environmentalists raid rather than trade. It’s not clear that ranchers benefit from a regime that discourages trading either. An analysis of federal grazing permits by economists Myles Watts and Lorraine Egan found a seemingly backwards economic result: As the value of the federal rangeland rises, thanks to increasing demands for environmental uses, grazing permit values have declined. “If the rights to grazing permits were secure and transferable,” Watts and Egan explain, “then grazing permits values would not decrease in value as noncommercial uses become more desired.” Indeed, the opposite would happen. Permits would become more valuable as competing groups bargained for gains from trade. Since grazing rights cannot be traded in market institutions based on property rights they are liable to be raided through political institutions, casting uncertainty on their value today. Of course, in order for trading to succeed, groups must be prevented from simply taking what they want at little or no cost to themselves. But today’s standing army of environmental litigators benefit from raiding rather than trading—and, in many cases, the federal government even ends up footing the bill for environmental groups that sue. Any attempt to promote trading must also reduce these groups’ regulatory power to raid. At the same time, much more needs to be done to lower the costs of trading among competing groups. Leasing reforms are needed to accommodate a host of different values on federal land, and permits should be recognized as secure and transferable property rights. Moreover, those permits should be allowed to migrate to their most-valued use, whether that’s cattle grazing or tortoise habitat. What’s certain is that today’s federal land institutions promote far too much raiding. As the Bundy standoff has shown us, conflicts over land use can erupt into full-on range wars. The raid-or-
continued from page seven
trade model provides a clear and useful lesson: If property rights are well defined and transferable, then disputes among even the most diverse groups are more likely to get resolved peacefully. Finding ways to strengthen property rights, even in the context of federal lands, would go a long way to changing how we fight over land in the West—or whether we even fight at all.
June 15, 2014
THE LIVESTOCK MARKET DIGEST
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“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”
June 15, 2014
To place your Real Estate Guide listings, contact RANDY SUMMERS at 505/243-9515 or RON ARCHER at 505/865-6011
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In the Rio Grande Valley. Custom-built home with 100 acres of irrigated land. House has approximately 3,700 sq. ft., 4 bedrooms, and 2 baths. One hour from Albuquerque Int’l Airport. Close to 5 racetracks: Sunland, Ruidoso, Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Farmington.
Tom Hardesty Sam Hubbell 520-609-2456
POLVEDERA, NM Horse facility on 7 acres. Metal barn with 22 stables. Hay barn, work shop, 2 mfg. homes $169,000.
1100 ACRE RANCH in San Antonio, NM $335,000. BLM allotment
W-R RANCH
18,560 ACRES 20 MILES NORTHEAST OF ROSWELL, N.M. ❙
680 Deeded Acres
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17,900 State Lease Acres
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927 BLM Acres
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300 Animal Units Year Long
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Good fences; 4-strand barbwire
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Newly remodeled Southwestern Home
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Good water; windmill and submergible tanks
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$1,800,000
CHARLES BENNETT United Country / Vista Nueva, Inc. 575/356-5616 www.vista-nueva.com
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O’NEILL LAND, LLC P.O. Box 145, Cimarron, NM 87714 • 575/376-2341 • Fax: 575/376-2347 land@swranches.com • www.swranches.com Good inventory in the Miami, Springer, Maxwell and Cimarron area. Great year-round climate suitable for horses. Give yourself and your horses a break and come on up to the Cimarron Country.
Miami Horse Training Facility. Ideal horse training facility w/large 4 bedroom 3 bathroom approx 3,593 sq ft home, 248.32± deeded acres, 208 irrigation shares, 30' X 60' metal sided shop/ bunkhouse, 8 stall barn w/tack room, 7 stall barn w/storage, 10 stall open sided barn w/10 ft alley, 2 stall loafing shed, 14 11' x 24' Run-In Shelters, 135' Round Pen, Priefert six horse panel walker. Many more features & improvements. All you need for a serious horse operation in serious horse country of Miami New Mexico. Additional 150 acres available on south side of road. Miami is at the perfect year round horse training elevation of 6,200. Far enough south to have mostly mild winters. Convenient to I-25. $1,550,000. REDUCED! Miami Horse Heaven. Very private approx. 4,800 sq. ft. double-walled adobe 4 bed., 3 bath home w/many custom features, 77.5± deeded acres & 77.25± water shares, large 7 stall horse barn, large insulated metal shop, large haybarn/equipment shed, all for
$1,375,000, plus an additional 160+/- deeded acres w/142 water shares avail. $560,000 (subject to purchase of 77.5± deeded acre parcel.) Krause Ranch. 939.37 +/- deeded acres. 88 Springer Ditch Company water shares. Mostly west of I;25, exit 414. Big views. $725,000. Miami Mountain View. 80± deeded acres w/80 water shares & house. $540,000. Miami. 10± deeded acres, awesome home, total remodel, awesome views $295,000. Miami WOW. Big home in Santa Fe Style great for family on 3 acres. $249,000.
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Miami Tangle Foot. 10.02± deeded acres w/water shares & meter. $118,000. Maxwell. 19.5± deeded acres, water, outbuildings, great horse set up. $234,000. Canadian River. 39.088± deeded acres, w/nice ranch home & river. $279,000. CONTRACT PENDING
O’NEILL AGRICULTURAL, LLC “Offers computer-generated color custom mapping service on digital USGS base maps. Hang a map in your office that looks like your ranch, w/water lines, pastures & roads etc. Put your ranch on one piece of paper.”
RON ARCHER 505-865-6011 • ron@aaalivestock.com Livestock Market Digest PO Box 7458, Albuquerque, NM 87194
Parker Joins IIAD Team lizabeth Parker, DVM, is bringing her unique experience in domestic and international animal health policy to the Institute for Infectious Animal Diseases (IIAD) where she will serve as the chief veterinarian effective August 18, 2014. Skilled in navigating the intricacies between science, government and practicality, Dr. Parker adds an impressive set of skills to an already strong research, development and programmatic team. Dr. Parker comes to IIAD from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, Italy, where she serves as an animal health officer in the Animal Production and Health Division, a position she has held since January 2012. Prior to her international services, Dr. Parker was the Chief Veterinarian for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in Washington, D.C., where she served the nation’s beef industry by leading the association’s domestic and international animal health efforts. During her time in Washington, D.C., she also served the House Committee on Agriculture, first as the 1999-2000 American Veterinary Medical Association’s Congressional Science Fellow for Ranking Member Charlie Stenholm (D-TX), then as a professional staff member for then-Chairman Larry Combest (R-TX), followed by Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA). During her time on the committee from 1999 to 2006, she worked on fruit and vegetable issues, viticulture, marketing orders and promotion programs, livestock issues, animal and plant health, pesticides, biotechnology, homeland security, food safety and honey issues. She holds a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine and two bachelor of science degrees, all from Texas A&M University. At IIAD, Dr. Parker will utilize her extensive national and international experience and network to develop collaborations between IIAD and animal health stakeholders, including private business, agriculture associations and veterinary practitioners, as well as federal and international governments. “As the Institute expands its partnerships globally, it is important that we have a dedicated professional on staff to foster and facilitate these relationships” says Tammy Beckham, IIAD director. “Dr. Parker’s international experience, combined with her professional education and practical approach, makes her an ideal fit for this role.” In addition to her work with IIAD, Parker will hold a joint appointment with the Office of the Director, Texas A&M AgriLife Research, serving as a subject matter expert related to livestock and animal health. In this role, she will assist with research proposals, technical and operational responses, grant writing and other funding requests for veterinary and animal health efforts. “Healthy animals are the foun-
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Livestock Market Digest
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By Frank DuBois
My column this month covers monuments, mice, wild horses and Gandhi Another anti-rancher monument n May 21, 2014 President Obama issued a proclamation to create the 500,000 acre Organ MountainsDesert Peaks National Monument. Unfortunately it contained the same bad grazing language as was used in the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. The proclamations say grazing can continue but it must be “consistent” with the purposes of the monument, in other words wildlife, recreation, science and so on. As I’ve written before, this sets up a dual management system where the items listed as purposes become the dominant use, while grazing becomes subservient. This consistency language is a relatively new phenomenon. For instance there was no consistency language in President Clinton’s proclamation creating the huge Grand StaircaseEscalante National Monument. However, the enviros weren’t winning some of their lawsuits against grazing in monuments so the consistency language has been added. All of this has been explained to Senators Udall and Heinrich, but to no avail. They have now hit the northern and southern parts of New Mexico and those living in other areas of the state better get ready. The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance has identified over three million acres they want to see “protected” and President Obama, while signing this most
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recent proclamation said, “And I am not finished.”
The tale of two Udalls I’m not the only one concerned about the negative impact on grazing a monument designation will bring. On the same day Senator Tom Udall introduced his legislation (S. 1805) to designate the monument, his cousin, Senator Mark Udall (D-Colo.) introduced legislation (S. 1794) to do the same in Colorado. His approach to grazing is far different than New Mexico’s Udall. First, grazing is mentioned in the Findings section with the following language: permanently protecting the values described in paragraph (1) while sustaining the local ranching economy would enhance the economic prosperity of local communities that depend on the area Then he includes grazing in the Purposes section with this language: to sustain traditional uses in the Browns Canyon area, including hunting, angling, livestock grazing, commercial outfitting, and boating And in the Management section he has the following language on grazing: . . . the laws (including regulations) and policies followed by the Secretary concerned in issuing and administering grazing permits or leases for the National Monument shall continue to apply in the same manner as on the day before the date of enactment of this Act.
(ii) Effect of designation.–There shall be no curtailment of grazing in the National Monument or Wilderness simply because of a designation under this Act. (iii) Adjustments.–Any adjustments in the numbers of livestock permitted to graze in the National Monument or Wilderness shall be based on revisions in the normal grazing and land management planning and policy setting process, giving consideration to legal mandates, range condition, and the protection of range resources from deterioration. That’s pretty strong wording and you won’t find the “consistency” language because livestock grazing is listed as one of the purposes. The Colorado Udall wants to protect special lands, but do so in a manner that also protects ranching and the local economy, while the New Mexico Udall wants to designate monuments and wilderness and is apparently unconcerned about the negative impacts on our ranching families.
Ratones sí, ganado no What’s the big deal about a measly 23 acres in a 200 cow outfit? Well, it’s a darn big deal when it controls your access to water. On the Lincoln National Forest the feds have put a pipe fence around the banks of the Agua Chiquita to protect a riparian area and habitat for the meadow jumping mouse. In response, the Otero County Commission passed a resolution instructing the County Sheriff to “immediately take steps to remove or open gates that are unlawfully denying citizens access to their private property rights.” That made the national news and resulted in a meeting in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Albuquerque. According to Blair Dunn, the attorney representing Otero County, the meeting was a disappointment. “It was very frustrating for the sheriff and the county commissioners to go all that way, have that meeting in good faith,
June 15, 2014 and nobody in that room from the federal government ever had any intention of compromising,” said Dunn. Otero County Commissioner Ronny Rardin indicated the dispute is far from over saying, “Ultimately, it is incumbent upon the commission, the sheriff and the citizens of Otero County to stand up for our constitutional rights.” Congressman Pearce says, “These disputes could be easily avoided if federal bureaucrats would stick to their constitutional oath and respect property rights” and Gary Stone, President of the local cattlemen’s association says, “If we let them take over our water rights, that’s the first step. Then we would have nothing left here.” A Forest Service official has explained the fence was authorized using the NEPA process and to even open the gate they would have to repeat the lengthy planning document. If the Forest Service really wanted that gate open you can bet the FONSI would have already been completed and filed. In the meantime, Otero County Sheriff Benny House says he will continue his investigation to determine if the Forest Service broke any state laws.
Wild horses & wild rides In Utah and Nevada there are contentious issues over wild horses, access roads and livestock grazing. Utah ranchers are suing BLM for not removing the prescribed number of horses, which are denuding the range and causing all sorts of resource damage. They are doing so with the backing of
two counties, state wildlife officials and the Governor. One county commissioner says BLM’s recent proposal to remove 200 horses is a “joke”. Another Utah county commissioner has fired up his ATV to take a ride on a road the BLM claims is on their land and has closed. He and an estimated fifty other protesters did this in spite of BLM’s threat to prosecute. In Nevada, Elko County Commissioner Grant Gerber is reacting to BLM’s order to not allow livestock grazing on selected allotments for all of 2014. He is organizing a “Grass March” where individuals on Memorial Day weekend will ride their horses over a seventy mile trek from Elko to Battle Mountain. Gerber says the “Grass March” is patterned after Gandhi’s “Salt March” in the 1930s. Gerber explains the British government “had a total monopoly on all salt. A citizen of India was even prevented from distilling a little salt from ocean water for his family. All salt had to be bought from the British government. In Nevada the federal government has a monopoly on Nevada land and the grass. The government owns 87 percent of the land, but also exercises total control over much of the private land as well. The effective control of the government exceeds 92 percent of the grass in Nevada.” Let’s hope the “Grass March” is as successful as the “Salt March”. 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 (http://www.nmsu.edu/~duboisrodeo/).
Mafi Joins the American Angus Association Mafi to serve as Angus regional manager for Kansas and Oklahoma he American Angus Association® welcomes Jeff Mafi of Coyle, Okla., as the new regional manager for Kansas and Oklahoma. Bringing years of experience in the purebred business to the Angus breed, Mafi will play a significant role in helping Association members identify herd goals, learn new programs and services, and grow into the future. “It’s a tremendous honor to be part of the American Angus Association,” Mafi says. “I truly look forward to getting started, meeting the producers in my area and learning how I can best serve them in my new role.” As a regional manager, Mafi will represent the Angus breed at various cattle events, sales, shows and other activities throughout the territory. Breeders are encouraged to ask him questions about Association programs and services, or for help locating Angus seedstock. He can also advise producers on marketing opportunities available through the Association, including advertising through the Angus Journal
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and other avenues. “Jeff’s wealth of experience lends itself well to connecting with Angus breeders and their commercial customers, sharing information on the latest programs, and genuinely helping them move their herds forward,” says Bryce Schumann, Association chief executive officer. A native of Oklahoma, Mafi graduated from Oklahoma State University (OSU) with a bachelor’s degree in animal science and a master’s degree in meat science. He previously served as senior herdsman for the OSU Purebred Beef Cattle Center in Stillwater, Okla. For nearly eight years, his general responsibilities included managing genetic selection and breeding for all females, developing bulls for registered and commercial breeders, and managing the annual production sale. Throughout his time in the business, Mafi has also served as a member of the OSU Animal Science Alumni Association Board of Directors, was a past president of the Intercollegiate Livestock Judging Coaches Association, and an instructor for the Michigan State University Department of Animal Science.
June 15, 2014
“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”
Page 11
Horse specialist warns of heat-related illness
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ummer is the primary season for many equine competitions, and intense exercise coupled with a high ambient temperature can quickly put a horse in the danger zone of heat-related illness. “There are several things a person can do to prevent their horse from developing heatstroke, or hyperthermia,” said Jason Turner, New Mexico State University’s Extension equine specialist. “The most important things are to prepare your horse for a heat stress environment and to be aware of your horse’s body temperature while in that environment.” Heatstroke may occur when a horse’s body temperature goes higher than the normal rectal temperature range of 99 to 100.5 degrees. The horse’s natural thermoregulatory mechanisms are capable of maintaining this normal body temperature except when overwhelmed by severe circumstances, such as disease or intense exercise in hot climates. “Heatstroke is a serious condition that can be fatal if not dealt with quickly,” said Turner. “There are several signs that the horse is experiencing hyperthermia. How
the horse is acting is one of the first visual signs.” Is it lethargic? Is it sweating profusely? Or is there an absence of sweating altogether? Perspiration is the way animals reduce their body temperature when it increases above a normal range. The sweat that is produced evaporates and cools the body surface. “Some horses may suffer from a condition called anhidrosis, a disorder where the horse does not sweat normally,” Turner said. “These horses are especially prone to hyperthermia if not managed appropriately. The specific cause of anhidrosis is unknown; however, it is thought that there is a physiological defect at the level of the sweat gland that inhibits sweating. A veterinarian can perform diagnostic tests that can confirm this condition if the owner suspects their horse might be afflicted.” Clinical signs that the horse is experiencing heatstroke are elevated respiratory rate of 40 to 50 breaths per minute instead of the normal eight to 16; heart rate of 80 or more beats per minute compared to the normal resting heart rate of 36 to 44 beats per
minute; and a rectal temperature over 103 degrees. “Hyperthermia most often occurs as a result of inadequate physical conditioning, extreme hot and humid conditions, a weakened thermoregulatory system, or a combination of the three,” Turner said. “The heat index, which is the temperature plus humidity, gives a means of assessing the danger that extreme environmental conditions pose to horses performing intense exercise in such an environment.” If the heat index is less than 130, which occurs at 100 degrees and 30 percent relative humidity, the horse’s built-in cooling mechanisms are usually capable of dissipating the excess body head generated during exercise. “However, when the heat index is greater than 150, which occurs at 100 degrees and 50 percent or higher relative humidity, the horse will probably need assistance in order to prevent heatstroke,” Turner said. “Owners should proceed cautiously when, or seek alternatives to, exercising horse in situations where the heat index is greater than 170 or the relative humidity is above 75 per-
Vesicular Stomatitis Detected in Five Horses in Kinney County, Texas First Case in the US This Year esicular stomatitis (VS) has been detected in five horses in far Southwest Texas, (in Kinney County, southeast of Del Rio, TX). The U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) confirmed the viral infection of the five horses. The horses were tested after the owner observed blistering and swelling on the animals' muzzles and contacted their veterinary practitioner. Testing at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) confirmed the virus as the New Jersey serotype. VS can cause blisters and sores in the mouth and on the tongue, muzzle, teats or hooves of horses, cattle, swine, sheep, goats, llamas and a number of other animals. Lesions usually will heal in two or three weeks. Because of the contagious nature of VS and its resemblance to other diseases such as foot and mouth disease (FMD), animal health officials urge livestock owners and caretakers to report these symptoms to their
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veterinarian immediately. Most animals recover well with supportive care by a veterinarian, but some lesions can be painful. The newly identified infected group of horses is currently under quarantine by the TAHC. Affected and exposed horses will be monitored by regulatory veterinarians until all lesions have healed and a decision is made to release the quarantine (a minimum of 21 days). There is no known exposure to other horses around the state, or at any equine events. No other cases of VS have been identified in the immediate area or elsewhere in the state. Dr. Dee Ellis, Texas’ State Veterinarian and TAHC Executive Director, said “Livestock owners should use the best means possible to limit exposure of their livestock to insect bites.” It is thought that insects are an important vector in the transmission of VS. Sand flies and black flies likely play a role in the virus transmission, so controlling insects is important. “VS outbreaks are extremely sporadic and years may lapse between cases. The last confirmed case of
Parker dation of a safe food supply and strong livestock sector. As IIAD products and programs grow and expand, it is important to be involved with our partners throughout the entire development and deployment process to ensure we are meeting the needs of our customers – from Texas farmers and ranchers, private industry and government,” says
VS in Texas was in 2009,” Dr. Ellis stated. Some states and other countries may restrict movement of, or impose additional requirements for susceptible animals from states having known cases of VS, therefore contact the state or country of origin for their requirements prior to moving livestock. “If you suspect your animal may have VS, you should notify your veterinarian immediately,” said Dr. Andy Schwartz, Assistant Executive Director and State Epidemiologist. “VS is not highly contagious to people but it can cause flu-like illness if infected saliva gets into an open wound, eyes or mouth. People handling potentially infected animals should wear gloves for protection, and talk with their physician if they have questions,” Dr. Schwartz stated. For more information about VS visit www.tahc.state.tx.us/news/brochures/TAHCB rochure_VS. pdf .
cent, since these conditions severely diminish the effectiveness of the horse’s thermoregulatory systems. “Prevention is the best medicine” also goes for heat stress for horses. With our normal low relative humidity, New Mexico’s arid climate is not usually a pre-disposing factor to heat stress in horses. However, one needs to consider the climate at the competition location. For example, a New Mexico-trained horse that is shipped to North Central Texas or Oklahoma in July or August is not acclimated to that area. Environmental conditions there increase the likelihood of heat stress in horses not accustomed to the heat and humidity. “If it is possible, avoid strenuous exercise of horses when the heat index is near the danger zone,” Turner said. “This may require adjusting your training or exercise schedule to do intense work early in the morning or late at night when ambient temperatures are lower.” If a horse must be worked in a heat index situation, Turner suggest owners view the NMSU Extension guide regarding helping horses handle heat stress located on College of Agricultural, Consumer and Envi-
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Livestock Market Digest’s
A USDA APHIS-VS fact sheet about Vesicular Stomatitis is available at www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/animal_he alth/content/printable_version/fs_vesicular_s tomatitis_2012.pdf
FALL MARKETING EDITION
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Parker. “IIAD is a leader in research, technology and education related to animal disease issues, and I look forward to being part of the Institute and the dynamic Texas A&M team, facilitating this important link between IIAD and its customers.” “Dr. Parker is an experienced policy professional with expertise in science and technology issues,
coupled with excellent analytical skills,” says Beckham. “She is a strong leader and an effective communicator with impressive consensus-buildings kills. Her knowledge of U.S. and international protocol, and experience in all levels of government will ensure IIAD’s projects and partnerships continue to lead the way in protecting agriculture and public health globally.”
ronmental Sciences website at aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_b/b711/welcome.html. “There are several means of relieving heat stress,” Turner said. “The primary goal is to lower the horse’s body temperature as rapidly as possible, and this is done by employing ‘active cooling’ methods that make the most efficient use of the heat loss mechanism that include evaporation, conduction, convection and radiation.” Those methods includes cool water bathing, which can be done with a garden hose or a sponge and bucket; increasing air flow by placing the horse in front of a fan or in a natural breeze; shading by keeping the horse out of the sun; and drinking cool water by giving the horse water to restore the body fluids lost in sweat. “Sweating results in a significant loss of body fluid, so it is important to monitor the horse and ensure that normal body fluid levels are maintained,” Turner said. “Horses that are moderately dehydrated, 4 to 9 percent loss of body fluid, will show decreased skin elasticity, poor capillary refill time of the gums, reduced saliva production, sunken eye sockets, muscle weakness and fatigue.”
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RON ARCHER 505-865-6011 ron@aaalivestock.com Livestock Market Digest PO Box 7458 Albuquerque, NM 87194
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Livestock Market Digest
Page 12
NMSU Creates Drought-Tolerant Alfalfa BY KRWG NEWS AND PARTNERS
obert Flynn and Ian Ray, both alfalfa experts at New Mexico State University, have been researching a new drought-tolerant alfalfa variety. The Billy Melton variety, developed by Ray, NMSU professor of agronomy, was named in honor of Bill Melton, an NMSU professor who had an alfalfa-breeding program in the late 1970s and began developing varieties that had higher drought tolerance. Ray and Flynn evaluated the NuMex Bill Melton variety under stress-inducing factors, such as using sufficient to limited water. Compared to other drought-tolerant varieties, such as the Wilson variety, it produced better yields and better quality. Research proved that this variety performs under drought conditions as well as under regular irrigation practices using more water. This alfalfa variety was released in June 2009 and was favorably reviewed by the National Alfalfa and Miscellaneous Legume Variety Review Board in January 2010. “A lot of alfalfa varieties do well under normal irrigation practices, but once water is withheld, they don’t do so well,” said Flynn, agronomist at NMSU’s Agricultural Science Center at Artesia. “This variety offers the promise of production in a cli-
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mate where production may not have been possible before.” Contrary to popular belief, this variety was not genetically modified. It took almost 12 years to make, slowly being created and curated using traditional methods and was specifically designed to meet the needs of growers across New Mexico. “It takes time to develop a variety like this,” Flynn said. “Sequences of genes in the plant influence yields even when there is lack of water. Ray took those genes and incorporated them into a new line that carries that marker and performs well.” Ray used state-of-the-art technology to find the genetic codes that allow this alfalfa to persist under drought conditions and yield marketable alfalfa where others can’t. “Since this cultivar yields well in wet and dry soil conditions, it should help farmers have more stable forage yields in wet years and dry years,” Ray said. “In dry years, however, regardless of the cultivar, yields will be less if insufficient moisture is provided to the crop.” NuMex Bill Melton has been tested in different locations across New Mexico, taking into account different elevations and irrigation practices. “This helps us see how it does in different climate conditions in
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New Central City Scale Grain Cart Scale App-Based Wireless System For Mobile Devices entral City Scale announces their new Grain Cart Scale Appbased wireless system that connects mobile devices like smart phones and tablets to grain cart weigh load bars. All in-range mobile devices with the CCS App shows, in real time, indicator displays to everyone working with your harvest operation from Combine operator,tractor-grain cart operator, truck driver and farm manager. The system uses a patent pending Agrimatics Libra TM Bluetooth® transmitter that installs on the grain cart and wires to the junction box connected to the weigh-bars. An in-tractor tablet or smartphone communicates wirelessly
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different regions in the state, and this information is useful for all growers in New Mexico,” he said. This year marks the culmination of their research and trials that have led to creating the optimal characteristics that make up the Billy Melton variety. “The positive aspect of this variety is that it will produce under drought conditions and more than other varieties,” Flynn added. “It will generate income for growers because it will have higher yields than other varieties with less water.” This variety could potentially impact other industries such as dairy and livestock, since it produces quality alfalfa with the protein necessary for the animals’ diet. Flynn and Ray will continue to monitor the different trial plots around the state throughout the year to evaluate and compare the Billy Melton variety to other varieties until it becomes commercially available next year. “We want to look for other characteristics that make this variety successful in our region,” Flynn said. “This variety holds great promise to grow and yield under limited conditions.”
with the grain cart to become the scale indicator. Cloud-connectivity unifies the system across your entire operation. Crop-flow transactions can be emailed or optionally stored securely in the cloud for access wherever you are. Wireless and battery operated means that it’s simple to install. Power – efficient design allows getting through a season without replacing the battery. Rugged design handles extreme temperature, vibration, mud, sun, rain and snow. Built rugged to withstand extreme temperature and high vibration which is the norm for farm field environments. Now you can manage your records on and off the field without any log books, flash drives or printers, making farm management a little easier. P.O. Box 7458 Albuquerque, NM 87194 505/243-9515 • Fax 505/998-6236 caren@aaalivestock.com www.aaalivestock.com
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June 15, 2014
Dear Editor, enator Harry Reid claims Cliven Bundy is a domestic terrorist. Senator Dean Heller says no he is a domestic patriot. Reid retorts he is not a patriot because he broke the law. When I think of patriots I think of people that unlawfully entered a ship in Boston Harbor and illegally stole the tea cargo, then destroyed it by throwing it into the Harbor. Some of us called those people patriots even though they ignored the law as established by the Crown of England. I think Mr. Bundy and his followers were patriots even though they ignored the law established by the Crown of Washington. Mr. Bundy did not pay the contested grazing fee for 20 years. Senator Reid gets his former employee installed as head of the BLM and within days he shows up in Bunkerville, Nevada, with 200 armed pseudo-officers of the law. Something smells bad. – Julian C. Smith, Jr.
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Man Against Beast an against beast is a theme in many a story, from days of yore to 21st century wolves ravaging baby calves. It normally takes a hero to slay the dragon or sue the EPA. Heroes are often battling with giants, against all odds; David and Goliath, Jack and the Beanstalk, or The Alamosa High School Maroons vs Miami Heat. Dennis had his opportunity to rise to the occasion. He is a farmer-feeder in the San Luis Valley. That part of Colorado demands a persistent, patient sort of person. The stubborn soil, fickle moisture and independent neighbors don’t tolerate pansies. Dennis came home from his day job. Days were getting short. He also had a meeting with the La Jara Stake after he finished his chores. He had a line of concrete feed bunks and was feeding his cow heard. The 1981 4440 John Deere that he inherited was still in service. He loaded his Jay Lore feeder-mixer that was hooked up to his farm truck. His dog jumped in the cab with Dennis and they started down the line of bunks. All of a sudden a mouse shot across the dashboard right to left! Denny reared back as the dog leaped into his lap, looking over the steering wheel in search of the rambling rodent!
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The mouse reversed his direction . . . the dog was barking and bouncing back and forth . . . Dennis was banging the dashboard trying to crush Mickey with his free hand, or both hands! The agile vermin leaped from the dashboard onto the back of the seat. He crawled over Dennis’ shoulder and dove down between his legs . . . the dog followed! Luckily, or unluckily, the varmint slid over the seat and down his irrigation boot! Denny smashed the furry critter against his leg through the rubber boot top. He held the trespasser tight, like one would grip a hot dog through the bun. It was then he looked up. He was in the part ditch long past the bunks. The Jay Lore was 30 degrees off level from the truck, which was 30 degrees off level from the gravel road. Thank goodness he hit a culvert and high-centered the front axle. There was a SCREECH! and the rig ground to a halt. It was one of those “Thank you, Lord,” moments. Later at the meeting he portrayed the incident as a miracle of sorts, hoping his explanation would lessen the impact on his neighbor, the Bishop, when he noticed 50 feet of his new wire fence had been ripped out by its posts.
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June 15, 2014
The Commies are coming BY BARRY DENTON
y neighbors just finished tripping some wild steers and tying them down Arizona cowboy style. Yes, they will go back and get the steers after they cool off. Unlike the government cowboys who slaughtered the Bundy cattle in Nevada they will go back and take their steers home instead of burying them. The government must have hired some “REAL” cowboys to pull off that stunt. Were you not impressed that the government tore up the livestock waters on the Bundy Ranch? What bravery they demonstrated. How does that help the wildlife that is still there when the cattle leave? Why don’t we hear from People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals in regard to Cliven Bundy’s slaughtered cattle? Perhaps slaughtering Bundy’s cattle was the government’s way of saving the ozone from cattle emissions? We truly have a bunch of miseducated nuts running this country. Have you noticed that the people that preach tolerance are often the most intolerant? Time and again the American cattle rancher gets attacked by its own
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government. The United States government resorts to gunships, armored cars, and highly armed officers to deal with a handful of cowboys who never hurt anyone? Maybe it was caused by a senator’s greed? It was just a few years ago that ranchers worked with the government to advance conservation. The United States Forest Ranger was your friend and helper. However, things have changed and the government has declared war on cattle ranchers. Whoever thought that Americans would have to fear their own government? It started about ten years ago around here. Our ranger of thirty years retired and was replaced with an arrogant twenty-fiveyear-old city slicker that knew nothing about grazing or cattle. One day he shows up and introduces himself as the new ranger. The first thing he informed us of were his suggestions on how we should manage our allotment. He wanted to switch our winter country with our summer country. I asked him if he was the stupidest person on earth and he actually thought he was pretty smart. We had only managed this allotment successfully for over sixty years. Just to be clear the winter country has canyons, trees, and
lots of oak brush so the cattle have shelter and feed in the winter. Our summer country was a big wide open grassy plain which responded well to spring rains with abundant forage. Since your ranger can only suggest crazy ideas and cannot force you to implement them we didn’t change. However, he came by about once a week with some new crazy scheme. We had a natural spring that we maintained and it always had water when other places did not. Our ranger determined that the cattle were ruining the “riparian area”. I asked how he had determined that? He pointed to a cottonwood sapling near the spring and began his diatribe explaining that they count the broken branches on a sapling. If there were more than ten breaks then there were too many cattle in the riparian area. He also pointed to all the tracks at the base of the sapling. First I asked him if he actually believed that counting branches on a sapling was an accurate way to determine there were too many cattle at the spring. He swore he really believed it. I then asked him if he knew what a deer track looked like. He said he did and I called him a liar. With a puzzled look he asked me why I called him that. I explained that his riparian area was covered with deer tracks and that cattle had not been there in over four months. Needless to say, that did shut him up for awhile. To make a long story short we did have a chance to sell the forest allotment so we did. We had
Colostrum: Liquid gold for kid goats and lambs A well-planned colostrum feeding program can help shepherds and goat producers minimize pre-weaning mortality rates BY DR. TOM EARLEYWINE, DIRECTOR OF NUTRITIONAL SERVICES FOR LAND O’LAKES ANIMAL MILK PRODUCTS
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What can we do to fight this oppression of the rancher? I think voting in the right folks would be a start in turning it around, but what do we do in the meantime? I’ve never seen America in such a rut of government takeover of everything. Our freedom guaranteed by the United States Constitution is being eroded on a daily basis. Political correctness does nothing but impede free speech. Where are we going to end up? Let’s stand up for ourselves before it is too late. How did cattle ranchers, military veterans, and independent thinking citizens become enemies of the country they would die to support?
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Colostrum is key in keeping death loss numbers in check. The ewe or doe supplies protection as antibodies that are concentrated in colostrum as immunoglobulins (IgGs). These antibodies help the newborn to fend off intestinal, respiratory and other diseases. High energy levels found in colostrum also help newborns to stay warm while dense levels of immune factors and Vitamins A and E can promote a healthy start to the digestive and respiratory systems.[3] This protection against the elements hinges on high quality colostrum fed immediately following birth. Lambs and kids should receive 10 percent of their body weight in colostrum by 18 hours of age. For example, a 10 pound lamb should be fed 1 pound (or 16 ounces) of colostrum in its first day of life. At least half of this volume should be fed within 4 to 8 hours. Colostrum and colostrum replacements should be fed at about 105 degrees F. Researchers at the University of Maryland recently stated that, when feeding the first colostrum, within “30 minutes is optimum while 18 hours is a must.”[4] Timing is crucial because the protective antibodies found in colostrum can only cross the intestinal wall and enter the bloodstream during this time. The intestinal wall begins to stop passive transfer of antibodies hours after birth, so immediate feeding of colostrum is desired. To ensure proper consumption in the necessary time, colostrum can be hand-fed via bottle or stomach tube. The necessary levels can be fed in three increments throughout the first 18 hours for adequate consumption. Once in the system, the maternally-derived antibodies help fight off infections, while the lamb builds its own stable immune system.[5]
other places to run our cattle without government interference. However, many others do not have that choice. The other thing that always baffled me about running cattle on the forest service was their fake concern for the land and wildlife. They would try and control the rancher’s every move, but when ATV folks tore up your pasture it was of no concern to them. Vandalism of water tanks and wells was never taken seriously either. It’s funny how the government would forget that they had a lease agreement with you and thought you had no rights as well. They certainly convinced me that they are truly evil.
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olostrum is often likened to liquid gold. The first feeding of antibodies has long been associated with immediate immune protection for calves, but the power of the first feeding is sometimes overlooked in small ruminants. This step is just as important in newborn lambs and kid goats, as management of newborns can play a significant role in a flock or herd’s long-term productivity potential. Colostrum, or the first milk of the ewe or doe, is the first protection that lambs and kids receive against environmental pathogens and bacteria. Newborns must be protected following birth because antibodies in the ewe’s or doe’s bloodstream do not cross the placenta.[1] The antibodies can only be received by consuming colostrum. Following birth, the lamb or kid is exposed to bacteria and pathogens that its immune system is unfamiliar with. Without protection, the new life can be in danger – leading to an increase in preweaning health issues and mortality rates. In fact, industry estimates show that nearly 20 percent of lambs die before weaning with 80 percent of these losses experienced during the first 10 days of life.[2] Research on kid pre-weaning mortality rates shows similar trends. Realistically, preweaning mortality rates in sheep flocks and goat herds should be under 5 percent.
The Power of Colostrum
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Livestock Market Digest
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The Old Brass Bell
June 15, 2014
Challenges, opportunities for young to enter beef industry BY JACK WHITTIER & MARIAH FISCHER, PROGRESSIVE CATTLEMAN
l’ Ben and I were camped below the ridgeline The horses hobbled so they could graze at night One wore an old brass bell that tinkled soft and low So we could find ‘em in the morning if they drifted out of sight That night I tossed and turned as I usually do Half-awake my mind finds troubles on which to dwell Old problems, unfinished business—they all worry me awake But on this night a bell was tinkling just to tell me all was well That sound reached out to me across the meadow My mind turned to the horses in the night I knew that they were close and drifted off to sleep In the comfort only found when everything’s all right Lately I been thinking about what it means If there are ways of knowing without the bell Little clues we can listen or watch for That might tell our troubled minds —“all is well”
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I think the clues are subtle but all around us If we miss them, we are doomed to a restless night A baby’s smile, a pretty sunrise, holding hands Clear as bells and softly ringing “all is right” And I hope these words have you a-thinking some About all the clues perhaps you have missed as well So when worries dog your heels or invade your sleep There will come to you— the tiny tinkling of a bell The bell is used by Ben Nelson on pack trips. It was originally a gag gift that he used and it works. It has a nice sound too.
This article is designed to provide a perspective from a young person with a desire to remain involved in animal agriculture as a profession. ariah Fischer is currently pursuing a master’s degree in animal science at Colorado State University in the Beef Management Systems Program. I have asked Mariah to provide her perspective of some of the challenges and opportunities for young people like her to enter or continue in the beef industry. First, I will provide some census information concerning the demographics of tenure and age of current farmers and ranchers in the U.S. The 2007 U.S. Census of Agriculture reported the percentage of beginning farmers and ranchers has steadily declined. The census showed only 26.5 percent of all principal operators have been farming for less than 10 years, a decline of more than 10 percent since 1982. The U.S. agriculture industry is dominated by farm and ranch establishments that have had the same principal operator for 10 or more years. Farms or ranches with principal operators who started within the past five years only account for 13 percent of all U.S. farms and 7 percent of all sales. Additionally, according to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, the average age of U.S. farm operators increased from 55.3 years in 2002 to 57.1 years in 2007. The number of operators 75 years and older grew by 20 percent from 2002, while the number of operators under 25 years old decreased 30 percent.
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In the states of Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming, young or beginning ranchers as a percentage of the population has recently seen significant decline. In 1992, 32 percent of ranchers in these three states were less than 44 years old. In 2007, census data showed that this number had decreased by 60 percent, as now ranchers in these three states less than 44 years old was only 20 percent of the total population. Furthermore, approximately half of the ranches in these three states are owned and operated by ranchers 55 years old or older. The above demographics serve to emphasize the need to attract and retain young people into farming and ranching. Following are some comments and perspectives from Mariah: “As a young person who has been involved in agriculture my entire life, I feel that the future of agriculture is very promising. Agriculture, whether it is crops or livestock production, is the basis of what feeds this country, along with supplying nutrition to other countries as well. “Food will always be needed for survival, and we will continue to need more and more food as the world population continues to steadily increase. “I think as a young person there are many opportunities to get involved in the agricultural industry, particularly livestock production. “Having hands-on experience, as well as a college education, is central for securing a job in this industry in today’s world. I think there are numerous internships and opportunities to gain experience when you are young or getting started within
Colostrum Are your ewes and does producing the colostrum your newborns require? Though colostrum is a necessary ingredient to newborn success, fluctuations in colostrum quality and quantity produced by the ewe or doe are probable on operations. Recent research shows large variability in colostrum production, with older ewes and does often producing higher levels of the protective first milk.[6] Research also indicates that ewes and does that produce larger litters are often unable to naturally produce adequate protection for bonus lambs and kids – often leaving these bonus lambs and kids, especially, unprotected.[7] Without this protection, newborns are at risk for long-term issues. Research by the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station in Dubois, Idaho, showed that nearly twothirds of early lamb loss is caused by scours or starvation, with lambs that did not consume adequate colostrum being more susceptible to health problems.[8] Though colostrum provides necessary protection, colostrum produced by ewes infected with Ovine Progressive Pneumonia (OPP) or does infected with Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis can transmit the disease to their young through the milk. These diseases do not appear until the animals reach maturity and can be devastating to health and production. To prevent the transmission of these diseases, offspring should not be allowed to nurse from ewes that test positive for OPP or does that test positive for CAE. One way to ensure that all newborns receive high-quality
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Feed lambs and kid goats colostrum replacement when: n Quality or quantity of available colostrum is inadequate. n Newborns are unable to suckle, such as in multiple births, first pregnancy dams and those born to sick or weak dams. n Ewes or does are suspected to be infected with OPP or CAE.
colostrum, free from any disease, in adequate quantities is through a colostrum replacer. When selecting a colostrum replacement product, look for a product labeled to raise IgG concentration above 10 mg/ml. These products are typically made of dried bovine colostrum and contain at least 75 grams of IgG per liter as well as high levels of natural colostral fat, protein, vitamins and minerals needed by the newborn lamb. In the United States, these products are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Veterinary Biologics for quality control. Look for the U.S. Veterinary permit on the label. Beyond this measure, selection of colostrum replacers should be based on research. Analyze the product for research results and determine if the supplier is a reputable source. In addition, the product should be made specifically for small ruminants (lambs and kids). After feeding a USDA licensed small ruminant specific colostrum replacer within the first 18 hours, a lamb-specific or kidspecific milk replacer should be fed
until weaning. For more information, visit www.lolmilkreplacer.com or contact Dr. Tom Earleywine at 800/618-6455 or email: TJEarleywine@landolakes.com. [1] “Sheep management: Colostrum and health of newborn lambs.” Iowa State University Extension. June 1995. http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/PM989X12.pdf 18 February 2013. [2] “Care of newborn lambs.” Sheep 201: A beginner’s guide to raising sheep. http://www.sheep101.info/201/newborns.html. 18 February 2013. [3] Schoenian, Susan. “Colostrum: Liquid Gold.” University of Maryland Extension. http://www.sheepandgoat.com/articles/c olostrum.html. 18 February 2013. [4] Schoenian, Susan. “Colostrum: Liquid Gold.” University of Maryland Extension. http://www.sheepandgoat.com/articles/c olostrum.html. 18 February 2013. [5] Nowak, R., and P. Poindron. From birth to colostrum: Early steps to lamb survival. Reproductive Nutrition Development. Volume 46, pp 431-446. 2006. http://vetsci.co.uk/2012/01/23/the-importance-of-colostrum-for-new-born-lamb/. [6] “Sheep management: Colostrum and health of newborn lambs.” Iowa State University Extension. June 1995. http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/PM989X12.pdf 18 February 2013. [7] Lindsay, D. R., R. Nowak, I. Gede Putu, and D. M. McNeill. 1990. Behavioural interactions between the ewe and her young at parturition: A vital step for the lamb. Pages 191–205 in Reproductive Physiology of Merino Sheep. Concepts and Consequences. C. M. Oldham, G. B. Martin, and I. W. Purvis, ed. School of Agriculture (Animal Science), The University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Peth. [8] “Care of newborn lambs.” Sheep 201: A beginner’s guide to Raising Sheep. http://www.sheep101.info/201/newborns.html. 10 March 2014.
June 15, 2014
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Tougher emissions rules dividing Democrats BY REID WILSON, WASHINGTON POST
hen President Obama announces new rules governing carbon emissions from coal plants, some of the loudest cries of opposition are likely to come from members of his party. The regulations, aimed at combating a rapidly changing climate by implementing state-by-state limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, will shine a spotlight on a growing division within the Democratic Party: On one side are major donors, who take a particular interest in environmental causes and are becoming increasingly important to the party. On the other are candidates from energyproducing states — where regulations on coal-fired power plants could have the most detrimental effects — whose fates will decide control of the Senate. The rule is one of the most significant steps the government has taken to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. Those candidates — most notably Sens. Mary Landrieu (La.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Kay Hagan (N.C.) and, to a lesser extent, Mark Udall (Colo.) — are on the front lines of the battle for the Senate. Their Republican opponents will almost certainly use Monday’s announcement to attack them. “Every American’s electricity bills will get more expensive, and we will force-feed those electric bills back to every Democratic candidate,” said Brad Todd, a Republican strategist working for Hagan’s and Pryor’s opponents. “When any politician gets caught making life more expensive for the middle class, he or she is in harm’s way.” Landrieu has been the most vocal Democrat resisting the administration’s environmental proposals. In May, Landrieu introduced a measure with Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) that would have immediately authorized construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a bill co-spon-
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sored by Pryor, Begich and Sen. John Walsh (Mont.), another energy-state Democrat facing a tough fight this year. As chairman of the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee, Landrieu has used campaign advertisements to tout her influence as a boon to Louisiana’s oil and gas industries. Last week, she guided Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on a tour of oil and gas hubs along the Gulf Coast. Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D), who faces a tight contest against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) in the heart of coal country, has said she would use the Senate seat to try to curb the “most restrictive” regulations on coal-fired power plants. “Coal keeps the lights on in Kentucky — plain and simple — and I will not stand idle as overreaching regulation adversely impacts jobs and middle-class families,” Grimes said in September. After the EPA proposed limiting carbon output, Grimes said the Obama administration “has taken direct aim at Kentucky jobs.” Democratic strategists say their energy-state candidates have to make clear their opposition to the forthcoming EPA rule, lest it hurt their chances. “If I were running, I would get the governor to sue and try to tie it up in the courts,” said Jim Cauley, a Kentucky-based Democratic strategist who managed Obama’s first Senate campaign. “Coal has just become the cultural litmus test as to whose side you are on.” That puts big Democratic donors for whom environmentalism and climate change are leading causes, led by California investor and billionaire Tom Steyer, in the awkward position of supporting candidates who don’t take the same view. Steyer has said he will spend up to $50 million of his own money and an additional $50 million through his NextGen Climate Action PAC on Democratic candidates in the 2014 midterm elections. Steyer has not directly spent mon-
ey on behalf of Landrieu, Pryor, Hagan or Grimes. But his money will at least indirectly help energystate Democrats: Steyer has contributed $5 million to the Senate Majority PAC, which has spent heavily in Louisiana, North Carolina and Arkansas. A Senate Majority PAC spokesman declined to say whether Steyer’s money came with stipulations on where it could be spent, but regardless every dollar spent elsewhere frees another donor’s dollar for Landrieu, Pryor, Hagan or Grimes. “People do recognize that ’14 is a pivot year for climate, because of the fact that on an everyday basis people are feeling a direct, immediate pocketbook impact on their daily lives,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist who advises Steyer. Races that Steyer and others are investing in are contests critical to maintaining a Senate majority. “You’ve got to win Iowa, you’ve got to win New Hampshire, you’ve got to keep Colorado” to keep the majority, Lehane said. In each state, Steyer-funded ads will point to immediate threats posed by climate change, whether through droughts, flooding, fracking or public health. “As much as I love polar bears and I love butterflies, we’re not going to be talking about them in these campaigns.” The balance between acting on environmental issues that are high priorities for Obama and the left and creating jobs in energy-producing states represented by Democrats has come up several times in recent years. Energy-state Democrats have pushed the administration to approve the Keystone XL pipeline and open new lands for oil and gas exploration. Strategists close to those big donors say they are less concerned with Landrieu’s position on oil drilling or Pryor’s support for Keystone than the larger goal of salvaging the Democratic majority in the Senate. “This race is not about fracking, it’s about control of the United
Challenges the industry. “For example, I grew up with a cow-calf background and had little idea of how a feedlot was run on a day-to-day basis. However, during the summer before my senior year of college, I was offered an internship at a 108,000-head feedlot in northeastern Colorado. “While I was there, I endeavored to learn and be involved in as many learning situations as I could. Workers as well as managers were very friendly and willing to take the time to teach me what I did not know. “I have also had the privilege of spending time on ranches in northern California with full-time cattlemen who have been successful in the beef industry. “I have been very blessed in that they have not only spent time with me sharing their practices and plans for success, but they have also allowed me to get many hours of hands-on experience. “I think it is important for
States Senate and a number of public policies that will be affected by that,” said David Kenney, a Colorado Democratic strategist who bundled more than $1 million for Obama in the 2012 election cycle and organizes fundraisers for senators visiting Denver. “I haven’t heard anybody say I won’t vote for this person or that person over fracking. Every conversation I’ve been in is, we cannot lose the United States Senate.” Instead, environmental groups such as the League of Conservation Voters place a higher priority on EPA regulations, where they say the battle over climate change will be won or lost, than on Keystone, which would have a relatively small impact. LCV said it will spend money to defend Hagan and Begich even though they support the pipeline because the pair have defended previous EPA rules. “This is the biggest step we’ve ever taken for the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced,” said LCV President Gene Karpinsky. “There are some incumbent senators who are consistently on record against us, and so be it. But we will be standing with those senators who stand for clean air and public health.” The Democratic debate over energy policy and climate change is further complicated by governors, particularly in Western states, where oil and gas industries make up a significant part of the economy. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) are ardently pro-fracking. Even California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), caricatured as the ultimate 1970s liberal and who has called for urgent action on climate change, signed a measure in 2013 regulating the fracking industry. The first drilling in California is likely to begin this year. Early in Obama’s first term, the intraparty tension cost the White House a key policy priority. The Democratic-led House passed capand-trade legislation by a narrow margin, with several energy-state continued from page fourteen
young people to listen to what those wiser and with more experience have to say. It is my observation that if you are willing to work hard, to listen and to learn, you can be successful in the beef industry. “The USDA recognizes the need to attract young farmers and ranchers into production agriculture. As a result, there are numerous federal programs available to a young person starting their own business. “Besides programs created to assist in establishing oneself financially, there are also increased opportunities presented to us from many new technologies in the beef industry. “For example, the use of ultrasound, timed A.I., DNA testing, EPDs, vaccines, software management programs, etc., have helped to improve cattle health, growth and management. “As with any other industry, we who are a part of the beef industry are not without our challenges.
Much of the population is disconnected from the farm and has little idea where their food comes from or how it is raised. “Animal welfare is a growing concern for consumers – and why wouldn’t it be? After all, the media relays stories and videos that are frequently very misleading. “Those videos only reflect a small proportion of beef producers. As a whole, the beef industry does a good job of practicing animal husbandry and caring for animals. I mean, who else is going to go outside at 2 a.m. in a snowstorm when it is -12ºF to save a heifer and her calf from dying during labor? “More stories about these events should make the news. Consumer perception is what drives the industry, and we have not always done the best job of conveying what we really do. “We should not let a ‘few bad apples,’ as Trent Loos would say, define our entire industry. We
need to work on transparency and allow consumers to see how well we truly do care for our livestock. “Besides animal welfare concerns, we face constant battles with environmental groups and governmental policies, financial hardship, consumer perception issues, family crises, unpredictable weather such as flooding in Colorado or the drought in California. . . . The list could go on. “However, we are agriculturalists – and more than that, we are beef producers. That is why I believe there is a very positive future for agriculture, in particular livestock production. “When adversity is breathing down our neck, we do not give up. Instead we push forward, we fight and we look for a new solution. Because raising cattle is not just a job to us, it’s a lifestyle. It’s our lifestyle.” Jack Whittier is a professor and Mariah Fischer is a graduate student in Colorado State University’s Beef Management Systems Program.
Democrats voting no. Despite a 60seat Democratic supermajority in the Senate, the bill never stood a chance because Democrats such as Landrieu and Pryor would never have voted for it. (When he first won his Senate seat in 2010, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin III ran a campaign ad in which he took a shot, with a hunting rifle, at the cap-andtrade bill.) The disconnect between donors who live in big cities on the coasts and elected officials who have to balance budgets and create jobs in energy-producing states causes tension within the party. “For us, it’s not a social good. For us, it’s our livelihood,” Kenney said of oil and gas exploration, which makes up 11 percent of Colorado’s gross domestic product. “I’d politely suggest they send their checks and let us figure out our public policy,” he said of donors who think otherwise.
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Livestock Market Digest
June 15, 2014
The 97 Percent Myth lobal warming advocates routinely toss out the statistic that 97 percent of scientists agree that climate change is real and manmade. Where did that figure come from? Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, and Roy Spencer, principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, explain the history behind the misleading number. In short, there is no basis for the claim that 97 percent of scientists believe that man-made climate change is a dangerous problem. In 2004, Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard science historian, examined 928 abstracts of scientific journal articles, finding that three-quarters of them believed that humans were responsible for most of the observed warming of the last half-century. n However, Oreskes did not analyze articles by prominent scientists – such as Richard Lindzen and John Christy – who question the “consensus” view. n Additionally, a recent study in Nature magazine confirms that academic abstracts often contain claims that are not proven in the studies themselves. A 2009 article by University of Illinois student Maggie Kendall Zimmerman and her master's thesis adviser Peter Doran also made the 97 percent claim. n The authors made this conclusion after conducting a twoquestion online survey of 3,146 scientists, only 79 of which were experts in climate science and had published half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on
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climate change. n It did not include the scientists most likely to understand the natural causes of climate change: solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists or astronomers. n Moreover, the survey did not specify whether the human impact on global warming was large enough to constitute a problem. In 2013, Australian blogger John Cook reviewed abstracts of peer-reviewed papers published from 1991 to 2011, concluding that 97 percent of the authors who stated their position on the subject believed that human activity was responsible for some warming. n However, when University of Delaware geography professor David Legates reviewed Cook’s papers, he found that only 41 of them (0.3 percent of all of the abstracts, and just 1 percent of those that expressed an opinion) believed human activity was causing most current warming. On the other hand, write Bast and Spencer, the Petition Project – a group of physicists and physical chemists in California – has collected more than 31,000 signatures from scientists agreeing that there is “no convincing scientific evidence that human release of . . . carbon dioxide . . . or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” Source: Joseph Bast and Roy Spencer, “The Myth of the Climate Change ‘97%” Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2014.
The State of Estate and Inheritance Taxes in 2014 wo U.S. states – Maryland and New Jersey – impose both estate and inheritance taxes, explain Liz Emanuel, Scott Drenkard and Richard Borean in a new report from the Tax Foundation. Estate and inheritance taxes have large compliance costs, suppress entrepreneurship and harm economic growth. The federal government imposes an estate tax, but many states in the U.S. levy their own estate and inheritance taxes. Estate and inheritance taxes differ in that estate taxes are levied against an estate, regardless of who inherits the assets. Inheritance taxes, on the other hand, are levied on transfers of assets, based on the inheriting party's relationship to the deceased. In the U.S., 15 states and the District of Columbia have an estate tax, six states have an inheritance tax, and only two – Maryland and New Jer-
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sey – have both. The Tax Foundation’s updated state tax map reveals the latest taxing trends: Washington has the highest maximum estate tax rate at 20 percent, while 11 states have a maximum estate tax rate of 16 percent. Hawaii and Delaware have the highest estate tax exemption threshold at $5.34 million, while New Jersey has the lowest threshold, at $675,000. Nebraska has the highest maximum inheritance tax rate at 18 percent, which applies to transfers to non-relatives. Kentucky and New Jersey are not far behind, imposing a top rate of 16 percent for beneficiaries not of the immediate family. Indiana fully repealed its inheritance tax last year, and Tennessee agreed to phase out its estate tax by 2016. Source: Liz Emanuel, Scott Drenkard and Richard Borean, “State Estate and Inheritance Taxes in 2014,” Tax Foundation, May 28, 2014.
