LMD Jan 2015

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

– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL JANUARY 15, 2015 • www. aaalivestock . com

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Digest I Volume 57 • No. 1

by Lee Pitts

Shame On You

NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING

The Mobilization of Climate Justice says climate justice is “a vision to dissolve and alleviate the unequal burdens created by climate change.” In other words, because land owning, carbon-creating Americans like you are the

do your sleepin' in the winter.” primary reason for global warming, you owe the poorer countries of the world. And they want reparations in cold hard cash.

A plethora of dark green organizations with names like

the Global Justice Ecology Project, Focus On Global South, Alliance of Wastepickers, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Rising Tide, Climate Justice Action and Climate Justice

In other words, because land owning, carbon-creating Americans like you are the primary reason for global warming, you owe the poorer countries of the world. And they want reparations in cold hard cash.

Now believe you have filled your pockets with gold at the expense of the world’s poor. You are also destroying their lives and the biodiversity of their overpopulated countries by increasing global warming. It is because you have created this climate crises that their lands are barren and their people hungry. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything they might have done.

Climate justice is part of the environmental justice movement and those who believe in it say it is an ethical issue because those least responsible for climate change experience its most horrifying impacts. They also contend that climate change is humanity’s greatest challenge, a crisis that must be rapidly addressed if catastrophe is to be averted and of course that will require a complete remodel of global society.

According to a coalition of these American socialists, the best way to avoid this crises continued on page two

Ecoterrorism: threat or political ploy?

BY SIVAN HIRSCH-HOEFLER AND CAS MUDDE, WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM

n 2004, John Lewis, deputy assistant director of the FBI Counterterrorism Division, declared in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee: “the FBI’s investigation of animal rights extremists and ecoterrorism matters is our highest domestic terrorism investigative priority.” To most Americans this statement, if it had been given serious attention by the U.S. media, would have come as a surprise. Having been bombarded with articles and public warnings about “jihadist terrorism” ever since 9/11, the average American would not have expected the primary domestic terrorist threat to come from groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which are largely unknown to the

I

by LEE PITTS

Just a Rancher

Climate Justice “If you expect to follow J the trail, you must ust when you think the world can’t get any nuttier something comes along that proves that it can.

Have you ever heard of climate justice? To me climate justice would be if ranchers who are trying to feed their families and the world, would be able to turn the rain on and off like a faucet.

You’d have climate justice if it didn’t snow while you were trying to pull a calf and if there was no black ice on the roads for truckers. It would be climate justice if it was nasty weather when politicians left Washington for Hawaii to vacation. Or if the air conditioning would go out and their computers would crash when bureaucrats had meetings on ways to destroy your way of life.

Now that would be climate justice.

Sadly, that’s not what the phrase means. What it refers to is the biggest land grab in history and redistribution of wealth worthy of a Venezualan dictator or a Cuban communist.

Riding Herd

broader public. In fact, the statement would have likely stunned most academic scholars of political violence and terrorism, who until recently have devoted little attention to the phenomenon of “ecoterrorism.”

In a recent article in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, we assessed the phenomenon of ecoterrorism, both in the United States and globally, by categorizing the types of the actions of the Radical Environmentalist and Animal Rights (REAR) movement, assessing their relative importance within the broader arsenal of actions of the whole movement, and evaluating them on the basis of a clear definition of ecoterrorism.

The REAR movement is a highly diverse, international network with an unknown number of activists and supporters worldwide. “Cells” can be found in at least 25 (mostly Western) countries. While radical environmen-

talists such as the ELF and Earth First! are more broadly focused on the entire ecosystem, radical animal rightists like the ALF and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are concerned more narrowly with sentient beings. Still, they regularly collaborate and claim joint responsibility for actions. Despite the diversity of ideas and ideologies, there are three main characteristics that all activists and groups share: an uncompromising position, status as a grassroots organization and direct action. In many ways, the REAR movement is best described as an idea; it is a collectivity in the most limited and virtual sense.

A recent publication shows that radical environmentalists and animal rights activists have been responsible for 1,069 criminal acts in the United States between 1970 and 2007. The continued on page five

was talking to my friend Phil on Thanksgiving about his father, Peter Tognazzini, and I mentioned that there would be a good turnout for his funeral.

Phil, in his modest manner said, “Why would there be a crowd, he was just a rancher.”

Just a rancher, indeed!

Pete was engaged in an occupation as old as the human race. He was just a rancher who made the land come alive providing nourishing food for people who live in big cities, and then turn right around and criticize those responsible for their sustenance. Pete was just a rancher who made two blades of grass grow where there had only been one before. Just a rancher who loved being in the company of cows, and those who raised them. Pete liked his cows red, his grass green, his hay cheap, and his rain regular.

Pete had been just a dairyman, but when he heard there were cows you didn't have to milk twice a day he became just a rancher. And a good one. I knew Pete for nearly 40 years but we got off to a rocky start. I mentioned in my column that Pete had served chicken at his branding. To this day I still get people who come up to me and ask, “Did that guy really serve chicken at his branding?”

Well, it wasn’t like he handed out boxes of KFC to all his neighbors. No, that would have cost too much.

“You really didn’t want me to waste beef on a bunch of ropers did you?” Pete asked in self defense.

Thirty-five years ago Pete went from being just a rancher to being just a farmer, too.

It’s bad enough that a rancher, and president of the county cattlemen’s organization, served poultry but then to become a farmer too! A stump rancher, a tree trimmer. Nothing worse. Probably started taking showers every day, too. The only thing worse for a rancher than eating chicken and farming would be if Pete was a banker. But I suppose serving on the Board of Farm Credit for 30 years made him one of continued on page eleven

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January 15, 2015

Climate Justice should chill you to the bone: There must be an equal distribution of all economic resources and those who have caused this crises must be made to pay.

That would be you.

Climate Racism There’s a battle brewing between the North and the South, except in the case of climate justice, the North are those countries above the equator and the South are those below. It’s Europe and America versus poor Africa and South America.

The greenies, climate crazies, and the United Nations believe the blame for “climate change” clearly lies with the North.

According to the Global Justice Ecology Project, “The historical responsibility for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions lies with the industrialized countries of the Global North. Even though the primary responsibility of the North to reduce emissions has been recognized in the UN Climate Convention, the

continued from page one

roots “in economic exploitation, racial oppression, the devaluation of human life and the natural environment, and corporate greed.” The professor says that although the environmental justice movement has its roots in the United States “in just two decades, this grassroots movement has spread across the globe” and "the call for environmental justice can be heard from the ghetto of southside Chicago to the Soweto township in South Africa."

The Climate Justice crowd are not above playing the race card and they say the lowincome communities and communities of color are likely to be particularly vulnerable to the “predicted” impacts of climate change. Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network calls it “climate racism.”

Climate Debt Climate debt is a concept which has been submitted to the UN’s Framework Convention

The environmental/climate justice movement has its roots “in economic exploitation, racial oppression, the devaluation of human life and the natural environment, and corporate greed.”

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production and consumption habits of industrialized countries like the United States continue to threaten the survival of humanity and biodiversity globally. It is imperative that the North urgently shifts to a low carbon economy. At the same time, in order to avoid the damaging carbon intensive model of industrialization, countries of the Global South are entitled to resources and technology to make a transition to a low-carbon economy that does not continue to subject them to crushing poverty.”

In other words, while the Global South may still use carbon based energy in order to catch up with us, we must destroy our cattle feedlots, gene technology, tree plantations, oil wells, coal industry and more.

Much more. We owe it to third world countries as a penance for past sins. We especially need to do this to atone for past grievances against aborigines, peasants, fisherfolk, and especially the women of the third world whom we have discriminated against by causing flooding, water scarcity, and a rise in sealevel.

You’d think that all this malarkey was being dreamed up by the “climate disadvantaged” but , sadly, it is mostly emanating from the United States, led by professors in American universities. For example, Robert D. Bullard is a sociology professor and director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. He says that the environmental/climate justice movement has its

on Climate Change by over fifty countries, including 49 of the world’s poorest. These countries contend that wealthy countries have grabbed more than their fair share of the Earth’s limited resources.

Another professor, this time from New York, Andrew Ross, wrote in a publication called Dissent that the North owes a big ecological debt to the Global South because of “the plunder of resources by extractive industries, and all of the associated pollution and biodiversity damage, to the loss of populations from the slave trade and colonial wars, to biopiracy of genetic resources from plants and agriculture.”

To arrive at how much money we owe they use a complicated formula based on atmospheric emissions estimates. According to Ross, “The belief that such measurements could be made with a degree of accuracy helped build confidence in the movement to hold rich nations to account. Evidence that atmospheric global warming was already taking its toll on the poor countries also bolstered the case for climate debt repayment,” wrote Ross.

According to one such formula over a quarter of the climate debt in the world is owed by the U.S. But surely our bureaucrats wouldn’t buy into this nonsense? Would they?

Prior to a gathering of the greens in Copenhagen in 2009, the U.S. State Department lead negotiator, Todd Stern, “rejectcontinued on page four

January 15, 2015

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January 15, 2015

Climate Justice ed the idea that the U.S. was retroactively responsible for a problem that could not have been predicted,” Stern said, “For most of the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, people were blissfully ignorant of the fact that emissions caused a greenhouse effect. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon.”(And also an unproven theory.)

According to Ross, Stern then suggested a “much narrower window for making repayment claims—on the basis of emissions since, say, 1990, when a verifiable link between atmospheric CO2 and climate change was established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s first assessment.”

In other words, our own U.S. negotiator bought into the concept that we owed reparations to poorer countries because of the damage we created with global warming!

According to Professor Ross, “To date, the preferred response of high emitters such as the United States is to offer “climate aid.” In Copenhagen, rich countries promised $30 billion as part of a fast-track, three-year aid package, with an eventual goal of $100 billion by 2020. So far the United States has paid $7.5 billion of our climate debt.

Climate Wars According to Professor Ross, “Another kind of climate debt involves the plight of environmental migrants, forced off their land and deprived of their livelihoods by climate change.” He says, “Their numbers were in the tens of millions globally by 2000, and estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

continued from page two

Change, the 2006 Stern Review, and other sources predict that climate change will generate from two hundred million to as many as one billion migrants by 2050”. Whereas Columbia University’s International Earth Science Information Network predicted that by 2050 the world

Thus, a significant portion of the Mexican border-crossers to Arizona should probably be classed as climate migrants. Arizona’s bitter fight over immigration may be one of the first skirmishes in the “climate wars” to come, when the threat of global warming will be used increasingly to

Over a quarter of the climate debt in the world is owed by the U.S. would have 700 million climate refugees. It all depends on which faulty formula you use.

Ross asked, “What is owed to them when they cross borders into more affluent countries, with high-carbon lifestyles, as refugees? Surely they are owed sanctuary at the very least, but other forms of reparation could be brought to the table on their behalf.”

Is the professor suggesting we hand each illegal alien $10,000 upon entering our country as down payment on our climate debt?

Ross says to consider Arizona, “ground zero for U.S. nativist sentiment. Much of the state is in the bull’s eye of climate change, heating up and drying out faster than any other region in the Northern Hemisphere, but the impact of the decline in precipitation on soil erosion in northern Mexico has also been significant. Studies predict that regional rainfall could decrease by 70 percent by century’s end.

shape immigration policies that conserve rich nations as resource islands.”

Who Owes What To Whom?

The less developed countries who have borrowed billions of dollars over the years from the likes of the U.S. are now using global warning as a way to skip out on their debts. Ross asks, “How did these debts to foreign creditors compare with the North’s liabilities for environmental impacts from early colonization onward? Were the South’s claims as an eco-creditor just as valid as those of North American and European banks?

Who owes what to whom? Many argued that the obligation to repay recent high-interest loans had to be weighed against moral and economic liabilities from the more distant past, and that any estimate of the balance of payments would lend itself to cancellation of all external debts.”

To address all the damage from climate change the warm-

ing theorists say we must go on a “carbon budget”. We must find out how much carbon the Earth’s natural systems can absorb without climate change occurring, and divide that equitably among all countries. For example, because the greens say that cows are a major contributor to global warming we must get rid of them because they are not in our carbon budget.

An Old Agenda To stop the Global North from exploiting the Global South the World Bank has come up with a scheme they call “Climate Smart Agriculture”. This program is designed to introduce soils and agriculture into the carbon trading market so Al Gore can get richer.

Rachel Smolker of BiofuelWatch explains: “Climate smart agriculture will put a dollar value on the carbon in dirt so it can be sold on the market.” In other words, if a feedlot was found to be a source of greenhouse gases they could buy offsets from a farmer or rancher who left carbon in the ground for credits. A rancher would get these credits by getting rid of his cows and letting the land lie in an undisturbed state without any methane being produced. The same principle would apply to farmers who let their fields lay fallow. Yet no one asks how many more third worlders will perish from starvation as a result.

The Indigenous Environmental Network says that Americans must redefine our relationship with the sacredness of Mother Earth by leaving our fossil fuels in the ground.

There’s only one little problem with all this socialist ecoblather and globaloney. The climate crises the dark greenies speak of is a myth. Mother Nature simply is not cooperating with the theory of global warming. According to Lord Christopher Walter Monckton in Winter’s copy of RANGE magazine, “There’s been no net warming in 17 years 10 months.

(Now over 18 years.) Sea levels fell from 2003 to 2008. Hurricane levels are at a low.

Droughts have declined over the last 30 years.”

You’d think the alarmists would be just a little embarrassed that the earth got a chill about the time they were telling folks we’re all gonna fry and die.

But this is just the tip of an enlarged iceberg, so to speak.

The environmental justice movement also includes food justice, housing justice and transportation justice. What all these groups want to do, according to Monckton, is abolish free markets, and impose huge taxes on the developed countries. “Warming is just the latest excuse for a very old agenda,” he says.

This would all be hilariously ridiculous if you didn’t have the IMF and the World Bank buying into the concept; if a group such as Labor Network for Sustainability wasn’t raising support for climate justice among the ranks of organized labor; or American teachers weren’t preaching this green religion from their classroom pulpits. Or, according to Monckton, “if 95 percent of all global warming “science” wasn’t funded by government agencies and tax funded government grants.”

January 15, 2015

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Ecoterrorism authors categorize three actions as assassinations (0.3 percent), 44 as armed assaults (4.1 percent), 55 as bombings/explosions (5.1 percent), 933 as facility attacks (87.3 percent), 30 as unarmed assaults (2.8 percent) and four as unknown (0.4 percent).

As no cross-national dataset for criminal acts of the whole REAR movement exists, and even national dataset are lacking in most countries, we developed an original global dataset of criminal acts of the radical animal rights movement in the period 2003-2010.

Given that animal rights activists are responsible for the vast majority of criminal acts of the broader REAR movement, and have a roughly similar pattern of activities as environmentalist activists, the findings should be largely representative of the broader REAR movement.

Following previous research, the dataset was constructed on the basis of the information posted on the website of Bite Back magazine, which is both internally and externally seen as “the news magazine about the radical animal rights movement worldwide.” The information on the website is mostly provided directly by activists themselves. Given that the media are highly selective in their coverage of these kind of actions, and law enforcement does not systematically collect data in most countries, this imperfect dataset is the best available to date.

We counted a total of 5,578 criminal actions by radical animal rights activists worldwide. Most actions took place in the United Kingdom (994), Sweden (769), Italy (458), the United States (446), and Germany (379). Using a slightly elaborated categorization, we counted 247 acts of arsons (4.4 percent), 0 assassinations (0 percent), 3,695 of vandalism (66.2 percent), 808 house visits (14.5 percent), 690 animal liberations (12.4 percent), 80 bombs (1.4 percent), and 58 cyber crimes (1 percent).

Global ecoterrorism The question which of these actions constitutes terrorism obviously depends upon the definition used. There has been much discussion among scholars about a working definition of terrorism, and many different ones have been offered. We argue that terrorism goes beyond mere political violence; terrorists terrorize. Essential to terrorism is a psychological process based on the power of fear, more specifically fear for the physical wellbeing of (a subset of) the population. Consequently, we define terrorism as a strategy that employs the threat or use of force or violence to instill fear in (a subset of) the population with the ultimate aim of achieving political goals. In the case of ecoterrorism, these political goals are the ending of environmental destruction and animal rights abuse.

The most straightforward positive case of terrorism is, of course, assassinations. They are the most obvious example of the use of violence against human beings.

Moreover, because the assassina-

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tions are politically motivated, and victims are selected on the basis of political motivations, they instill fear in the subset of the population that meets those political motivations. The most straightforward negative case is animal liberations, which clearly do not constitute acts of terrorism. While pure animal liberations might create some economic costs, i.e. cutting fences and breaking locks, they do not instill fear, as there is no threat of force or violence to human beings. Similarly, vandalism and cyber attacks, of and by themselves, do not meet the definition of terrorism, even if they could have a more direct personal impact, through the invading of privacy. Even tagging (i.e. spraying graffiti) at or mass mailing to a home address is not instilling fear, as long as it is not linked to other acts, which are (considered as) threatening to the targeted human beings.

This leaves three types of acts that are less clear-cut: arsons, bombings, and house visits. The case for arsons and bombings is pretty similar. In both cases the question is whether the particular act can be considered threatening to the physical integrity of humans. For example, a car bomb threat at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP16) inCancun, Mexico was clearly threatening to all humans inside the targeted building and therefore constitutes a terrorist act.

However, the torching of a truck belonging to the municipal dog pound in Bariloche, Argentina, in May 2013, was not, because the arson was done in the night and the truck was not close to a private residence.

More problematic are the various cases of arson that target properties close to private residences and include thinly veiled threatening messages. For instance, in October 2012, Swedish ALF activists set fire to one of the cars of the owner of a fur store in Kumla. Not only was the car torched in front of the home of the target, the ALF included the following message: “This is just a warning of what is coming if you don’t end your involvement in the bloody skintrade[sic] NOW!!!.” The last type of action, house visits, is even more complex, as it is often not only aimed at the actual target, but also at her friends and family.

Many house visits are legal, such as demonstrating on public streets outside of a private residence.

Others are illegal, but not necessarily threatening, such as demonstrations at a private residence.

Even actions that expose (young) individuals to gruesome pictures of experiments on animals are not necessarily illegal or threatening.

However, relatively harmless acts can become terrorist acts if they are accompanied with threatening messages.

So, where does this leave us with regard to the term ecoterrorism? There is no doubt that certain acts of the REAR movement are terrorist. And there are some small groups within the movement that do not exclude terrorist acts. But

despite ongoing radicalization within the movement, the vast majority of REAR activists and ‘groups’ are not involved in terrorist acts. While it is difficult to exactly establish the proportion of terrorist acts within the total action repertoire of the REAR movement, we estimate that less than 10 percent of all criminal actions of the movement can be categorized as “ecoterrorist.” Note that criminal acts constitute only a minority of all acts of both the environmental and animal rights subculture in general, and the REAR movement in particular.

Every major social movement includes moderate and radical individuals and groups, including often a small violent (terrorist)

minority. This was the case in, for example, both the recent antiglobalization movement and the historical civil rights movement.

No one would classify these movements, as a whole, as terrorist.

Today, the U.S. anti-abortion movement includes a significant and very active radical wing that is involved in criminal acts and even terrorism. Unlike the REAR movement, academics, government agencies and politicians hardly ever refer to the radical anti-abortion movement as terrorist.

Similarly, the label “ecoterrorism” should not be used for the whole REAR movement, but only for some of its actions, individuals and groups; this also holds for the

most active ‘groups’ within the broader movement, i.e. ALF and ELF. Obviously, counterterrorist measures should only target these terrorist minorities, rather than the broader movement. Just as every radical anti-abortion activist is not a (potential) terrorist, neither is every radical environmentalist or animal rights activist.

Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler is an assistant professor in the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel. She works on political extremism and political violence, with a particular emphasis on Israel.

Cas Mudde is an associate professor in the School for Public and International Policy at the University of Georgia. He is the author of “Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe” and editor of Youth and the Extreme Right. He is a member of theScholars Strategy Network and can be followed on Twitter @casmudde.

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Livestock Market Digest

January 15, 2015

Net Wrap Ingestion Can Create Health Problems for Cattle

BY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS

growing number of cattle producers are discovering the risks for cattle when leaving net wrap or twines on big bales (hay/straw) when feeding the bales, or when using a bale processor (hay buster) to chop the forage as it is being fed. The net wrap or twine can accumulate in the rumen and interfere with digestion, and the cow loses weight. Some of them eventually die, but the producer may not know the reason unless the rumen is examined during a post-mortem exam.

Steve Hughes, a Montana rancher with about 1500 cows, discovered this problem a few years ago after sending some cull cows to a local meat processing plant, where the net wrap in the rumens was discovered. “Sometimes when a cow is a little thin or lame we don’t send them to market, but have them butchered at the local plant to sell on the rail. It’s not a big plant, probably killing about 30 cows per week. We take some of our cows there if they get a little age on them and are getting thin. Some that we’ve taken there in the last few years shouldn’t have been as bad as they looked,” says Hugh-

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es.

“The guy that runs the plant is a good friend of mine. He found the net wrap in the rumens, and saved some for me to look at. This was about two years ago. In one cow’s rumen there was probably a mass of net wrap about the size of a 2gallon bucket. It wasn’t in every cow we killed at that plant, but certainly enough to make us realize that the cows are eating it with their hay,” he says.

“We use hay-busters, grinding big round bales with those as we feed them out in the pasture. Most of the net wrap gets chopped up with the hay, but some gets through the machine and doesn’t stay on the flails. It goes out with the feed. We feed a lot of cattle and use three haybusters for the winter feeding.

We clean those every day, burning the net wrap that gets caught in the flails or pulls out of the drum, but some probably goes out with the hay,” says Hughes.

“We feed about 30 tons of hay each day, so for us to take off the net wrap before we put the bales in the machines would be nearly an impossible task.

After we discovered the problem in the rumens, we tried removing the net wrap first, and did it for a while, but it was difficult to get all the net wrap off and still be able to feed all the cows and get done before dark.

Our daylight hours in the winter get pretty short. We couldn’t afford the time, and couldn’t get the job done—couldn’t get enough hay fed in time. So we had to quit taking it off,” he says.

“The net wrap is great to bale with because it is quick. But often when you take it off before feeding, the bales tend to fall apart a little on the outside and you have a mess and are losing some of the hay—and losing some of the efficiency of having the net wrap in the first place. You just about have to leave it on until it is fed,” he explains.

This is a dilemma. “I’ve talked to people who feed big bales this same way (chopping it up) that were baled with twine. The baling twine will do the same thing over time, accumulating in the rumen, because you can’t get rid of all the twine.

It’s not just a net wrap problem, but it may show up more frequently just because of the greater amount that a cow might ingest,” he says.

“What happens with the net wrap is that the longer they are eating some of it, the more it tends to accumulate in the rumen, and it takes up space in

there,” says Hughes. These cows can’t digest enough feed (can’t eat as much because the rumen is already partly full) and can’t properly digest the feed that’s in there, and they lose weight. Feed efficiency is greatly reduced and the cow becomes less productive and is often culled at an earlier age than she would have otherwise.

“The net wrap is plastic and doesn’t degrade in the rumen; it stays there and tends to accumulate. If you only have a few cows you can probably take time to remove the net wrap or twines before you feed the bales, but for us it just doesn’t work to take it off. We’ve talked about going to a different feeding system, like big square bales, and taking the twine off,” says Hughes.

“We always have a few big square bales for emergencies, because if we have a breakdown with the hay-busters and can’t get the feeding done, we can put big squares on a feeding truck. But to switch over and go strictly to big square bales isn’t feasible for us. We put up 6,000 tons of hay so we can’t just change everything just because of one situation. The big square balers are expensive and what would we do with the equipment we already have? I like the way the hay-busters feed (the efficiency, and how well the cows clean up the chopped up hay, wasting less of it). You can stretch your hay amount by 10 to 15 percent by having haybusters. So this is a real dilemma,” he says.

“What the cost to us is, with the losses from rumen problems, I have no idea because we’ve never kept track of the number of cows we think have ingested the net wrap, or how many are poor doers because of it. I like feeding with the haybusters and I like the net-wrap, but occasionally we have a cow that doesn’t do well and this is one of the drawbacks we have to deal with. A few years back, before we used the net wrap, we probably had fewer problems, but now we have to try to weigh the advantages and disadvantages,” he says.

“Before this problem, an older cow that didn’t breed back we’d get a decent price for her.

Then when we couldn’t sell them that way because they’d gotten too thin, and sell them on the rail, we’d lose at least half the value of the cow because of the loss of body condition. It’s not a monumental loss because all the cull cows aren’t that way; I think some just ingest more net wrap than others.”

January 15, 2015

“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”

Red Meat Club Has Announced 2015 Friend of the National H Western Honoree

The Little Engine That Could

he Red Meat Club of Denver has announced that the coveted Friend of the National Western and Red Meat Industry award will be presented in 2015 to Carnahan Ranches, Inc. of Kiowa, Colorado. The award will be presented at the Red Meat Club’s annual dinner promoting the red meat and livestock industry, which is set for Thursday, January 15, 2015 at the National Western Club.

While Carnahan Ranches traces its Elbert County, Colorado roots to an 1862 homestead and has a distinguished record as a commercial producer, they are being recognized by the Red Meat Club for their remarkable history as a National Western exhibitor, which traces back to the very first Stock Show held in 1906. Having missed only the war year of 1943 when no show was held, 2014 will mark an incredible 108 years of support.

In the inaugural 1906 Stock Show, family patriarch Jacob Dietrich and his son-in-law Allen L. Carnahan showed two-yearold bulls. Both were actively involved in the organization and leadership of that first Stock Show, and in 1907 took third place in the two-year old steers division; the family still possesses that ribbon today.

“The good Lord willing, Carnahan Ranches is dedicated to continuing to show each year at the National Western Stock Show into the distant future,” says Charlie Carnahan, who together with wife Jane and the assistance of Christopher and Ashley Carnahan presently manages the family-run business.

Charlie and four other fourthgeneration Carnahan’s comprise the board of directors of Carnahan Ranches.

The featured speakers for the 2015 Red Meat Club dinner are John and Leann Saunders of Castle Rock, Colorado, who serve as CEO, President and cofounders of IMI Global. Founded 20 years ago, IMI Global is the industry’s leading and mosttrusted resource for third-party verification of food production practices. The company supports more than 10,000 farmers, ranchers, processors, retailers and restaurants with a wide variety of verification programs that provide for product traceability, source verification, non-hormone treated cattle, organic and

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grass-fed programs, and humane handling standards. IMI Global connects consumers to the sources of the food they purchase through their retail and restaurant labeling program, and will present on the latest in consumer demands trends that are shaping the red meat industry.

The Red Meat Club dinner begins at 5:30 p.m. on January 15, 2015 at the National Western Club. Tickets are $35 per person and may be purchased by calling 303/299-5556 or by emailing ahall@nationalwestern.com.

ave you read The Little Engine That Could to your kids or grandkids? Dr. Tom told me a story that brought it back to me.

Two good ol’ Nebraska cowboys were given the task of rebuilding a barbwire fence on an 80acre pasture. First they removed the clips and stays from the old top wire on the long side; a quarter mile long. Being a progressive outfit, they were using modern agriculture technology.

They backed their pickup to the gatepost on the southeast corner of the pasture. That allowed them to hook the ranch’s homemade wire winder to the free length of wire. The homemade winder contraption was secured to the pickup bed and powered by a 5.5 Briggs and Stratton gasoline engine they robbed off an old lawn mower.

They jerked the little engine to a coughing start with a few tugs on the manual cord then each jumped up on the tailgate, one on each side of the winder. They appreciated the modern machine marvel that replaced the pain-in-thebuttocks of rolling 1,320 feet of rusty bob wire through the overgrowth, rocks and trash, by

Page 7

hand.

They were daydreaming of goin’ to the Zorn Theater in Benkelman, just takin’ it easy. They were stirred out of the fantasy when the wire began to tighten; the little engine that could was going all out and starting to whine!

To paint a better picture of the situation, it would help to know: #1, The truck battery was weak, so when they parked the pickup in the gate, they left the truck engine running, #2, The parking brake, as in most old farm trucks, was broken #3, It was a manual shift #4, The gate was 9 feet wide #5, They had left the doors open and #6, The gate post on the passenger side was an old telephone pole.

Ya know, when you are part of a big wreck, time seems to slow down? The Little Engine That Could dug in, the truck began moving backwards. As our cowboy’s brains began to puzzle this out, looking first at the taut wire, then the straining winder, back to the opened doors, then at the smoking motor . . . “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can . . .”

The little engine tore off both doors, started smoking then with a screech, froze solid! The cowboys leaped to safety! The pickup died.

Sigh.

When they recovered they sorted through their options and finally applied another commonly used 21st century technology to save the day; they called the boss on the cell phone.

Livestock Market Digest

Page 8

January 15, 2015

Back home to bumpy roads

BY LAURA CONAWAY, AMERICAN ANGUS ASSOCIATION

A version of this story was published in the New York Times on March 30, 2014 anny Encinias has traveled the world. Opportunity and responsibility led him near and far, where adventures turned into lifelong memories. But through all his journeys, one thing remained: he wanted to go home. For the father of two, it’s the miles spent down bumpy roads in a beat-up truck that the Clayton, N.M., cattle rancher treasures the most.

“The whole, driving nature of living on a ranch is that it promotes family,” Encinias says.

“Some of the best times in this business are when what a lot of people would consider work, we consider play and an awesome opportunity to pass on what we do to the next generation. As long as we’re together, it’s an amazing life.”

That life began in rural New Mexico, where generations before him raised cattle on the short grasses of the open range.

Encinias was born into it and, at 40, has done his part to ensure others get to reap its blessings alongside him.

The cattle were always there, but it was during his pursuit of a Ph.D. at North Dakota State that a friend introduced the young student to the registered Angus business. That animal science degree eventually led him back to his roots and ranch but years went by before he was truly home.

As a beef cattle specialist for New Mexico State University, it was Encinias’ job to travel. Back and forth across the state, he them on available technologies and practices while simultaneously listening to them, sharing in their successes and trials.

A people person, passionate in thought, articulate in speech, he was good at what he did. But it was a desire to give his young daughters the lifestyle he once knew that resulted in a resignation after 12 years of dedicated service to others.

“That was one of the major decisions, to leave the University,” Encinias recalls. “I hoped and dreamed from a young age that I would be able to be involved in the industry at the level I am today. I’ve probably exceeded my expectations at this point.”

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Today, he and his wife, Hayley, carry on the ranching legacy by raising quality Angus cattle with their two daughters Mia and Elia. Miles spent on the road have since been replaced with trips on horseback and the full-timer sees no chance of hanging his hat up anytime soon.

Anyone familiar with the pressures and hardships that are merely par for the course when it comes to cultivating life in New Mexico may initially wonder at such confidence, then realize it is necessary for success. Few things come easy for a rancher faced with summers of heat and wind followed by ice and temperatures below freezing. No rain means no grass for the cattle or preservation of the rangelands. No cattle means no livelihood for Encinias.

“For my girls, it’s a realistic perception of life. Nothing comes easy. There’s going to be disappointments. But all in all, with God and your family, what else could you need?

breeds. It keeps us in business. It keeps our customers in business with the right type of genetics that work here. You can have the most aggressive and the most desired genetics but unless you take care of those details, the animal will have a more difficult time qualifying for a branded beef program like CAB that has such high standards. We strive and emphasize excellence in all aspects of our operation. Good genetics only take you so far.”

Stewards of enchanted land The picturesque mesas and canyons that provide cover for the cattle during the winter serve as the perfect backdrop to grow a family.

“Every day my girls get to experience the things that I think we all search for as human beings,” Encinias says. “They understand the good and the struggles of life, but they also get to instinctively appreciate the gift of life, whether it’s a newborn calf or when the grass final-

With care and determination, emphasis is placed on raising cattle known for quality Adapting to the environment The northeastern trade center of Clayton has been dry for nearly 14 years. Prolonged drought since 2010 has forced many to sell some or nearly all of their herd to survive; a fact that has yet to distract Encinias from his plan.

“We’ve had to make some tough choices,” he says, making it clear that his present struggles are faced with the knowledge of possibility for future generations.

Up at 4 a.m. the man who says cattle in his part of the country “have to get out and hustle for a living,” does a bit of his own before the day’s end.

“Now we’re about 50 percent registered, 50 percent commercial. We sell registered females and registered bulls. We also keep a set of select commercial cows, heavy Angus influence, that we market as show cattle.”La Gloria Cattle Company runs about 145 head.

That’s not all. Together with his wife, they run a reproductivemanagement consulting business where emphasis is placed on embryo transfer and artificial insemination (AI) work. It’s mainly about genetics.

With a focused goal to produce functional and profitable cattle that work in an extreme climate, the couple remain cognizant of the consumer and make sure quality standards are upheld.

“Angus cattle work in our environment. The Angus component can guarantee fertility, more so compared to other

ly greens up after summer rain.”

Stewards of the land first and foremost, it’s moments before sunrise that likely cause Encinias to question why he ever left. Ask him his favorite time on the ranch and he’ll tell you without hesitation. “When everything’s still and quiet,” he answers. “It’s the time when everything is just tranquil. It’s that calmness of just being out there by yourself, it’s in a lot of ways therapeutic to me. Riding out into the darkness and having the sun come up and just being captivated by the blessings that we have.”

A humbling experience, the family considers it an honor to be a part of a community that contributes to putting food on the tables of many. Sharing cow stories in the pickup, each day is lived with a passion and appreciation for the land and the animals that graze it.

“We still consider ourselves as younger breeders in the business but we’ll always be grateful for that family sense in the Angus business and how a lot of these breeders have taken us under their wing.” With care and determination, emphasis is placed on raising cattle known for quality beef — the signature of the Certified Angus Beef ® brand.

“Our cattle are our priority,” the rancher says. “We’re proud to be Angus breeders and we’re proud that Certified Angus Beef is there for us.”

The Encinias family is featured as a New Mexico producer on the brand’s website, www.certifiedangusbeef.com

January 15, 2015

“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”

Page 9

Livestock Market Digest

Page 10 For advertising, subscription and e ditorial inquiries write or call:

What Is the Tax Gap?

Livestock Market Digest P.O. Box 7458, Albuquerque, N.M. 87194 Telephone: 505/243-9515

he American tax code is confusing. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has released a 300-page report on the U.S. tax code, detailing just how complex filing taxes has become. Between 2001 and 2012, more than 4,600 changes were made to the tax code – an average of more than one per day. As of 2012, the Internal Revenue Code was 9,000 pages long.

That the tax code is complex is evidenced by the amount of time Americans spend complying with it: n Americans spend 6.1 billion hours annually complying with IRS filing requirements, which Coburn notes is equal to an entire year’s work for 3 million full-time workers. n Most people rely on third parties to prepare their taxes. For individual filers, 59 percent used tax preparers in 2010, and 30 percent used tax software. n Businesses also use tax preparers, and compliance is especially costly for small businesses – according to the NFIB, it costs small businesses 67 percent more to comply with the tax code than it costs large businesses. n Small businesses spend between $18 and $19 billion annually in tax compliance costs.

That money, the report says, could otherwise

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“be used to hire new employees, invest in research and development, or market products.”

There is another cost to this complexity: the tax gap. The tax gap is the difference between the amount owed to the federal government and the amount actually paid; in 2006 (the most recent data available), that gap was at $450 billion. It dropped to $385 billion after late payments were made and the IRS took enforcement action. The government’s collection rate for that year was 86 percent, in line with previous rates. If these trends continue, the 2014 tax gap will be close to $500 billion; were it paid, the Coburn report says the entire 2014 deficit ($483 billion) could disappear.

How to close the tax gap? The report offers a few options, one of which is to prevent serious tax delinquents from being employed by the federal government, as their salaries are paid by taxpayers. According to a 2013 IRS report, 318,000 federal workers owed more than $3.3 billion in federal taxes, not including the taxpayers already paying back tax debts through installment agreements.

But, according to the report, the easiest continued on page eleven

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“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”

January 15, 2015

Tax Gap

Riding Herd continued from page ten

option would be to make the tax code simpler and eliminate the likelihood of mistakes. Not only do payment errors result from the complexity, but more complexity leads to more confusion, with the IRS increasingly unable to meet its demands: n The IRS saw an increase in phone calls from taxpayers seeking help from 71 million to 108 million between 2004 and 2012. n Over that same time, the number of phone calls answered fell from 36 million to 31 million. n During the same period, the IRS had a written correspondence backlog that tripled from 357,151 cases to 1,028,539 cases.

The report also notes that an overly complex tax code opens the door to tax avoidance, and taxpayers look for loopholes and ambiguities hidden within its 9,000 pages.

Source: “Tax Decoder,” Office of Senator Tom Coburn, December 2014.

Missouri Land Sales

continued from page one

their ilk, too.

To say that Pete was just a rancher is like saying he was just a husband. Married to the lovely Amelia for 66 years! I’ve heard of others being married that long but it wasn’t all to the same woman! After 66 years the two looked at each other with a gleam still in their eyes as if they were teenagers in love. They finished each others sentences and talked with that sass, spunk and sparkle that made every day special.

But Pete was not just a husband and a rancher, he was just a father, too. Pete was so proud of his children, justifiably so, and their home is filled with several generations of history and accomplishment.

Pete was just a patriot, too, having served in the Army Air Corp during World War II. He served in England and France helping build the gliders that carried soldiers to the Battle of The Bulge. He served on a plethora of committees and cared deeply about the only community he ever had.

Pete was also just a friend. A salt

of the earth good neighbor who liked nothing more than a branding or a barbecue. Simple pleasures for simple people who celebrated life on a daily basis.

Pete was just a religious man who lived by the Golden rule, the ten commandments and the word of God. He had a strong sense of morality. He believed with all his heart that he would be reunited one day with his beloved Amelia. And rest assured, heaven will be Pete’s final address. I’ve delivered eulogies for business titans, politicians and all sorts of big shots but this was the first time I could say with 100 percent certainty where the deceased would end up. And I hope to see him there one day, just not too soon.

Maybe Pete will have a welcome barbecue for me and Pete, it had better not be chicken!

Peter Tognazzini . . . just a rancher, just a husband, just a father, just a friend. Just a man who loved his wife, his family, his God and, yes, his cows. And that my friends is just the legacy of one wonderful man.

See all my listings at:

paulmcgilliard.murney.com 361 Acres - Absolutely the Ultimate Hunting/Retreat being offered this close to Springfield/Branson, Missouri. Many options for this PAUL McGILLIARD property - hunting, recreational, church camp, jeeping, horseback riding Cell: 417/839-5096 facility, or just your own personal retreat. A-1 built 60x100 all steel insu1-800/743-0336 lated with 2-16’ elec. overhead doors. Inside is a fabulous 900sq ft. 2 BR, MURNEY ASSOC., REALTORS 1 BA living quarters. Open fields, heavy woods, timber, rolling hills, bluffs, SPRINGFIELD, MO 65804 springs, creeks, a cave and breath taking views. Only 60+ miles south of Springfield, minutes to Bull Shoals Lake.

113 acres SOLD / 214 acres REMAINING: “Snooze Ya Loose.” Cattle/horse ranch. Over 150 acres in grass. 3/4 mile State Hwy. frontage. Live water, 60x80 multi-function barn. 2-br, 1-ba rock home. Priced to sell at $1,620 per acre. MLS #1204641

INTEREST RATES A S L OW A S 3% Pay m en t s Sch ed u l ed o n 25 Year s

J o e Stu b b l ef i el d & A s s o c i at es 13830 Wes ter n St ., A m ar i l l o , TX 806/622-3482 • c el l 806/674-2062 joes3@suddenlink.net Mi c h ael Per ez A s s o c i at es Nar a Vi s a, NM • 575/403-7970

GREAT INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY CLOSE TO SPRINGFIELD. El Rancho Truck Plaza. MLS #1402704; Midwest Truck Stop MLS #1402703; Greenfield Trading Post MLS # 1402700. Owner retiring. Go to murney.com, enter MLS #, CHECK THEM OUT!!!

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Page 12

Livestock Market Digest

January 15, 2015

Actually, Raising Beef Is Good for the Planet Grasslands for cattle safeguard soil, water and land.

BY: NICOLETTE HAHN NIMAN, WWW.WSJ.COM/

eople who advocate eating less beef often argue that producing it hurts the environment. Cattle, we are told, have an outsize ecological footprint: They guzzle water, trample plants and soils, and consume precious grains that should be nourishing hungry humans.

Lately, critics have blamed bovine burps, flatulence and even breath for climate change.

As a longtime vegetarian and environmental lawyer, I once bought into these claims. But now, after more than a decade of living and working in the business—my husband, Bill, founded Niman Ranch but left the company in 2007, and we now have a grass-fed beef company—I’ve come to the opposite view. It isn’t just that the alarm over the environmental effects of beef are overstated. It’s that raising beef cattle, especially on grass, is an environmental gain for the planet.

Let’s start with climate change.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, all of U.S. agriculture accounts for just 8 percent of our greenhouse emissions, with by far the largest share owing to soil management—that is, crop farming. A Union of Concerned Scientists report concluded that about 2 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases can be linked to cattle and that good management would diminish it further. The primary concern is methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

But methane from cattle, now

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under vigorous study by agricultural colleges around the world, can be mitigated in several ways.

Australian research shows that certain nutritional supplements can cut methane from cattle by half. Things as intuitive as good pasture management and as obscure as robust dung beetle populations have all been shown to reduce methane.

At the same time, cattle are key to the world’s most promising strategy to counter global warming: restoring carbon to the soil.

One-tenth of all human-caused carbon emissions since 1850 have come from soil, according to ecologist Richard Houghton of the Woods Hole Research Center.

This is due to tillage, which releases carbon and strips the earth of protective vegetation, and to farming practices that fail to return nutrients and organic matter to the earth. Plant-covered land that is never plowed is ideal for recapturing carbon through photosynthesis and for holding it in stable forms.

Most of the world’s beef cattle are raised on grass. Their pruning mouths stimulate vegetative growth as their trampling hoofs and digestive tracts foster seed germination and nutrient recycling. These beneficial disturbances, like those once caused by wild grazing herds, prevent the encroachment of woody shrubs and are necessary for the functioning of grassland ecosystems.

Research by the Soil Association in the U.K. shows that if cattle are raised primarily on grass and if good farming practices are followed, enough carbon could be sequestered to offset the methane emissions of all U.K. beef cattle and half its dairy herd. Similarly, in the U.S., the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that as much as 2 percent of all greenhouse gases (slightly less than what’s attributed to cattle) could be eliminated by sequestering car-

bon in the soils of grazing operations.

Grass is also one of the best ways to generate and safeguard soil and to protect water. Grass blades shield soil from erosive wind and water, while its roots form a mat that holds soil and water in place. Soil experts have found that erosion rates from conventionally tilled agricultural fields average one to two orders of magnitude greater than erosion under native vegetation, such as what’s typically found on wellmanaged grazing lands.

Nor are cattle voracious consumers of water. Some environmental critics of cattle assert that 2,500 gallons of water are required for every pound of beef.

But this figure (or the even higher ones often cited by advocates of veganism) are based on the most water-intensive situations.

Research at the University of California, Davis, shows that producing a typical pound of U.S. beef takes about 441 gallons of water per pound—only slightly more water than for a pound of rice— and beef is far more nutritious.

Eating beef also stands accused of aggravating world hunger. This is ironic since a billion of the world’s poorest people depend on livestock. Most of the world’s cattle live on land that cannot be used for crop cultivation, and in the U.S., 85 percent of the land grazed by cattle cannot be farmed, according to the U.S. Beef Board.

The bovine’s most striking attribute is that it can live on a simple diet of grass, which it forages for itself. And for protecting land, water, soil and climate, there is nothing better than dense grass. As we consider the longterm prospects for feeding the human race, cattle will rightly remain an essential element.

Ms. Hahn Niman is the author of “Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production” (Chelsea Green), from which this is adapted.

January 15, 2015

“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper”

By Frank DuBois My column this month is about NDAA & CRomnibus . . . read on to learn of these beasts

NDAA wo massive budget bills passed Congress just before they adjourned, both of which have impacts on property rights and federal lands.

First up is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Yes that legislation, purportedly to fund our national defense, contains the largest federal lands package to pass Congress since the 2009 Omnibus Public Land Management Act. The natural resources title of the bill contains approximately 70 riders and takes up many pages of this huge bill.

It includes language to designate 250,000 acres of new Wilderness and withdraw hundreds of thousands of additional acres from mining and oil and gas leasing. It includes new parks, wild and scenic rivers and other such environmental designations. Within the Wilderness provisions is a section sponsored

by Senator Heinrich that designates the 45,000 acre Columbine-Hondo Wilderness in northern New Mexico.

It also contains the HeinrichUdall language to transfer the Valles Caldera Preserve from a multiple-use trust to the sole jurisdiction of the National Park Service. In a joint statement Senators Heinrich and Udall say the transfer is “to increase public access.” In a floor statement Senator Heinrich says current management has resulted in “drastically limited public access with relatively high entrance and permit fees” and the new management will result in “expanded public access.” A more realistic assessment comes from the Washington Post: The Park Service is taking on Valles Caldera and numerous other properties at a time when the agency is struggling with more than $11 billion in deferred maintenance at existing parks and monuments and is looking to boost entrance fees at parks across the nation to generate more revenue in advance of the agency’s centennial. Can the agency afford what amounts to its largest expansion in nearly four decades?

The transfer does include grazing language, but it has long been National Park Service policy to discontinue grazing on its

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lands, so we shall see.

There is, however, some welcome grazing language in the natural resources title of the bill.

For years the Forest Service and the BLM have been behind on thousands of NEPA analysis documents on the renewal or transfer of grazing permits. I know, it is ridiculous to do a NEPA analysis on a permit that allows something to continue as is, but that’s what the DC Deep Thinkers have brought us. The problem has received a band-aid fix each year, but this new language gives us a permanent fix.

It reads, in part, “The terms and conditions in a grazing permit or lease that has expired, or was terminated due to a grazing preference transfer, shall be continued under a new permit or lease until the date on which the Secretary concerned completes any environmental analysis and documentation for the permit or lease required under the National Environmental Policy Act.” Also included is language which says the issuance of a new grazing permit may be categorically excluded from NEPA if certain conditions are met. The final version of the grazing provision did not contain the language Senator Heinrich had pushed in the Senate which would have allowed for the permanent retiring of grazing permits in New Mexico.

Both New Mexico Senators were supportive of the natural resource package. “Protecting these special and important places will increase tourism and

create jobs in the surrounding communities while ensuring New Mexicans can enjoy them for generations to come”, said Senator Udall. Senator Heinrich remarked, “This is a historic moment and absolutely critical for jobs across the western United States and particularly in New Mexico. The public lands package will help grow our economy in the energy, tourism, sporting and recreation sectors.”

It’s sad to report that neither Senator mentioned livestock grazing. In fact, Senator Heinrich gave a floor speech containing 1,379 words and never mentioned livestock grazing once.

Therein he stated, “New Mexico’s critical public land based economic engine will continue to

Page 13 grow in the energy, tourism, sporting and recreation sectors.”

He even specifically mentioned his efforts in the bill “to streamline the oil and gas drilling permit process”, but nothing about the livestock grazing permit process. I guess it’s hard to include livestock grazing in his “public land based economic engine” while at the same time trying to arrange for its permanent retirement.

CRomnibus The second item produced by our crafty Congressmen is an appropriations bill dubbed CRomibus because it is an omnibus spending bill for eleven continued on page fifteen

Livestock Market Digest

Page 14

January 15, 2015

Why are the feds harassing Navajo shepherds? angus

BY SHANNON SPEED AND HALLIE BOAS

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n late October in a remote area of Arizona called Black Mesa, federal SWAT teams dressed in military flak jackets and wielding assault rifles set up roadblocks and detained people as helicopters and drones circled overhead.

The response made it seem as though police were targeting dangerous criminals — terrorists, even. But they were actually detaining impoverished Navajo (Dine’) elders accused of owning too many sheep.

For the past month Hopi rangers and agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) have been entering people’s land and holding them at gunpoint, with few warrants and little respect for due process. Community members say they live in fear because of this extreme intimidation in the Hopi Partitioned Lands in northern Arizona.

The Hopi tribe and the BIA say that over four dozen people have exceeded their permitted limit of 28 sheep per household, which will lead to overgrazing.

Even if that were true — and many people doubt the claim — it would hardly justify the excessively intimidating approach to the problem. So far, three people have been arrested and more than 300 sheep impounded.

Exorbitant fees are levied for people to recover their sheep, which the elderly Navajo residents depend on for their livelihood.

The residents of Black Mesa believe this most recent assault on their livelihood is being funded and instigated by the federal government through the Department of Interior and the BIA as part of an ongoing effort to maintain access to vast coal reserves on their ancestral homelands.

The 1974 Navajo and Hopi Settlement Act made almost a million acres of shared NavajoHopi land in northern Arizona exclusive Hopi territory, called Hopi Partitioned Lands. Black Mesa was crisscrossed and split by barbed wire fencing designating boundaries. The Department of Justice undertook a plan to relocate more than 14,000 Navajo and 100 Hopi.

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Couched as an effort to resolve what was called the Navajo-Hopi land dispute, the act was actually the result of an ongoing effort to exploit mineral resources in the area. The Navajo and Hopi had peacefully coexisted in the area for decades until the discovery of coal led to policies that created corporatebacked tribal governments and divided the tribes over resource exploitation.

The relocation conveniently cleared the way for two of the largest coal strip mines in the country. In its 30 years of operation, Peabody Coal’s 103-squaremile Black Mesa mine left a toxic legacy along a 273-mile abandoned coal-slurry pipeline, the source of an estimated 325 million tons of climate pollution discharged into the atmosphere. It ceased operations in 2005.

The still-operating Kayenta mine supplies approximately 7.5 million tons of low-sulfur thermal coal annually to the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona. In 2013 the mine sold 7.9 million tons of coal.

Many Navajo resisted relocation. The federal government responded with a war of attrition to undermine their ability to remain on the land. It implemented a building moratorium that included repairs on existing structures and a livestock-reduction program that limited the number of animals a family could own.

Because traditional Navajo economy is based on sheep, these programs represented a direct threat to survival. If they cannot raise sheep, they must relocate to areas where they can find some other way to make a living. This will clear the way for further mining concessions, with no one in the area to protest the pollution and dislocation more mines will bring.

Black Mesa resident Louise Benally suggests that the grazing question is a red herring. “I believe overgrazing comes from the air and water pollution [on] Black Mesa. This is the front lines. The atmosphere is so toxified that it is killing everything,” she told us in a recent phone interview.

She argues that if sheep grazing is the real concern, a different approach should be taken.

“Twenty-eight sheep is not

enough to sustain a family. If Hopi care about the land, help us with land management education. We need someone qualified who knows the plants and animals to oversee the rotation of animals in these areas,” she said.

Shirley Tohannie and elder Caroline Tohannie had their herd of 65 sheep impounded on Oct 22. The Tohannies’ neighbor Jerry Babbit Lane was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for attempting to intervene on their behalf. Officials claimed that the grazing permit held by Tohannie’s late husband was no longer valid. In order to get her livestock back, she had to sign a complaint stating that she was trespassing and will have to appear in Hopi tribal court.

In September the U.S. government signed a settlement with the Navajo Nation to pay over half a billion dollars in compensation for the government’s mismanagement of tribal trust resources. At the signing, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell cited President Barack Obama’s desire to improve the nation-tonation relationship between tribes and the federal government. While this public relations move made national headlines, the simultaneous harassment of Navajo elders and the deliberate effort to deprive them of their ability to remain on their lands did not.

If the federal government really wants to improve its relationship with American Indian tribes, it should start by ending its historical collusion with energy corporations to displace people from their lands for natural resource extraction. The BIA and Department of the Interior should immediately stop impounding Navajo sheep and terrorizing the residents of Black Mesa.

The federal government should then work to forge collaborative nation-to-nation relationships that honor all Native people’s right to decide for themselves how to live on and develop their ancestral lands.

Shannon Speed is a Chickasaw tribal citizen and a public voices fellow with the OpEd Project. She is an associate professor of anthropology and the director of Native American and indigenous studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Hallie Boas is a graduate student in anthropology and Native American and indigenous studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked with the Black Mesa community for six years.

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January 15, 2015

The Westerner agencies and a continuing resolution (CR) for one other. The bill funds the eleven agencies through September 30, 2015 and is a CR for the Dept. of Homeland Security because of the outrage over Obama’s actions on immigration.

The agencies that hold most of our interest are contained in the regular appropriations and don’t let anybody tell you about severe cuts in the budget. The EPA is the only entity to receive an actual cut, in its case a well deserved -$60 million. All the other agencies of interest (BLM, FS, USFWS, etc.) received increases, and the four land management agencies received $306 million for more land acquisition.

The big news in this bill are the so-called “riders”, which are policy directives stipulated

by Congress. In most cases these are “no money shall be spent” type insertions.

One of the biggest riders will prevent the listing of the sage grouse as an endangered species for one year. The critical habitat for the sage grouse would cover millions of acres over multiple states and this gives some breathing space to those states working diligently on programs to prevent a listing. Another rider of great importance would prevent the EPA from implementing its redefinition of “waters of the U.S” which would have resulted in a huge land grab by the feds.

Other riders of interest would: Prevent the government from requiring reports on “greenhouse gas emissions from manure management systems”; prohibits any requirement that ranchers obtain greenhouse gas permits for “methane emissions” produced by bovine flatulence or belching; prevents contributions to the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund (Obama had pledged $3 billion); prohibits the regulation of lead in ammunition and fishing; and prevents the closure of 250 FSA offices.

Michellenibus Oh yes, Michelle Obama and the other DC Deep Thinker’s attempts to control the food intake of our children is in the CRomnibus too. The School Nutrition Association didn’t receive their first goal, which was a waiver for those schools which were losing money because of the new standards. However, the bill does suspend further salt reductions, grants exemptions from the 100 percent whole grain standard and ends the ban on potatoes! We all know what goes good with potatoes.

And all that, my friends, is why these tired old eyes will never be the same.

But no, just as we are wrapping this up the AP is reporting on Obama’s new dietary guidelines. Every five years USDA updates its healthy eat-

“America’s Favorite Livestock Newspaper” continued from page thirteen

ing guidelines through the My Plate program. An advisory panel to USDA has circulated a draft proposal that the feds not only make recommendations on what is healthy for you, but also what is healthy for the environment. Reportedly, the guidelines will emphasize more plant-based foods such as grains, fruits, nuts and vegetables – all at the expense of meat. The draft report says a dietary pattern higher in plant-based foods and lower in animal-based foods is “more health promoting and is associated with lesser environmental impact than is the current average U.S. diet.”

Experts on nutrition are now experts on the environment too.

I told you their nanny-state nutrition programs were antimeat and they were gunning for you. Better get out your bullet proof vests as they will have both barrels blazing for the next two years.

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

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.

Page 15

California Forces Small Winery to Shut Down alifornia is not known for being businessfriendly. Indeed, the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council recently issued its Small Business Policy Index and placed the state in last place, ranking it as having the “least friendly policy environment” for small business and entrepreneurship in all of the United States.

Scott Shackford of Reason Magazine reports on one such example of a small business struggling to survive in the Golden State. In Castro Valley, California, a man named Bill Smyth owns the Westover Winery with his wife. It’s a tiny business that is open for just 10 hours each week and takes in only $11,000 in annual profits. For help, Smyth takes volunteers, whom Shackford says were sort of like

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interns – many of them were learning to make wine and volunteered at Westover as a learning experience.

Unfortunately, the state did not see it the same way: California prohibits for-profit businesses from using volunteer labor, and the state charged Mr. Smyth $115,000 for the violation – an amount it would take his business 10 years to amass in profits.

As a result, Smyth is now closing his small business at the end of this year. Shackford reports that small wineries often use volunteers, but, in response to Smyth's experience, have sent them home.

Source: Scott Shackford, “Wine Workers,” Reason Magazine, January 2015.

Customers Face High Energy Prices Thanks to European Climate Agenda espite 18 years of no global warming, European nations have continued to push a climate change agenda, to the detriment of consumers, writes Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute.

The European Union agreed to the Kyoto Protocol in 2002, pledging to reduce its carbon emissions to 8 percent below 1990 levels. But, forced to comply with emissions limits not imposed on other parts of the world, Burnett writes that many European businesses fled, moving to countries with lower ener-

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gy costs and no emissions limits.

Climate change policy has been extraordinarily expensive for Europe: n From 2004 to 2013, EU states spent $882 billion on renewable energy projects. n By 2030, Germany – whose citizens face some of the highest energy costs in all of Europe – could alone spend $1 trillion transitioning to renewable energy. n Electricity prices in Europe are twice that of the United States. n Relative to Europe, the U.S.

manufacturing – operating with lower energy prices – saved $130 billion in 2012.

Burnett notes that the EU seems to have recognized that its unilateral carbon dioxide reductions have only hurt its own member states. The EU has agreed to further reduce its emissions by 2030 but only if the United Nations completes a binding climate treaty that would require other nations to make similar reductions.

Source: H. Sterling Burnett, “Harmful Consequences of EU Climate Policy,” Heartland Institute, December 5, 2014.

Page 16

Livestock Market Digest

January 15, 2015