Posted on 10/14/2013 3:19:18 PM PDT by yoe
Last Wednesday, the weather was sunny and warm at Bob Fortune's cattle ranch in Belvidere, S.D. On Thursday, it started raining. By Friday night, the rain had turned to snow. By the weekend, the snow turned to a blizzard with 60 mile an hour winds. By the weekend, Fortune says, "the cattle just couldn't stand the cold anymore, and they just started dying."
Only a year after sweeping drought left ranchers across South Dakota desperate for feed, this week they're just beginning to reckon with a freak early snowstorm, dubbed Winter Storm Atlas, that wiped out an estimated 10 percent of the cattle in the state's western region, up to 100,000 animals. In the coming weeks they will dig through the mess to try to tally the damage to an industry worth $5.2 billion statewide, that also killed an unknown number of horses, sheep, and wildlife. Fortune, president of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association, says losses like this would be enough to cripple many ranchers even in the best of times, especially with the loss of future calves next spring whose would-be mothers were killed. But with the federal Department of Agriculture still shut down, ranchers are cut off from the livestock insurance that would normally keep them afloat following a disaster like this.
"We have no idea if there'll be federal aid for these ranchers," Fortune says.
After catastrophes, livestock producers typically turn to the federal Farm Service Agency's livestock indemnity program, which offers compensation for lost cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens, and other livestock. As long as the government stays shut, FSA offices nationwide will be shut too, leaving ranchers without support. A spokesperson for the state's Department of Agriculture said the most their office can do is offer advice on how to document and carry out a cleanup effort. Even before the shutdown, the insurance program was already threatened by delayed passage of a new federal farm bill, which allots money for a range of food and ag-related programs from food stamps to incentives to go organic. While the shutdown debate rages, the Senate and House are still hashing out the farm bill, leaving the livestock indemnity program in midair.
The weekend blizzard, which dumped up to five feet of snow in some places, was "very historic," according to meteorologist Darren Clabo at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology's Institute of Atmospheric Sciences. Rapid City, the largest city in the state's western half, received the most snowfall ever recorded in October, and the third-highest one-day snowfall for any time of year. While South Dakota residents and ranchers are accustomed to brutal winters, Clabo said, "we don't get these kinds of storms in the first week of October." That means that cattle were still covered in thin summer coats, and left out in exposed summer pastures.
The storm, Clabo said, was the result of a strong high-altitude storm that pushed in quickly from the Pacific, gathered energy over the Rockies, and peaked just over Rapid City. While it's too early to say what role climate change might have played in this particular storm, higher levels of heat trapped in the atmosphere can result in more frequent and severe storms. Last month's IPCC report found it "very likely" that extreme precipitation events like blizzards will increase over this century.
For now, the South Dakota state Department of Agriculture is picking up the slack as best it can, urging ranchers to fully document their losses so they can get aid if and when it reappears, said spokesperson Jamie Crew. Meanwhile, Fortune and his peers will continue to dispose of dead livestock, which state law requires be cleaned up within 36 hours for public health reasons.
"The more snow melts," he says, "the more dead cattle they're finding."
That cow/steer is probably still alive, it is standing up. And the cattle in this case were still probably in summer pasture. Cattle hadn’t been sent to market yet or moved to winter pasture. Even in that case, there aren’t barns big enough for many of these operations. We didn’t keep cattle in barns except cows we knew were going to calve or calves. The rest of them were on open range, ranches bigger than cities as I explained the other night.
Stand your Ground GOP...No Funding for Obamacare....the Unsustainable, Unaffordable Care Act.
Life is risky.
People don’t understand the size/scope.
We have some horrible weather here....but we get to our beef with something to fill their bellies...and we chop ice to water them.
I'm not privy to exactly what happened up there....but we've had bad, bad weather here...and not get those types of losses.
FWIW-
Agreed. Maybe they should get out and see where their food comes from occasionally.
Seriously, Nervous Tick, you haven’t an idea about this business. My family doesn’t take government handouts and has zero subsidies for their ranching business. These are family businesses that span land the size of major cities in the US. All run with just a few vehicles and a minor profit margin, usually put into building fence line or replacing the worn out vehicle that is used to haul feed to the cattle, buy gas, put clothes on the kids.
One rancher I heard here on the local news, said that the cattle were on summer pastures and there were just not enough trucks and time to get them moved. This was a really unusual storm.
Yeap. Summer pasture, rain, wind, snow. Deadly even in winter pasture.
>> My family doesn’t take government handouts and has zero subsidies for their ranching business.
You’re not part of the problem, then. Good luck.
People don’t understand just how fast this storm came up and how vast these ranches are and how rough the terrain is. Ranchers care about their cattle. This is heart breaking.
You might not have enough memory to go back, but were you affected by the blizzards in 2005 or so when the National Guard airlifted feed into the cattle because there was so much snow the ranchers couldn’t haul food. That affected SE CO and NE NM.
Were you affected by the blizzard in 1976? I was just a child but still remember snow over our house, I didn’t go to school for weeks, no way to get buses to us. National Guard brought us food, feed for cattle that survived. I remember walking over fences, trees. That was NE NM.
Most of these people are not part of the problem. Don’t let this magazine or a few whiners color your view of these people.
>> Don’t let this magazine or a few whiners color your view of these people.
Noted, and I’ll keep my eyes open. I’m sure the overwhelming majority of them are good people in a tough situation.
I do know this: farm subsidies are a significant part of the government spending problem.
As are asinine ethanol subsidies consistently lobbied for by the corn belt states.
Corporate welfare is every bit as damaging to our long term survival as is individual welfare.
Let the market work. If raising cattle in the Dakotas is on the balance unprofitable without government support, then the Dakotas is not the place to raise cattle.
It’s harsh, but it’s the truth.
FRegards
If ranching is not profitable in SD or anywhere else it has been historically done, it is not due to weather events like this, but rather government regulation in every aspect of the business world - regulation on care of the animals to taxes on the gas needed for the pickups and trucks.
In CO, the Dems passed a requirement that rural electric coops invest more in renewable energies, driving up the cost for energy for small ranchers and farmers. They don’t let them pull their water from the ground, and now force them to pay more for their energy so that big city critters can pat themselves on the back for saving the environment.
So while we may complain about the subsidies that “farmers” get are too much, the actual numbers in the past have included things like food stamps (just reading that was 80% of what we think of as farm subsidies).
And a good portion of what farmers are getting in subsidies is being taken from them in taxes and other operating costs imposed by the government.
I agree — get government COMPLETELY off our backs.
Completely.
I don’t raise cattle — but I raise forage crop in a county in Texas where cattle outnumber people probably 50 to 1. We don’t have blizzards — our problem is we don’t have precipitation period for too many months out of too many years.
I do have some skin in the game.
FRegards
Idiots.
Cattle will drift before a storm. I’ve seen lots of them facing south against a fence in the Oklahoma panhandle when storms came through from the north.
This was an early storm. Most cattle would still be on pasture for a few more weeks before being moved to a sheltered area.
And while we’re on the ag issues in the Dakotas — here’s another problem.
Those loveable jackasses with their Scandinavian socialist roots elect too damn many marxist sh!tbags to national office.
Very strange for a people that depend on oil and ag for their livelihood. You’d think they’d get a clue. But, no.
They’ve made their own bed in large part due to the ‘rat bastards they have sent to Washington.
Unfortunately they have helped screw us ALL with their insane Northern European folly.
We Texans don’t suffer quite so much from that form of shooting ourselves in the foot.
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