Sound Science Is Rangeland
Managers’ Best Political Tool

By Colleen Schreiber

ABILENE — Range professionals, rangeland managers, and farmers and ranchers must not be afraid to get political. After all, they have sound science to back them up.

That was the message delivered by third generation South Dakota rancher David Fischback at the recent Texas Section Society for Range Management annual meeting here.

Fischback, who hails from Faith, South Dakota, told the group of range professionals that one of the problems with SRM is that for too many years it has refused or neglected to get political.

"There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting political when you have science on your side," Fischback stressed. "We have the best minds and the best technicians and the most astute scientists who work with, on and for rangelands, in this organization than anywhere in the world, and we’re afraid to get political. Or when we do get political we write a letter of apology for saying something wrong.

"When it comes to Washington, where is SRM?" he asked. "Where is SCS? Why do we always hear what Jane Fonda and Barbara Streisand, Robert Redford and Al Gore have to say? Why do we always hear what they think would be good? For crying out loud — these people play make-believe for a living and we’re taking their word for it that they know something about the environment, about endangered species, about life. They live in a world of make-believe!" Fischback said.

"I won’t argue about their ability to act," he continued, "but where are their credentials when it comes to testifying at Senate and House Committees, and agricultural committees, or giving advice to the President or the Secretary of Agriculture on what’s good for agriculture?"

He reiterated that range professionals must become politically active. "We can get the votes, but it’s going to take some really drastic measure. We first have to get their attention to get noticed."

Dr. Jerry Holechek, New Mexico State University range scientist, agreed. He is a long-time critic of the government feed program and other agricultural subsidies because, in his opinion, "government subsidies accentuate the oversupply problem."

Holechek received national print and broadcast publicity because of the stance he took with the feed program.

"I said some things that some ranchers didn’t like, but it was probably the smartest thing I ever did if I wanted to get the message across to the ranchers," Holechek told the group.

"There’s nothing like controversy to get people to thinking. Range professionals are going to have to take a different approach in dealing with controversy if they want to reach the ranchers," he insisted. "Rather than control controversy, we will have to allow controversy to be a source of debate."

Fischback asked those who live and work in private land states to be patient with the time and effort being spent by national associations and professional societies like SRM on public land policy.

"Please be patient and hold your criticism of that," he said. "I tell you why: because whatever happens on public lands is going to happen on private lands. This entire effort to remove livestock from public lands is not going to stop until they’re done. Private lands are next."

The native South Dakotan said he has a personal problem referring to public lands as federal lands. "The federal government should not own land larger than 10 miles square for purposes other than for national defense," he contended.

He said the Homestead Act of 1862, which required homesteaders not only to file claim on 160 acres, but to farm that 160 acres, was a mistake. (Texas law was much more reasonable, granting four-section homesteads and requiring no farming, but even those operations tended to fail in the western part of the state. — Ed.)

"We all know that 160 acres of the western prairies never would provide a living for anyone, and a whole lot of them never should have been plowed up."

The drouth of 1911 in the western states and then the Depression and the dustbowl in the 1930s forced many people off the prairies because it simply wasn’t working.

Fischback told the group that in his opinion one of the good things that came from the drouth and the Depression was the institution of the Soil Conservation Service.

"I do not believe much in federal agencies and federal programs, but I do believe that the Soil Conservation Service is one of the best things that ever happened to agriculture in this country.

"One of the boondoggles of the programs of the 1930s, however, was the institution of the ASCS, subsidy payments, farm payments and disaster payments, loan payments, etc.," he opined.

In the 1980s it was the Conservation Reserve Program. "The intent wasn’t all bad," Fischback conceded. "I can’t argue about restoring habitat, but what else has it done? It has shown us that if we make mistakes, somebody is going to bail us out."

He noted that CRP payments in South Dakota and surrounding areas range anywhere from $18 to $35 an acre.

"I’ve never known a rancher who has made that much ranching. CRP discriminates so heavily against those who don’t have land eligible to put into CRP. We’re having a tough time competing. Have you ever gone to a land auction and tried to compete against someone with a CRP check?" he asked. "CRP has taught us nothing about how to manage the resource, but it has taught us that money can win."

Fee Busby, Deputy Chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Sservice — successor to the Soil Conservation Service — also addressed the group.

Busby grew up on the "divide" 40 miles from Abilene. Some of his earliest memories, he said, are of the dark dust clouds that on a lot of days literally obliterated the sun by noon.

His father was a sharecropper who drouthed out on their farm during the Dust Bowl. He moved his family to town, and after a series of moves spent 26 years operating a small grocery store at Nolan.

The land around where Busby lived was mostly dryland cotton and grain sorghum with some rangeland. The first range improvement practice he ever witnessed was in 1956 when the owner did some rootplowing.

"I feel like we have a failure of the system, not a failure of the people," Busby told the group. The Extension Service, established in 1914, was created because a lot of university research was lying on the shelves and not being translated and transmitted to the landowners, he explained.

"They were given an exceptionally important mission, to be the front line educators."

Unfortunately, he continued, over the years, county agents and the like have been overwhelmed with 4-H and more and more community affairs. That in itself, though not bad, Busby noted, has detracted from the professionals’ ability to be on top of production agriculture and conservation.

The same thing has happened to NRCS district conservationists as well, he conceded.

"They’ve been pulled away, in large part by the cost-share, programs, and they’re not in a position to answer questions about grazing systems, brush encroachment or water for San Antonio."

Busby told listeners that, in his opinion, those in the information delivery system started losing their way, not with the 1985 Farm Bill when NRCS was given some regulatory responsibilities, but in 1973. It was then that farmers were told to grow fencerow to fencerow and produce as much grain as possible; by doing so, he said, they could reduce the price of a loaf of bread by two cents. More important, however, the U.S. had just signed a trade agreement with Russia that would allow the U.S. to sell billions of dollars of grain to the pertetually struggling communist giant.

From that time forward, Busby said, the American grain farmer became the driving force behind most of what happens in agriculture today.

"We produced grain for a period of time, and then Russia invaded Afghanistan and we cut off the grain trade, and we saw the collapse of the whole agriculture industry. Land prices plummeted and fell into a severe recession.

"Suddenly the government was faced with unbelievable commodity support payments. In 1983 and 1984, the government paid out multi-billions of dollars to the grain farmers to prop up the price of grain. All of it set the 1985 farm bill at a price support level that no one ever believed would be put in place."

Like Fischbach, Busby believes that the CRP program, though intended to be a good strategy of conservation, actually sent the American farmer down a totally different path.

"It was merely an offset strategy that made Congress look good because it was called conservation," he said.