By Larry Coleman M.

RANCHO DOS AMIGOS, Baja California Sur, Mexico — This may be a subject that nobody gives a rat's wisdom tooth about, but I thought I'd give a little insight as to how ranching in other parts of North America differs from the southwestern United States. About the only thing that seems to be the same is how hard it is to make a living at it without having to take a city job just to have enough money to be able to ranch.

Rancho Dos Amigos is located just south of the Tropic of Cancer, near the tip of the Baja peninsula. To say it's tough going around here would be an understatement. I'm not saying the desert here is any dryer than West Texas or parts of New Mexico and Arizona. The problem here is isolation.

The Baja peninsula is just about 1000 miles long, and anything that gets trucked in must come down that long, hot highway or be ferried across the Sea of Cortez from Matzatlan or Los Mochis, Sinaloa. Since there isn't anything to back-haul out of here, freight charges are out of sight and we are lacking a lot of modern equipment that might be taken for granted even in other parts of Mexico.

The only real agricultural area in the state of Baja California Sur is the Santa Domingo Valley, which is about four good hours north. Everything is north. If you go any other direction more than 50 miles you run right into the ocean.

There's a lot of corn and alfalfa grown in the valley and there are several small to mid-size dairies located there as well. There used to be a considerable amount of cotton grown in Ciudad Constitucion and Insurgentes, which gave us access to some cottonseed meal called mascarote, which we used in our feed when we could get it. They say the water level in the aquifer is dropping about as fast as they can throw up new hotels in Cabo San Lucas, so cotton growing was abandoned for crops that conserve water, like alfalfa (??). I'm not telling you that for true, I'm just telling you what we were told. You get told a lot of things in this country, and a lot of it makes even less sense.

Anyway, ranching here is kind of like owning a boat. You do it because you just want to and you’re prepared to pour all the money you can get your hands on back into "the ranch." We get a little rain every August or September whether we need it or not. This is the only place I've ever lived where the folks sit around hoping for a hurricane to bring some additional rain. It doesn't take much to wash out the roads and wreak general havoc, but as people begin the cleanup after a gully washer you have to notice the smiles on their faces.

There are three kinds of ranchers in Mexico: wealthy men ranching on private property, poor men ranching on even poorer private property, and the poor man who belongs to an ejido. An ejido is a group of farmers or ranchers who own the land jointly. This is how the vast majority of farming and ranching is done in Mexico and is the main reason why things are as they are. An ejido generally has between 25 and 100 members and may control several thousand acres.

Rancho Dos Amigos is part of the ejido named Caduaño and is made up of 86 members with about 20,000 acres. Everyone has their own homestead, but the bulk of the land is used in common. I won't get off into why this is not the most effective way to get something done. Just think about it for a minute or two.

The cattle business is more than a little different here. Since so much of the land is unfenced, bringing in new stocker cows is a joke unless you’re willing to put them up and feed them every bite they eat until they can calve. You can then keep the calf penned and let the cow graze some during about eight months of the year. The rest of the time there isn't anything out there to eat anyway. If you turn an animal out that is from other parts you may or may not ever see that animal again, as they seem to decide right away that they don't like their new surroundings and head for home at the first opportunity.

I guess the biggest thing keeping everybody from getting any size to their operation is the need to feed at least four months out of the year. Don't get me wrong, some folks don't feed. I think they consider themselves breeding for genetics. The cattle that can survive on their own do, and the ones that can't, don't. This philosophy keeps both the feed bill and the herd size down.

Feed prices are pretty close to U.S. prices, I believe. Alfalfa is sold almost exclusively by the small square bale and winds up costing between $135 and $140 a ton during the late spring and early summer when it is most plentiful. If you have to buy it during the off season it can cost up to $185 a ton. Corn prices this year are running about $190 a ton. I might mention that I'm speaking of metric tons (2200 pounds). Ready-made 14 percent feed runs about $205 a ton at the mill in La Paz, two hours away. All the other supplies needed around the place are priced proportionately, with animal medicines, vaccines, etc., being limited and extremely expensive.

I read a lot about packers in the subscriptions I get in the mail from the United States. From the articles, it appears that the packers are just agents of the devil sent straight from hell to make the ranchers' and feedlot owners' lives just about not worth living, but how would you like them to just disappear?

I mean it. How would you like to not have to use packers at all? As far as I know, there is not a single packer in this state. When a man gets ready to sell stock for slaughter, he doesn't load them up and take them down to the friendly auction barn here. No sir. We don't have a single auction barn in this state, either! Nope, what you have to do is make a private treaty deal with a local meat market.

All animals must be slaughtered in facilities run by the local government at a cost of roughly $12 per head. Cattle are killed around dawn and the carcass delivered to the butcher shop by eight o'clock. Some of it may be eaten by the consumer on the same day it was slaughtered. Beef is put out for sale as soon as it has been cooled down enough to slice and bone easily. The only aged beef around here is either brought in by the hotels and better restaurants or comes from a butcher who bought more than he could sell.

The general arrangement is that the market will pay a per kilo dressed weight price one week after receiving the carcass. This year the dry season price comes to about $1.11 a pound. Almost all cattle are slaughtered grass-fed.

Most ranchers try to sell their stock that have fattened on natural vegetation during the winter. They weigh the most then, and feeding during the dry season is avoided. Of course, the market is flooded and prices drop, but it is still the most common method. This past season ranchers got about ninety cents a pound.

As I said before, you have to go back in a week to collect the money for the beef that has already been sold. Far too many times your money was spent to pay the electric bill or to fix something that broke. I've gotten so mad at the butcher about the number of trips I had to make to collect my money that I've threatened to charge by the trip instead of by the kilo.

I've got to admit, things are looking up for Rancho Dos Amigos. My son, David, and I have begun to buy on the hoof during the selling season and have them finished out in July and August when there just isn't much for sale locally and the meat markets are bringing in beef by the box from the mainland and even from some of you guys in the States. Offering grain fed beef when cattle are scarce makes the markets easier to get along with and the pay a lot faster in coming.

My son has never been to a cattle auction. I may take a trip to Texas just so he and I can sit in the bleachers and watch the action. Transportation will prohibit buying a few to bring home with us, but it will be nice for him to see how things are done in other places.