Dear Sir,
"The bottom line is that our members want to move from independent price takers to organized price makers. They are telling us they are ready for a change," says TCFA Chairman Jim Schwertner.

It appears that cattle feeders in Texas are now willing to work together to improve fed cattle marketing. Cattle prices are too low when considering what the consumer pays for beef. If successful, the TCFA may overcome the obvious disadvantages of a disorganized seller, the feeder, dealing with an organized buyer, the big packers. This is very good news for cattle producers. Restoring competition will mean higher prices at the feedyard, and in turn, higher prices at the ranch. Hopefully TCFA will be supported by not only by Texas cattle feeders, but other states as well.

Good work, TCFA.

Mike Callicrate
Saint Francis, Kan.

Dear Sir,
As a rancher and lawyer who has been active in private property rights and conservation for the past 15 years, I read with interest the Sept. 2 article on conservation easements. I am afraid that my friends at the Trans-Pecos Heritage Association have overstated the case against

conservation easements and understated the advantages. Most western ranchers are caught in the vice of escalating land values and operating expenses on one side and declining profit margins on the other. The result is hang on by your fingernails or sell out. For my part, I would prefer an

alternative where I can release the development value of my land without developing it and while assuring that it remains in ranching and wildlife.

The development value of our land is stranded capital, and if you don't want to see it turned into ranchettes but you need the money to buy out family members or to provide alternate income, what is a ranching family to do? The answer may be in the sale of development rights rather than

donation. I agree with the article that donation of conservation easements to avoid confiscatory death cases is a bad alternative to complete repeal of the tax. But even if we can accomplish that, we are still stuck with "stranded capital". The purchase of development rights has been used by cattleman's groups in California and Colorado, and farmers across the country, to free the development value and seperate it from the ag value.

Why is the sale of development rights to a friendly non-profit, such as a cattleman's trust or private wildlife trust, somehow more an alienation of your property rights than the granting of an oil and gas lease to an oil

conpany owned and operated by people you don't know? An oil and gas lease is not a lease in the traditional sense, but the transfer of a fee simple determinable in the oil and gas under a rancher's land ,subject only to the life of the production and the payment of royalties. Furthermore, an oil and gas lease grants the lessee a possessory right to your land, for the purpose of operations, and a conservation easement or sale of development rights may be drafted without any possessory right. The sale of development rights or sale of conservation easements can be an expansion of your property rights rather than a restriction.

If my desire is to see my family ranch stay in cattle and wildlife production, not be broken up, and still provide for the future family members who are not interested in the ranch, what can I do short of winning

the lottery? I would welcome the opportunity to sell the right to develop our ranch to a friendly trust, without right of assignment to a third party, in return for the 30-40 percent of its present value represented by its

"ranchette value," invest that money for the future, and keep this a working ranch forever. My heirs have the benefit of the development value now, rather than later, and the investment income in the future.

So what's wrong with exercising your rights to the fullest? I thought that's what we were for!

Joe Fitzsimons
San Pedro Ranch
Carrizo Springs, Texas