Commentary by Bill Bullard, CEO, R-CALF USA
America’s political and societal winds shifted a long time ago. Prior to the mid-70s, which would be about 50 years ago, America both respected and supported family-scale farmers and ranchers who grew and raised America’s food, and there were a lot of them. At the time, America had about 2.3 million farmers and ranchers.
Also prior to then, there was a keen recognition that family-scale farmers and ranchers were needed to provide both an economic and social foundation for communities all across the western half of the United States. But there was a problem. Nearly 50 percent of all the land in the western United States is federally managed, and much of the West is arid or semiarid, which is not conducive to maintaining vibrant, economically sustainable communities when only about half of all the land is available for purchase by aspiring farmers and ranchers.
And so it was that America’s policy prior to the mid-70s was to provide farmers and ranchers with grazing and water rights on federally managed lands so they could maintain viable farming and ranching operations all across the West. Grazing these federally managed lands, of course, had benefits beyond supporting a solid economic foundation upon which rural communities would thrive and prosper. In addition, grazing helped suppress wildfires, provided an environmentally balanced ecosystem, and it enabled the West to become a major producer of life’s most important sustenance – meat, grains, and other foods.
But then, something happened on the way to the grocery store. The number of farms and ranches began to decline, and America’s population grew more and more distant from their agrarian roots. Being farther away from many of the population’s food producing, ancestral farmers and ranchers, America’s political leaders lost sight of the importance of sustaining vibrant rural communities in the West. And rather than encouraging farmers and ranchers to continue producing food by grazing and managing federally managed lands, the winds changed, and America’s policy became that of significantly reducing, if not eliminating, farming and ranching on federally managed lands.
So, over the course of the last 50 or so years, there’s been an exodus of farmers and ranchers in the West who once owned property rights on federally managed lands – those rights being the right to water and the right to graze. As a result, rural communities all across the West have been hollowing out. And the reason for this, of course, is that America’s politicians forgot, ignored and neglected their responsibility to responsibly support America’s family-scale farmers and ranchers, and all the rural communities they support, in that half of the western United States where much of our food is produced on federally managed lands.
And all that leads us to this sordid story.
In June, Charles and Heather Maude, who are ranchers from Caputa, South Dakota, were individually indicted on charges of theft of government property. The couple are accused of stealing and modifying a United States Forest Service Grazing Allotment that consists of about 25 acres. The Maude family has owned and managed this grazing allotment free of infraction or rule violation, for over 100 years. The couple were charged separately, so they must retain two attorneys and are each facing up to 10 years in prison and fines up to $250,000.
Based on the information we have today, these indictments are occurring while the government states the Maude family currently maintains their allotment in “good standing.” What appears to be at issue is that the original fence-line boundary of the Maude’s allotment is not perfectly presented on the survey of the allotment that was completed over 100 years ago.
Now it is well known in the West that imperfect surveys and boundary lines are not uncommon due to the rather primitive technology and harsh conditions that existed during the times of the original survey.
Is this a new tactic the government is employing in an attempt to accelerate the eviction of western ranchers and their property rights from federally managed lands? Or is there more to this story than what is publicly available?
Well, we don’t know at this point, but what we do know is that the Maude’s are certainly not the first ranch family to be treated like criminals in the government’s ongoing effort to extinguish the property rights of ranchers who graze on federal allotments. We also know that on the surface, this appears to be an incredibly heavy-handed action by the government against a family who are generational community members and upstanding citizens and whose focus has long been on land stewardship and food production.
If this action upsets you as it does us, please contact your members of Congress and ask them, “What in the world is going on here?”