The Art of Range Podcast

The future ain't what it used to be (Yogi Berra): there are more price risks and stressors on cattle markets than ever, and the predictability of cattle markets is at an all-time low. Livestock insurance is not new but is recently gaining adoption as a reliable risk tool to prevent catastrophic financial losses and prepare for uncertainties such as drought. Listen to Jack Field, with CKP Insurance, discuss insurance products with Dr. Shannon Neibergs, WSU livestock economist and director for the Western Center for Risk Management Education. For more information, contact Jack directly at [email protected] or (509) 929-1711 .

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3x5mbIC

More information from USDA Risk Management Agency on LRP is available at https://www.rma.usda.gov/Policy-and-Procedure/Insurance-Plans/Livestock-Insurance-Plans.

Pima County owns and leases large tracts of land for working landscapes and biological conservation. Vanessa Prileson manages the range program which ensures this arrangement is successful and has good advice for other organizations selecting lessees/operators who need to be able to manage toward conservation goals and as well as economic and production goals.

Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. https://webcms.pima.gov/cms/one.aspx?portalId=169&pageId=52654

TRANSCRIPT: https://bit.ly/3AHjH6l

Ted Turner started buying ranch land in the early 1990s as both an investment and to conserve habitat for imperiled species at a spatial scale that would be meaningful. Today, Turner Enterprises owns nearly 2 million acres of land across the Western United States. Mark Kossler manages the ranching operations on these 15 properties, all of which include bison. Carter Kruse is the lead scientist for the management efforts behind numerous species conservation efforts on Turner's holdings.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

https://tedturnerreserves.com/our-mission/

TRANSCRIPT: https://bit.ly/3vua1cb

Spring 2021 arrived with a large percentage of the Western U.S. exhibiting below-average precipitation, in some places a lot below the 15-year mean. Matt Reeves discusses current conditions and potential ecological responses, and Shannon Neibergs analyzes livestock management options, including current cattle markets, hay supply, and herd management scenarios.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Matt has a periodic spring/summer webinar called Reading the Tea Leaves: https://www.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/events/tealeaves

The Fuelcast website is https://www.fuelcast.net/

Livestock Forage Program: https://www.fsa.usda.gov/Assets/USDA-FSA-Public/usdafiles/FactSheets/livestock_forage_program_lfp-fact_sheet.pdf

IRS tax management, weather-related(drought) sales of livestock: https://ruraltax.org/files-ou/RTEWeatherRelatedSalesofLivestock.pdf

TRANSCRIPT: https://bit.ly/2SzCTkZ

Ashley Hibbard may seem an unlikely rancher, but she may do more to change minds about ranching than most who seem more likely advocates. Ashley, who astute listeners will remember from the Women in Ranching Forum from SRM's 2020 annual meeting, runs an artist-in-residency program on the Sieben Live Stock Company home place in central Montana. Good art can bypass bad logic, and the beauty of ranching done well affects even those who think ranching is detrimental to both humans and the planet. Listen to Ashley tell her story in this interview.

SHOW NOTES

Ashley and Cooper are featured in a Montana Land Reliance video series, "Stewardship with Vision." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=179SsWS2RJo

Women in Ranching recording: https://soundcloud.com/art-of-range/aor-036-srm-09-womeninranching

TRANSCRIPT: https://bit.ly/3fo0sWS

Gus Hormay worked with the Sieben Live Stock Company in the 1970s and 80s to help him understand rotation grazing principles. Chase and Cooper have adapted these ideas, centered on extended rest, to their context and needs. This approach has worked especially well on public lands managed for elk habitat. They received the National Cattlemen's Beef Association's Stewardship Award in 2003 in recognition of these efforts and results. In this second half of the interview, Cooper and Chase describe their blend of rest-rotation and short-duration, high intensity grazing, methods for winter grazing, and putting this all together in some mixed-ownership landscape grazing projects.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Working Cows podcast interview with Cooper: https://workingcows.net/?s=hibbard

Kiss the Ground, documentary on regenerative agriculture: https://kisstheground.com/

Scott Chase's (Cooper's dad) new book, Beyond the Rio Gila: https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Rio-Gila-Scott-Hibbard/dp/1432866133/ref=sr_1_1?crid=20PWDKDLFEKN6&dchild=1&keywords=beyond+the+rio+gila+scott+hibbard&qid=1620216618&sprefix=beyond+the+rio+%2Caps%2C300&sr=8-1

Angus Beef Bulletin article: http://www.angusbeefbulletin.com/ArticlePDF/0303abb_Sieben.pdf

2021 Rangelands journal article "Potential to improve winter grazing pastures: Sieben Land and Livestock study": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019005282100002X. Authors estimate that It is estimated that grazing instead of feeding cattle during the winter can save 42% to 70% of the yearly input costs in the western United States and Saskatchewan, Canada.

TRANSCRIPT: https://bit.ly/3wDtyat

"Big ranches mean big risks", says Chase Hibbard. Large lands and lots of cattle doesn't equal guaranteed success in the economically unforgiving world of family ranching. The Sieben Live Stock Company has been around for 6 generations and has both awards and scars to show for their perseverance. All good stories have tension and dark threads in the weaving. Join Tip in a conversation with Chase and Cooper Hibbard about navigating the ups and downs of keeping a big ranch together. They discuss the fascinating history of this iconic Montana ranch, hard succession planning decisions, and how management is sustained today.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Sieben Live Stock Company website: https://www.siebenlivestock.com/

Charlie Russell painting, "Waiting for a Chinook", aka "Last of the 5,000": https://www.charlesmarionrussell.org/Waiting-For-A-Chinook.html

Montana Land Reliance: https://mtlandreliance.org/

Land Trust Alliance: https://www.landtrustalliance.org/. The Land Trust Alliance is a national land conservation organization that represents more than 1,000 member land trusts and is a good source for more information about land trusts and conservation easements. https://www.landtrustalliance.org/

Ties to the Land succession planning: http://tiestotheland.org/

TRANSCRIPT: https://bit.ly/3hYvA0W

Farmer and rancher mental health has been in the news the past few years, with farmer suicide rates alarmingly high. Farmers and ranchers are often seen as the embodiment of the American ideal -- the rugged individualist who is self-sufficient, doesn't need help, lives on the land, doesn't have problems . . . but the stresses of modern farming, especially financial stresses, leave many feeling hopeless and helpless. Don McMoran and Kristen Hinton-Vanvalkenburg discuss programs to help farmers and their families deal productively with the stressors and with mental health challenges unique to farming.

There are several signs or symptoms to look for when stress has begun to take an effect on you or someone you know. If you see something, say something!

Thoughts of hurting oneself

Care of Livestock Declines

Increase in Agriculture-Related Accidents

Appearance of Farmstead Declines

Children Show Signs of Stress

Lack of energy/motivation to do usual tasks

Loss of interest in favorite activities

Alcohol and/or substance abuse/addiction

Withdrawal from others

Relational tension

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

WSU Extension Suicide Prevention. https://extension.wsu.edu/skagit/suicide-prevention/. WSU and the Agricultural Suicide Prevention Program is not a crisis center. IF YOU ARE IN NEED OF IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE, reach out to the National Suicide Prevention line, 1(800) 273-TALK (8255).

Western Regional Agricultural Stress Assistance Center. https://farmstress.us/

National AgrAbility Project. http://www.agrability.org/

Hanna Ranch, the movie: https://www.amdoc.org/watch/hanna-ranch/

and here: https://www.amazon.com/Hanna-Ranch-Mitch-Dickman/dp/B00KIGQLEK

TRANSCRIPT: https://bit.ly/3qTwZ9x

Americans often refer to electric fence as "New Zealand" fence, and many other grazing innovations seem to have origins in this relative small island in the southern hemisphere. Thomas Maxwell, a pasture scholar from Lincoln University in NZ, provides an overview of the history of indigenous land use, European settlement, and domesticated grazing animal use in New Zealand.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Recent article "Functional diversity vs monotony: The effect of a multi-forage diet as opposed to a single forage diet on animal intake, performance, welfare, and urinary nitrogen excretion". https://academic.oup.com/jas/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jas/skab058/6148868

TRANSCRIPT: https://bit.ly/30ZzjkM

Americans are vaguely aware of pastoralism as a term connoting a lifestyle that revolves around animal raising, but most of us don't have much more understanding than a loose attempt at a definition. Fiona Flintan has spent much of her career with the International Livestock Research Institute working with pastoralist cultures in Africa, helping secure rights to land and address conflicts, and communicating this way of life to the outside world. Listen in on her conversation with Tip about livestock as a way of life rather than a means of obtaining money, about unique features of pastoralist peoples, of the nature of conflicts over abundance rather than shortage.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

https://www.ilri.org/

Guidelines for participatory rangeland management: https://www.ilri.org/publications/mapping-guidelines-participatory-rangeland-management-pastoral-and-agro-pastoral-0

TRANSCRIPT: https://bit.ly/37BWYvB