In mid-November, I had occasion to drive through Fall River
Valley and Big Valley east of Redding with my friend Larry Forero, who is the
livestock farm advisor for Shasta and Trinity Counties. He remarked, somewhat offhandedly, that these
valleys used to be full of small ranches with 60-100 cows. Today, they are dominated by much larger
operations – 500-1000 cows (or more) and large-scale hay ranches. I asked him what had changed.
“Life got more expensive,” he replied. Things like health care, fuel, and pick-ups
are more expensive today than they were 30 or 40 years ago. I think our expectations have changed, too –
we think we need more material goods than our predecessors did – we need a big
television, a new truck, a Hawaiian vacation. I was struck by the fact that
these changes happened within my lifetime – I don’t feel that old!
Like the families that farmed the 40 acre farms of our past
with a mule, I suspect that families that raised 75 mother cows in 1970 didn’t
make their entire living from cattle.
Somebody generally worked off the ranch – as a school teacher or a nurse
or a bus driver. In that respect, the
ranches of my youth were not that different than the small farms of my middle
age – an off-farm income is still necessary today. What’s changed in these communities is that
the 75 cow operation has totally disappeared.
In the Sierra foothills where I live and ranch, the question
of scale is very different for livestock operations than it is for high-value
vegetable farms. An acre of mixed salad
greens might generate net income similar to the net income from 2500-plus acres
of un-irrigated pasture land. Given
these economic facts, why would somebody (like me) choose to raise sheep
instead of arugula and mizuna? Why would somebody choose to farm at all?
I think there are plant people and there are animal people –
few of us are both! I much prefer
working with livestock to weeding a bed of salad mix, partially because I’m
better at livestock than I am at vegetables!
Part of it has to do with the nature of the land we manage. Rangelands, by definition, are too steep,
dry, cold, hot, wet – too something – to produce a crop. Much of the land I graze with my sheep is
unsuitable for producing vegetables or fruit – and yet it produces incredible
grass that my sheep love.
So what is the answer?
If we want to buy our salad greens from someone who knows every square
inch of her one-acre farm, how do we make sure she stays in business? If we want to buy our t-bone steaks from
someone who remembers how a particular cow’s grandmother performed in dry
years, how do we do that? In short, how
do we make sure we have small to mid-sized farms and ranches that are part of
the fabric of our communities?
Those of us who farm or ranch at this scale will probably
need to lower our expectations in terms of our standard of living. Like our predecessors, we’ll need some
off-farm income (and the benefits that often come with such job). We must be compelled to farm, much as an
artist is compelled to paint. Our
customers – our communities – must recognize the value of local food production
by acknowledging that higher food prices might be necessary. Our local governments must recognize the
stresses that land fragmentation place on the economic viability of our
farms. Our society must again realize
that food production must make a living for those who do the work.
