News Update
May 18, 2017
Tempered by Fire
Watching a video documenting the devastation of the fires that broke out March 6, Mark Gardiner winces at the frames showing dead cattle lined up for burial. It isn’t just a movie. It’s all too real.
Those cows, the ground they grazed and the people they bring together are the passion, not to mention the livelihood, of he and his family.
The Ashland, Kan., Angus breeder is one of hundreds of ranchers affected by fires that consumed two-thirds of his home county’s acreage and more than 1.5 million acres in the three-state area of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. In a community where the local bank is still called the Stockgrowers State Bank, the long-term impact for the community will indeed be great.
However, Gardiner and fellow ranchers in Clark County and surrounding areas are looking forward to rebuilding, bolstered by the outpouring of support from those who heard about their plight and are lending a helping hand.
Continue reading the Angus Journal feature online.
It Takes a Village
“It’s just been put on hold,” Melanie Hink candidly says of her flower shop on Main Street.
The Ashland, Kan., native certainly isn’t without work, though. She may have 30 years in the floral design business, but she has nearly as many invested in Ashland’s Christian Church Camp — and right now, it’s her top priority.
She looks right at home sitting at a round table in the camp’s mess hall. She’s spent a few hours in this kitchen, preparing meals for youth attending church camp in the summers. A member of the First Christian Church, she also does a good bit of the cooking there, too. Quite simply, she likes to cook.
“They think this is my kitchen,” she laughs. “It’s not just my kitchen. It takes everybody. It’s taken a lot of people to make this work.”
By “this,” she means the Christian Service Camp, which has been operating on a daily basis since the March 6 wildfires near Ashland and Englewood devastated area farms and ranches.
Continue reading this Angus Journal feature online.
Cargill Exits Cattle Feeding
Industry giant Cargill is leaving behind the cattle feeding business as it works a deal to sell its last two remaining feedlots at Leoti, Kan., and Yuma, Colo. In a $36.7 million deal with Green Plains Inc., a vertically integrated ethanol producer, Cargill will turn over the business that represents a one-time capacity of 155,000 head.
Cargill says the transaction will be finalized once a definitive agreement and regulatory reviews are complete. The two locations will add to existing Green Plains feedlots in Kismet, Kan., and Hereford, Texas, making the company the fourth-largest cattle feeding operation in the United States, with a total capacity of more than 255,000 head.
By partnering with Green Plains in a multi-year supply agreement, the yards will continue to supply cattle to Cargill’s beef processing facilities in Fort Morgan, Colo., and Dodge City, Kan.
Watch this week’s episode of The Angus Report online to learn more. You can also catch the show at 1:30 p.m. Central Saturday and 7:30 a.m. Central every Monday on RFD-TV.
Reopening of NAFTA Provides Chance to Right the U.S. Trade Agenda
Initiating an official renegotiation process of past, failed trade deals, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer formally notified Congress May 18 of the Trump administration’s intentions to reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The renegotiation provides the administration with a unique opportunity to reset the U.S. trade agenda, according to National Farmers Union (NFU).
“For far too long, our nation has stuck to a free trade agenda that has led to a massive $500 billion annual trade deficit, lost jobs and lowered wages in rural communities across the U.S.,” said NFU President Roger Johnson. “With this renegotiation of NAFTA, the Trump administration has the opportunity to reset that agenda by instituting a new, fair trade framework that works for family farmers, ranchers and rural residents. NFU urges them to do so in a fashion that does not upset the positive trade relations the U.S. agriculture community relies upon.”
For more information, view the NFU news release online.
Stop Federal Water Extortion, Farm Bureau Says
Land managers in the West increasingly demand that ranchers who work federal land surrender their water rights to the government or get off the range. It’s extortion and a form of unconstitutional taking that simply has to stop, Randy Parker, Utah Farm Bureau’s vice president of national government affairs, told the House Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans.
Legislation known as the Water Rights Protection Act could mean an end to federal strong-arming of ranchers by a government that owns the vast majority of land that can be grazed west of the Mississippi. Parker cited numerous instances in which the federal government forced or attempted to force ranchers to surrender their water rights. Parker urged Congress to act.
If passed, the Water Rights Protection Act would bar the federal government from seizing state-granted water rights from ranchers and restore basic property rights to them.
Read the Farm Bureau news release online.
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