Who Is Today's Rancher?

Changing Practices: Ranching is different than it was 20 years ago. Success today in the ranching business requires the rancher to be a conservationist. An unregulated industry 100 years ago, today's ranchers are still repairing damage done by overgrazing a century ago. Soil erosion, deteriorated range conditions, and economic instability led ranchers to institute the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 which imposed a grazing fee for federal lands to create rural economic stability and to conserve forage on public lands.

While many cowboys still ride horses, many drive pickups and go home to a computer, the Internet, a fax machine and other current technologies. The modern rancher, schooled in range science, understands how, in the arid West, damaged habitats can take from 25 to 200 years to recover. He knows that if he is to survive and pass his ranch on to his children, he can't abuse the land he is dependent upon for his survival.

Ownership: The myth of the wealthy land baron rancher is generally just that: a myth. Only 1.9 percent of beef farms/ranches are owned by corporations and most are family corporations with fewer than 10 stockholders - only 0.2 percent are non-family corporations (U.S. Census of Agriculture 1992). Of public-lands ranchers, 88 percent of permittees are medium-sized family operations (U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of the Interior 1992). The majority of families make less than $28,000/year (Obermiller 1991). Profits, if and when they exist, are plowed back into the business, back into the land.

Ranching is almost always a family business, with 83 percent of farms/ranches in the same family for over 25 years, and 10 percent in the same family for over 100 years (Rockwood Research 1996).