End of an Era

[Caustic Burno]

Back around 2010 I attended a TAMU workshop. One of the topics discussed was cattlemen like myself wouldn't exist by 2035.
I don't know the numbers today as I haven't attended a Workshop in a while. I am attending one next month.
At that time over 90% of all cattle raised in Texas were on ranches with 25 to 50 head.
We used to have breakfast at the local feed co-op on Saturday morning with standing room only.
Today there are four of us left.
The co-op today makes the majority of its money off the deer hunters.
I have watched sale barns close and thousands of acres of pasture that was full of cows are now empty .
Cooperate chickens and hogs work maybe cattle will as well soon.
I can see the beef gene pool only having a shallow end as dairy in the future.
Been one heck of a journey and a hell of a vision in the rear view mirror.
To quote Roy Rogers

 

[Lucky]

Be interesting to know if they account for yearling operators in those avg herd size numbers. It would also be interesting to see how they figure family ranching numbers. Cattle numbers are definitely down in the Eastern half of Texas. I think it's just too hard for people to turn down the big money being offered for land. That's not to say some of those families move to other states and buy bigger ranches either.

It definitely seems like Salebarns are closing rather than opening. Allot of this has to do with the ability to easily truck cattle to other markets or sell on video.

I always wanted a couple hundred acres and some cattle. We've got more than double that now and not sure I'd buy anymore. The wife talks about selling several times a week now.

 

[Travlr]

More than anything else it's got to be the price of real estate. Of course the current mentality that it's okay to pay (and charge) 80/100K for a pickup and you "deserve it" doesn't help.
When I sold my place in Arkansas I was pretty sure I would never be back in the cattle business just because I'd never be able to afford the acreage again. But I made some good decisions and found some worthwhile land in SD that I could pay cash for, and I was back in business.
But that's the trick to the cattle business in my opinion. You have to own your real estate outright.
And at this point there are too many competitors for any decent ground. Way too many rich folks and corporations buying up cattle country and turning it into hunting resorts and tax write-offs.

 

[Dave]

But that's the trick to the cattle business in my opinion. You have to own your real estate outright.

I don't know about that. Literally everyone here leases land. Some a smaller amount and some of the bigger ones lease 10,000's of thousands of acres. Leasing always worked out good for me.

 

[Caustic Burno]

I think prices are all relative to wages Mrs. and I started out when I was making a buck eighty an hour raising a family,
I retired thirty something years later pulling down over 200K.
I thought they were nuts when the 250 acres across the road sold for 400 an acre.
The difference I see today is lifestyle with the younger generation.
Not saying it's wrong just different, they want to work four days a week, live in box yard . Each weekend is a planned event, from bass fishing, golf, deer lease or kids event and start over next week.
Where I see the train jumped the tracks is the majority only own a bank note and are one payday away from losing everything.
That trend started in the late 70's with the S&L's that no longer exist.
Good credit, bad , none? Will tote the note.
Being raised by parents born in 1914 your view of a note wasn't pretty.
We lived a simpler life as well.
I didn't mind chores cept hoeing the garden! When dad would give that one before school my whole day was ruined.
My grands and greats I doubt have ever held one.
They are an excellent snake elimination tool.

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

Meanwhile up here on the tundra every year we have more and more people from down south and out west buying up old farmsteads and trying their hand at raising a family on a small farm. Pastures that have been abandoned and overgrown for years now have fence, and small herds of cattle that are growing yearly. Some work online jobs others are handyman, concrete finishers, drywall finishers, tree service folks, etc.

 

[Fay Holiday]

Great topic, although very sad.

I agree on the garden hoeing and also any house work as the ruination of an otherwise good day during childhood.

Yes, the ranching community has changed and not for the better. Cattle auctioneers are an endangered breed.

After selling off my mountain ranch property due to health and neighbors subdividing and California people with money buying it, I moved to the edge of town where my backyard was pasture and hayfields as far as I could see. That changed a few years ago and now several hundred large high priced houses are in between me and ranch land.

I once could have bought the entire bordering 300 acres for $150,000 and now they are getting $150K for HALF an acre.

I was shocked to read that most of the cattle ranches in Texas have less than 50 head.

 

[Ky hills]

I read today where Tennessee was losing 200 acres of farm land, can't remember the exact time frame whether a day, week,
Here in our county in KY, there's 2000 contiguous acres representing 2 farms that are set to be zoned for housing and commercial developments.
There's a project in the works to rezone close to 150 acres to use half of it for a truck stop with parking spaces for 150 road tractors, with four restaurants inside of it.
We live on a state highway and used to be fairly isolated, now there's houses all around. It feels like we are in the middle of a city.
I think the end of an era has about come for me here.
I'm thinking seriously of selling out of almost all our cows, and just taking a few head through the winter, in preparation to downsize and move.
I don't know how long it will take but could be by this time next year we could be sold out and moved off from here.
The real estate people used to push subdividing land into small lots, now the ones we've talked to, are saying don't lot it off, that people are looking for land and that there is not hardly any left.
Most buyers are now from out of state as locals generally can't or won't pay what it's worth.
When I was young everybody warned me and scared from trying to buy more to expand. All I heard was negative on it, so I never did, then everything got so expensive that what cattle I have isn't enough to spread the cost over.
I've put Al to everything I've made back into it for so long it's just spinning wheels and at my age that's not practical or good business.
So now I reckon we going to become real hobby farmers somewhere with a warmer winter.

 

[Travlr]

I don't know about that. Literally everyone here leases land. Some a smaller amount and some of the bigger ones lease 10,000's of thousands of acres. Leasing always worked out good for me.

I wish I could find some...

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

I guess the main reason people are moving here is we don't have interstates, subdivisions, malls, Starbucks, etc so land is affordable for a commoner. And i believe none of that will be a concern here at least in mine or my kids lifetimes.

 

[SmokinM]

I guess the main reason people are moving here is we don't have interstates, subdivisions, malls, Starbucks, etc so land is affordable for a commoner. And i believe none of that will be a concern here at least in mine or my kids lifetimes.

I wish you luck in that fantasy. I am 46 and rode loaded hay wagons as a 10 yr. old kid down the main drag here. We were considered the sticks and bumpkinville. Now that same road has got 10s of thousands of cars, stoplights and shopping centers lining it. We moved to where we are now 7 years ago. In the last 2 they have built at least 20 houses within 5 miles of me and real estate prices are skyrocketing even in this economy. Not sure where all these experts get this population decline info or why they think it is a bad thing. Seems to me we are a good 25-45% overstocked in this world now. I hope it stays that way for yours and all of our sakes but I fear life has taught me otherwise.

 

[Travlr]

I guess the main reason people are moving here is we don't have interstates, subdivisions, malls, Starbucks, etc so land is affordable for a commoner. And i believe none of that will be a concern here at least in mine or my kids lifetimes.

Well THAT just jinxed it...

Starbucks opening soon in a location near you, and Walmart to follow.

 

[backhoeboogie]

Dad bought feed straight from the mill. They sent a truck out with an auger tube. Open the hatch in one of the feed rooms and they blew in feed to filled it. Feed shovel and 5 gallon buckets and you were in business. That no longer exists. Not here anyway.

We had a huge peanut drier in town. Wagon after wagon headed there in season. Peanut hay was everywhere. A half bale of sand full of sticks and cows would fight you for it. That peanut drier no longer exists. Nothing left buck slabs. No peanut hay around either.

Its just not the same deck of cards any more Caustic.

 

[Ky hills]

Our county joins Fayette County, to the west, it contains KY's second largest city, Lexington. The population of that county is around 320,000, we also join Madison County to the south, it has around 100,000 population.
Some of the other counties that join Fayette to its west have already built up solid going into so that there's not hardly any distinction between them and it.
Realtors told us that our county is the last secret hold out but that word is getting out about it and we'll soon be like those places. We've always been the stereotyped eastern KY county by the developers, but that is changing somewhat in that they are wanting to develop it.
We live close to I-64 and the Mountain Parkway, and not too far from I-75.
Coffee shops are popular here, though I've never been in one. We have a Starbucks free standing location and also one inside of our local Krogers grocery as.
We have 4 other coffee shops too.
When I was a small child our bypass was fairly new with just a few businesses on it and most of the land was still being used as hayfields.
In the very early 90's, I was in high school and there was a school farm located off the bypass. Our FFA/Agriculture classes had hands on experience with raising crops of tobacco there. On one of the bus rides from school to the school farm a friend of mine commented that one day all the rest of that land along the bypass would be built up. We all knew it was true because it was starting to get developed more then.
They double laned the bypass soon after I graduated and now a few over 30 years later the school farm is no more as it grew a few big new schools on it, and pretty much all the lots left along the bypass are growing buildings.
The local county government has gotten in financial crisis mode and are looking into bringing development and housing in to make up for the shortfalls.
When my parents built out here we were fairly isolated even though in a state highway that starts here and runs through the eastern mountains.
Now we have another section of bypass about a mile from us, and we are surrounded by houses and small acreage lots.
I used to wouldn't have believed it would be this way in my lifetime.
Even several more isolated communities are seeing considerable growth with intrastate roads being extended.

 

[greybeard]

BTDT. Getting flooded didn't help but age and a city born wife were the big decision weights.

 

[Brute 23]

The future is in leasing land. It's thr most money you will make but you will need to be wildlife and recreation friendly. No more thinking you own the place because you have a cattle lease. Make yourself useful as a local resource also because the owner will likely not live there.

No matter some ones financial status land can not pay for itself in many areas. The last place my family bought was in the late 90s and it was like $1100 an acre. The land across the road from us is selling for $10K an acre right now. Our neighbors at one place are selling the wife's homeplace by the Sq ft in another area. It's so out of balance that my brother and I were playing around with some numbers the other day, with my parents, and if we sold the surface of our land, the cattle and land can't even generate the interest that would generate, invested in to the stock market. You could leave the principal and live off the interest, straight up mailbox money. That is a factor that has to be considered.

Wealthy people and companies are not killing cattle and land and all that. The math above and subdividing is killing the land. We are losing the sub 600ac properties daily to make 10, 20, 40 ac tracs.

 

[Dave]

Where I grew up there was tons of berry farms. All the kids picked berries. The bigger farms had old school busses which ran routes picking up berry picking kids. Went to a keg party in HS. We were 10 miles out of town surrounded by miles of timber. Now it is wall to wall houses and a High School in that area. In 1979 I moved 50 miles away to a sleepy little farm town. Dairies, sweat corn, and green peas. Still not much of a town but it is a bed room community to the bigger cities farther north. Still farms along the flood plain of the river because you can't build out there. But no more corn or peas and not one in ten of the dairies left.
So I moved here. A county bigger than the state of Delaware with a population of 16,000. I am surrounded on 3 sides by BLM. And other than it is government property there are reasons people didn't homestead on that land back when the government was giving it away. Back before the spotted owl shut down the woods the average income here was $20,000 higher than Portland. Now it is $20,000 lower. Nothing in the way of industry. There is the interstate but it is truck traffic headed to or from the coast. The vast majority of the cars (and there isn't very many of them) are people from out of state just passing through. You would have to search to find someone with only 50 cows. It takes 300 to make a living. So the small guys have long since sold out to the ones wanting to make a living running cows.

 

[greybeard]

he math above and subdividing is killing the land. We are losing the sub 600ac properties daily to make 10, 20, 40 ac tracs.

Exactly!! And if 'near' a metro area, that sub 600ac area can be expanded to 2-3X . Subdivisions near hot metro areas are now huge and not shy about offering 700-1000+ ac ranch owners big $$ to sell out. You can't get 10 homes on an acre most places but you you can get nine 1/10 acre home sites to an acre and each new one built valued at $300K plus.

The local govts are all for it too.
A single acre of pasture previously valued at that high $1100 will now generate county property taxes on those 9 new homes for whatever the tax rate is on $270,000. 100 acres of new homes=$27million taxable value (minus homestead exemption)for a county that WAS getting whatever $110,000 tax valuation was. (minus ag exemption)

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

This area has seen a population decline over the years with the closer of our copper mines and paper mill. Went from 4 schools to one and that is now shrinking to only use a portion of the one building, not many sports teams at school because there arent enough students. Something like 90% of the population that's left lives below the poverty line. Nearest Interstate is 150 miles south, walmart is 60 miles north, Starbucks is 100 miles south and theres no reason for that to change. This area is largely national and state forest land so very little risk of development there. Heard the other day there has been 1 building permit pulled already in 2025 that means by years end there should be at least 1 new house in a county of 1400 sqmi. Nearest "metro" area is probably 4-6 hours away so not close enough to become suburbs. 300 inches of snow and 7 months of cold/snow keep the masses away.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

The USA is a giant country as counties go yet has only 5% of the world population. You think it's getting crowded here? Many parts of the world are wall to wall people.