Word: hansons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Like his parents, Hanson still butchers his own meat for family meals, heats herd house with wood, and uses cowboys on horseback to trail his herd down a the summer ranges. But now he rides in a Ford pickup, with a CB radio crackling away. He relies on machines - swathers, balers and stackers - to get the hay in. He is constantly on the phone to his accountant in Helena, and spends hours hunched over the kitchen table with his pocket calculator. "Ranching is a lot, lot more than raising cattle nowadays," says Hanson. "It involves accounting, mechanics, sophisticated farming...
...beef market has not kept pace with inflation over the past several years, despite what those who buy steak at more than $3 per lb. might think. While his choice steers brought 80? per lb. last year, Hanson expects to get only about 71? per lb. this year...
...same time, the cost of almost everything involved in raising cattle has soared. In 1972, for example, Hanson paid $10 to plant one acre of alfalfa; today the price...
What really riles Hanson is the Government regulations that hamper his ranching. "Big Brother has got his arm solidly around you," he says. The Environmental Protection Agency will not let him use weed spray on his feed crops com animal poisons against the coyotes that prey on his calves. He complains that the Bureau of Land Management will not plow back more of the ranchers' grazing fees into improving the range, and that he must seek permission from the Army Corps of Engineers to build a culvert along a stream on his own property. "It's rules...
...Hanson is surviving, but barely. From 1974 to 1978, he lost so much money that he did not have to pay income taxes - on a ranch worth $2.5 million. He turned a small profit in 1979, but he will not do as well this year. In an effort to better his profits, Hanson now breeds his cows as two-year-olds - a year earlier than before - fattens his steers another 150 lbs., up from 650 lbs., companies selling them, and leases parts of his land to oil and gas companies for exploration at $1 per year per acre...