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Vol. 81/No. 14      April 10, 2017

 

Capitalism deepens wildfire disaster for ranchers

 
BY PATRICIA MARSHALL
Extensive wildfires began sweeping through 2 million acres of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas March 6, burning cattle and other livestock, buildings, grasslands and the fencing on it. Seven people died as a result, three of them young ranchers in Texas trying to rescue their cattle. Thousands of people had to evacuate their homes.

Thousands of tons of donated hay were already arriving in Clark County, Kansas, while the last fires were still being put out. Ranchers, farmers, truckers, students and others in the region and across the country are continuing to get solidarity and supplies to affected ranchers.

Dry conditions, low humidity and strong winds are blamed for the fires spreading at up to 70 miles per hour. New fires continue to break out, scorching 2,500 acres in Seward County, Kansas, March 23. Five fires were reported in Texas March 27.

The social relations of the dog-eat-dog capitalist system working people face have turned the “natural” disaster of the fires into a social catastrophe for ranchers and others who live in this region. This is especially the case in Kansas where 85 percent of rural Clark County went up in flames.

March is always a month when wildfires are most likely, but no steps were taken to minimize the threat when above-average rainfall encouraged the growth of forage grasses across the cattle ranches. This grass can dry out in one hour, ideal fuel for wildfires to spread.

Fields with growing crops can stop or retard the spread of these fires. One of the reasons the town of Ashland in Clark County was not burned down was that the head of the fire hit green fields that acted as a firebreak. But the Conservation Reserve Program, administered by the Farm Service Agency, pays farmers to take land out of crop production to encourage the development of grasslands.

The continuing spread of red cedar trees from 55 million trees to 85 million between 2005 and 2015 meant additional fuel for fires. There is no government plan for prescribed burns to contain their growth.

In spite of the known threat of wildfires, the Kansas Forest Service only has four people working fulltime on firefighting and fire prevention.

Last March a large wildfire spread from Oklahoma into neighboring Comanche and Barber counties in Kansas. Firefighters from the two states could not coordinate their efforts because Kansas didn’t have the legislation in place to authorize it. This remains the case a year later.

In face of the social disaster, working class solidarity is evident. A convoy of some 30 trucks left Ohio on March 24 carrying hay, feed and 25 volunteers from across the state planning to work with ranchers in southwest Kansas. Some 200 volunteers, including students on spring break, are working around Ashland in Clark County, one of the state’s hardest hit areas.

It wasn’t until March 21, more than two weeks after the fires broke out, that the Department of Agriculture announced a paltry $6 million in disaster funding was available to farmers and ranchers across the three states. Estimates put the cost of lost cattle, land recovery and replacing and repairing fences in the northern Texas Panhandle alone at $12.4 million.

Maximum allowances for a rancher’s cattle losses are capped at $125,000 and funds to replace fencing that costs some $10,000 a mile is capped at $200,000. Jennie Giles-Betschart, a Kansas rancher, told Fox News that the fire destroyed miles of fence on her family’s ranch in Clark County. Replacing it would take $800,000 out of their pockets.

And government funds only come after fences are replaced and paid for, with stringent and complicated conditions. Separate forms, some several pages long, have to be completed for each claim.

All this happens at a time when ranchers are seeing prices for their cattle plummet. There was a combined 40 percent drop in ranch and farm income in 2015. The loss of cattle in the fires and the huge cost of replacing fencing threaten to force ranchers out of business.

Kansas Department of Agriculture figures show over 5,000 less ranches and farms there since 2007.

Ranchers also face declining land values. In 2016, for the first time in 26 years, South Dakota ranch and farmland values fell.

Many ranchers who voted for Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election, hoping for change, have noted the absence of any comment on the wildfires by the president. At the same time, budget proposals he is making include slashing the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development programs by 21 percent.

This cut includes cutting staff in the Service Center offices — the very places ranchers are directed to submit claims after the wildfires.  
 
 
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