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For more than a century, through a dozen dry spells when lakes disappeared and the land died, thousands of cows from the Swenson Land & Cattle Co have roamed the fields of Texas.

Yet the drought currently ravaging the southern Plains has done what the Dust Bowl could not: chased them off this land and driven them more than 600 miles north to Nebraska.

Now, as the worst drought in a century stretches into its second year, these ranchers and many of their peers are herding their animals in record numbers to the Cornhusker State and other points north, in search of grazing land that is not parched — a shift that is fueling a dramatic economic and cultural reshaping of the U.S. livestock industry.

"If we're going to survive, we have to go north," says Dennis Braden, general manager of Swenson Land & Cattle Co in Stamford, Texas, about 170 miles west of Dallas. "We have to go."

While some Texas ranchers hang on, selling off their stock at an unprecedented pace that has reduced America's cattle herd to the smallest in 60 years, many are carving new homesteads out of some of the richest grassland in North America, a bid for survival that falls somewhere between surrender and hope.

In cattle-car convoys that wind along routes cowboys used in the 1800s, this migration is also a stark illustration of the myriad threats facing the world's future food supply: intense competition for land; increasing demands on limited water resources; and the growing threat of volatile weather.

The size and speed of the shrinkage in the U.S. cattle herd has left the industry reeling. As the national cattle and calf inventory fell 2 percent from a year ago to its smallest since 1952, the herd in Texas dropped 11 percent or 1.4 million head, the biggest decline in nearly 150 years of recorded data.

But Nebraska's herd increased 4 percent or 250,000 head in the year to Jan. 1, the most of any state, placing it ahead of Kansas as the country's second-largest cattle producer, according to the Department of Agriculture's bi-annual survey released on Friday.

Today, 7.1 percent of the country's cattle is in Nebraska — the state's largest share of the national herd since the federal government began collecting data in 1867. At 13 percent, Texas now has the smallest share since 1986.

The shrinking supply has extended a two-year rally in Chicago futures prices, raising costs for companies like Tyson Foods Inc and McDonald's Corp. Retail prices are up 20 percent since 2009, with choice beef topping $5 per pound for the first time ever in November, USDA data show. But slack demand and soaring feed costs have kept margins tight.
It seems set to get worse before it gets better.


While Nebraska offered solace for a first wave of bovine refugees, space is running out, forcing some even further north or west to less hospitable climes; virulent diseases could, if left unchecked, devastate local stock, a threat that has prompted officials to quarantine dozens of herds.

Local tensions are already apparent. Some worry about the potential strain on the environment. Others fret over old rivalries being revived with crop farmers — as well as land-hungry southern cattlemen and investors — that would further drive up record-high farmland values at rural auctions.
"People worry we're going to see a lot of big Texas cattle and oil money up here," said Gary Phipps, a fifth-generation rancher who took in several hundred Texas cattle on his family's spread in Cherry County, Neb. Land prices are already going up, Phipps noted. "Is it going to get worse?"

This great northern migration is troubling, too, for ranchers and packers in Texas, long the nation's leading cattle producer. But the need for the cattle to leave, even if only temporarily for some, is inescapable.

The drought has been keenly felt across a wide swath of the south, as five consecutively dry seasons were exacerbated by weeks of triple-digit temperatures and raging wildfires. On land where cattle once ate their fill of native grasses, ranchers fed their heifers cotton gin trash — an agricultural byproduct — hamburger buns and day-old bread as feed supplies disappeared.

Even before the Texas state climatologist warned last September that these dry conditions could last until 2020, a group of managers from a dozen large Texas cattle operations met to talk about how to deal with the drought.

Swenson Land & Cattle's Braden and Joe Leathers, general manager of the Four Sixes Ranch, agreed to travel north.
"We had a couple names and a lot of hope, and that was about it," said Leathers, who is based in Guthrie, Texas, a ranching community located about 214 miles west of Dallas.
After two weeks, and driving thousands of miles of country roads and dirt lanes, the men pieced together enough land in Nebraska and four other states — a patchwork of leases, ranging from a year to five years — for more than 11,000 cows.

This January, both men returned to Nebraska on their own, hunting for more land.

"If we can find enough land, and the right leases, we'll stay there for generations," said Leathers.

Leathers doesn't want to leave, nor do the 75 employees he oversees — families with two and three generations working side-by-side. But they must adapt to the changes in weather patterns across the U.S. and worldwide, he said. The solution: multiple locations to allow trucking the herd to better climes.

There is much to be said for Nebraska's rangeland, and its share of the U.S. herd has risen over the past decade.

Weather patterns have shifted in recent years, allowing the sandy soil of Nebraska's Sandhills to enjoy more rainfall.


In Cherry County, Neb., where some ranchers are sitting on a three-year stockpile of hay and wild grass, the annual precipitation has averaged 30.44 inches in the past three years, up nearly 300 percent from the state's drought of 2002, said Al Dutcher, state climatologist with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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you cannot imagine how tough it is for cattle farmers in central and south texas right now. I am still losing two to three trees a week .. and we are getting rain now. the grass is growing at 1/4" from the ground and mostly yellow.



I moved some woodpile slash to burn since the burn ban finally lifted, the cows were on the now uncovered grass inside of 20 minutes. this is yellowed 3" grass that has been under a woodpile for months.







..
here are some examples of trees

127, was down your way in June and there was talk of possible stage 3 water restriction. Did you guys ever get there?

That's nasty.

actually took a long yesterday on "live Cattle", not something I have traded before, guest was saying there has been a huge culling and a shortage is imminent.

Wonder if Ann Barnhardt lurks these boards.

She'd probably know.

Uh, yes she does....

Water is the new oil.

I like Ann. Wonder if she is married

Hell of an article and great pics. Smallest in 60 years? and how much has beef consumption increased in the last 20 ?

american cattle herd.

making up the difference:

Goodlander,

If Brazil went to 14, and the US went down to 7 (assuming these are %), where is the balance - 80%?

they are % of global herd numbers, part of the chart did not seem to go through the converter well.

The rest of the cattle are spread out everywhere else on the globe.

Hey 127001, what breed of cattle do you have?

Also, for comparison purposes, in normal times how many acres do you need per head of cattle? I'm from the southeast originally and there it is 1:1.

I was in Namibia once and there in normal times it is 25 acres per head, in a dryer time it is 40 acres per head.

Flap

longhorn cattle.

I Have always aimed at 2 acres per head in good days. I think this is very geographic specific as I am sure other places are more kind and perhaps much more harsh. I hear some parts of Utah are 150 acres per head or worse.

What kind of irrigation system and how many desalinization plants could tarp had bought us?

None. TARP is all funny money and balance sheet digital dollars, it's confidence not stuff. If that gets spent into the real economy, real inflation happens.