Official mammal designation sought | Poor land is being cropped to take advantage of income programs
PELICAN RAPIDS, Minnesota — A hawk hovers high over spring grass blowing in a warm wind while other birds and bugs cry out in an un-planned symphony of nature.
Down below, a steady bovine stomping and grunting provides a heavy undertone to this western Minnesota pasture.
“I just never get over the beauty of them,” said bison producer Dale Rengstorf as a herd of his cows, calves and yearlings moves up a hillside, feasting on fresh grass.
Rengstorf has time to enjoy the natural beauty of bison now that the industry has recovered from bad times a decade ago. The downturn saw many producers driven out of the industry, packers go into bankruptcy protection and everyone lose a lot of money.
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Nowadays there’s good money in both bison meat and hides, the producer base is solid and only growing slowly, and markets have matured.
U.S. bison producers are happy to re-emerge into public light, something they might experience more often in the future if they win their bid to get the bison named as the official mammal of the United States.
“There’s never been a national mammal,” said Rengstorf. “It should be set apart as something special.”
A bevy of U.S. politicians have supported the U.S. National Bison Association’s campaign to get bison recognized, highlighting the creature’s broad appeal to Americans.
Rengstorf is pleased to see farmers able to make money raising a form of livestock that is naturally adapted to prairie conditions.
“When I see marginal land that’s getting cropped just so people can farm the programs, and I see a chance to put a natural animal on it to produce a healthy meat, I think we should do it,” said Rengstorf.
Much of the land on which Rengstorf’s bison are roaming today was once enrolled in the U.S. land set-aside program, which paid farmers to keep land out of production. The immediate area is a giant, sprawling mountain of glacial gravel covered by only a few inches of light soil, so it is vulnerable to erosion.
Some local farmers plow and crop the local land, even though it yields poorly. However, programs can provide a steady stream of income, considering that crop insurance levels are based on countrywide averages.
Rengstorf finds the land perfect for bison, and his bison are a perfect fit for the owner of the some of the land: a foreign gravel company.
Rengstorf has rented 900 acres of land from the gravel company, which uses only a tiny fraction of the area for aggregate extraction. It gives him pasture and the company a small income from otherwise marginal land.
The gravel company cannot enroll the land in the land set-aside program because it is foreign.
The land supports about one cow-calf pair per four acres.
“I don’t intend to ever plow any of this down,” said Rengstorf, who has 2,500 acres in the local area and more land elsewhere.
