Carving Out a New Dust Bowl

By Robert T. Grieves

Sodbusting is changing the face of Great Plains farming

Earlier this month 500-h.p. diesel tractors, brand-named Big Bud 525 and Steiger Panther, pushed 60-ft.-wide chisel plows into the gentle prairie around the hamlet of Winnett, Mont., quickly transforming what once was Wayne Bratten's 28,000-acre ranch into a raw wound of overturned earth. Eastern Colorado Wheat Farmer Emmett Linnebur became a part owner of the Crow Rock Ranch near Miles City, Mont., and used a fleet of ten supertractors to tear into 50,000 of its acres for wheat planting. In recent years, tractors have bulldozed some 6.4 million acres of marginal grasslands in Montana and Colorado and an estimated 27 million acres scattered across the rest of the U.S.

While this frenzy of rangeland transformation has made money for some, for others it has raised the specter of an environmental calamity. Explains Steve Meyer, executive vice president of the Montana association of conservation districts: "When you remove the vegetation on rangelands, you're depleting a resource. If steps aren't taken, we face the possibility of another Dust Bowl."

Critics of sodbusting, as the increasingly common practice of slicing grazing lands into wheat farms is called, say that most of the marginal land of the Great Plains cannot support commercial exploitation. With less than 20 inches of precipitation a year, the region is semiarid. These marginal soils, where they are not too rocky or saline, are often too sandy for farming or are packed with calcium and lime. When overturned by plow blades, valuable topsoil only a few inches thick becomes vulnerable to wind and rain erosion; once gone, it takes decades to replace. The sodbusters are either big operators who buy land and plow on a major scale, or small ranchers who break their own land for a quick cash fix. "I want to make a buck," concedes John Greytak, 53, a former Datsun dealer and present grain operator who since 1974 has broken 250,000 acres of grazing land, mostly in Montana, and stores some 30% of his wheat production in giant bins (for which the Government pays him 26.5-c- per bu. each year). Robert W. Thomas has put more than 20,000 acres of northern Colorado rangeland under the plow since 1979 and claims to have made at least $1 million on the recent sale of a 9,480-acre tract of prairie land that he planted in wheat.

Sodbusters buy rangeland at prices that are relatively low because of today's depressed livestock industry, plow and plant the acreage in wheat, then sell the cultivated land, sometimes to buyers unfamiliar with the region and the fragility of the range's topsoil. Since the mid-1970s, planted prairie tracts have shot up in value because of speculation in cropland as an inflation hedge and federal farm programs such as PIK (payment in kind).

PIK allows farmers to sell federal surplus grain if they agree to plant less wheat in a given year. If a farmer with 100 acres of wheat land wishes to apply for PIK, he must first have farmed the land for two years. Once his application is accepted, he can take some or all of the land out of production in the third year and ask the Government for, say, 80% to 95% of the grain that the land would have produced. The farmer can then sell that wheat for the highest price he can get. The national average this year: $3.50 per bu. Last week Agriculture Secretary John R. Block offered a plan to extend PIK to the 1984 harvest in order to make further reductions in the price-depressing wheat surplus.

While not directly affecting most speculators right now, the existence of PIK has helped encourage sodbusting. In one area of Montana, for example, undeveloped land that sold for $100 an acre recently fetched more than twice that price when tilled in wheat. Says Ronald Miller, a federal district conservationist: "As long as a person can come in and almost immediately double his money, the problem is going to continue."

Loans, federal subsidies such as deficiency and disaster payments, and price supports for crops help sodbusters as well as other agricultural producers. Entrepreneurs apply for price supports and, as required by federal law, take 15% to 20% of their cropland out of production. In effect, range plowers break prairie land that may have little agricultural value and collect money for keeping it out of cultivation. Says Bernie Spanogle, district forest ranger at the Pawnee National Grassland in Colorado: "People are farming the federal crop programs, not the land."

Though land-use regulation is the virtual preserve of state and local governments, Colorado Republican Senator William Armstrong has introduced a "sodbuster bill" backed by the Reagan Administration and the Montana Stockgrowers Association, a group traditionally opposed to land-use controls. It would deny federal payments of any kind for crops grown on highly credible land. A companion bill is pending in the House. Local officials are also beginning to take action. A new law in Weld County, Colo., requires sodbusters to prepare a conservation plan and obtain a permit from the county commissioners. This spring Colorado strengthened an existing law that permits counties to enforce conservation measures and make violators responsible for destruction caused by their plowing.

For many residents of the northern Great Plains, such legislation cannot come soon enough. Edith Phillips, 71, of Weld County, is suing Sodbuster Thomas for $150,000 because of waves of dirt that she claims are blowing off his plowed acreage and onto her homestead. Says she: "There's nothing but dust out there. You can't breathe." Admonishes Bill Brown, a Montana rancher: "The Government shouldn't be subsidizing bad farming practices."

--By Robert T. Grieves. Reported by Richard Woodbury/Denver

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