Arizona ranchers share frustrations with Kelly

Glendale meeting draws a dozen ranchers and farmers

By Steve Stockmar
Twitter: @stevestockmar

From labor to conservation to federal red tape, a group of Arizona ranchers shared frustrations Tuesday at a discussion with Sen. Mark Kelly in Glendale.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was also on the panel, and at one point chided Kelly “to fix the damn immigration system” when talk turned to border issues impacting Arizona’s $23 billion agriculture industry.

The morning gathering took place at Rovey Family Farm, 7711 W. Northern Ave., which was founded in 1943 by Emil Rovey. The outdoors discussion — surrounded by cow pens, muddy walkways and the signature livestock smell — was hosted by Emil’s son Paul Rovey, who still runs the dairy and cattle operation where he was raised and who previously served as chairman of the U.S. Dairy Export Council.

About a dozen ranchers and farmers were also on hand.

“The USDA in my opinion is doing a great job. On the ranching side of the equation it’s a completely different story,” said Tim Peterson, owner of Arizona Grass Raised Beef in Yavapai County.

Arizona Grass Raised Beef has its own USDA-inspected processing plant in Northern Arizona that allows for complete in-house integration from harvesting to product line shipping. The company, however, ran into bureaucratic problems after Yavapai County’s Goodwin Fire wiped out 85% of one of its ranch’s infrastructure in summer 2017.

“The Forest Service, in their handbook, in three places states it’s a 50-50 cost share when you have a fire that devastates your ranch. I can tell you that that has not happened in any way, shape or form,” Peterson shared with Kelly and Vilsack. “I was told by the Forest Service that they did not have any money.”

His 25,000-acre ranch couldn’t run cattle for two years, and they were on their own to replace the infrastructure. His cowboys packed more than 30,000 pounds of burned up barbed wire in the rough country of the Bradshaw Mountains north of the Valley, and still weren’t done with red tape.

“After we rebuild the ranch, then the Forest Service threatens me to cut my numbers by 25% because the fences ‘aren’t built quite right,’” he said, adding that the ranch has received just a fraction of what aid it is owed.

“For five-and-a-half years it’s been nothing but a nightmare,” he said.

Ben Menges ranches in eastern Arizona, between Safford and Morenci, and serves on the Arizona Cattle Growers’ Association executive committee. As a fifth-generation Arizona cattle rancher, the federally protected Mexican gray wolves are a major issue to livestock in his region.

“I’ve always said that some people want to produce beef for people to eat and not wolves to eat, and I can take you to ranches in that area where they produce more beef in a yearly basis for the wolf to eat than people to eat,” he said during the discussions. “It’s a challenge to be reimbursed. And that’s one of the things that I really want to focus on on the eastern side of the state is we have to live with the wolves. We’re gonna have to live with the wolf, and maybe the best approach would be to focus on conversation for the ranchers.”

With most Arizona ranches sporting between 60 and 100 acres per cow, it’s those conservation measures that seem to fall on ranchers, said Sonia Gasho, who owns Stronghold Beef in Cochise County and who attended Tuesday’s gathering to be heard.

“Sometimes the public hears that as ‘Oh we’re just whining because we’re out there and it’s your lease and you signed up for this.’ And that’s true to a point. But at the same time ranchers and farmers — and particularly in this instance ranchers — we’re your conservation boots on the ground,” she said. “There’s no way that the USDA, the Forest Service, and the NRCS [Natural Resources Conservation Service] can staff everything, and we’re the ones who are actually implementing that conservation.”

Rancher challenges went beyond just the processing and the full two years it takes to get beef from the ranch to the grocery store. Ranchers shared issues with regulatory costs and permitting, including labor, which turned the conversation toward immigration.

Vilsack explained his department is pledging $100 million to create partnerships with community colleges and other organizations for training on all aspects of an industry that also relies on an immigrant workforce hampered by labor issues, at which point he turned to Kelly seated to his left and said it’s time to “fix the damn immigration system.”

“There’s got to be border security, no doubt about that,” Vilsack said. “But also there has to be a process in which these folks [cattle ranchers] have the stability of a workforce. We talk about family values in this country — these workers who are working on these plants and on these dairies all across America; you want to see people who really commit to family values? These people working on these farms are family values. Why do I say that? Because they come up here for a job to be able to support their families and they know they can’t go back home ... because of our broken immigration system.”

Kelly said in the 14 months since he took office, tackling individual pieces of immigration, such as the H-2A visas that allow U.S. employers who meet specific requirements to bring foreign nationals as temporary agricultural workers, leads to “inertia” among D.C. lawmakers.

“On both sides of the aisle we find folks that would really want to improve the H-2A visa program,” Kelly noted. “But on one side of the aisle nothing will be done until the border security problem is fixed 100%. On the other side of the aisle you have folks that want everything. They want comprehensive immigration reform, and they’re unwilling to do the small pieces.”

Vilsack countered that ranching issues shouldn’t be lumped in with two constituency groups serving political agendas.

“You don’t have to do that in this ag situation,” he said. “The producers and the workers have come together and made your job really easy. Here’s the deal. We agree to this. We agree to do housing, we agree to do wages and so forth ... here’s the complete package. All you have to do is pass it. And everybody impacted by this is going to say ‘thank you.’ It’s just nuts.”

“It is nuts,” Kelly answered, “and to find the 60 votes to do this is challenging, but we’re continuing to work on it.”

Bill Perry owns a farm in Tonopah, on the far west edge of Maricopa County, some 17 miles west of the Palo Verde nuclear plant. His family isn’t in the livestock business, but they produce a lot of feed that ends up in the industry. He has plenty of experience with hiring foreign workers.

“I hired my first guy from Mexico in 1974. I don’t know how many I’ve hired since then. Hundreds, hundreds,” he shared. “And they come here to make a little better life for their family, but I can guarantee you that not one of them ever tried to vote.”

Kelly meets quarterly with Arizona farmers and ranchers, and talk has turned of late to escalating food prices. This past month, Kelly called on Vilsack and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to do more to reduce costs for consumers. The increase in food prices in the U.S., he says, has tripled beyond the 10-year average.

“As prices for chicken, pork, beef, and other meats continue to skyrocket we must support innovation within the meatpacking industry,” Kelly wrote in his Dec. 21 letter. “Important first steps include better utilizing technology in meat inspections. Delays in meat inspection, due to outdated processes and fewer inspectors, delays the ability of new facilities to open or existing facilities to expand. And the Department of Agriculture should provide additional grant funding to build, modernize or expand meat processing facilities.”

According to the Arizona Farm Bureau, 95% of Arizona farms and ranches are family-owned and operated, and many are passed from generation to generation. Farming and ranching families manage and maintain more than 26 million acres of Arizona land, says Tiffany Selchow with the Arizona Beef Council.

Tuesday’s round table discussion lasted one hour before Kelly spent some time one-on-one with the ranchers.

“I think it was productive,” Perry said as he was leaving.

Steve Stockmar
News Editor | Sun Life Magazine & Arts & Entertainment YourValley.net
@stevestockmar

sstockmar@iniusa.org

Meet Steve
Steve Stockmar joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2017, and has been an Arizona journalist for almost 30 years. He serves as editor of Sun Life Magazine and contributes to West Valley communities where he focuses mostly on arts & culture, education, and profiles of neighbors making a difference.

Community: Every season Steve serves as a “buddy” with the Miracle League of Arizona in Scottsdale, has volunteered his time with Family Promise in Glendale, and previously served on the Ghostlight Theatre board in Sun City West.

Education: Graduated from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff with a Journalism major and English minor.

Random Fact: Steve once won a 50-player live Texas Hold ’Em poker tournament.

Hobbies: Anguishing over his beloved Chicago Cubs and Bears; listening to Beatles and Grateful Dead music.