Profile of good stewardship: the Rafter F Cattle Company (2001) ⋆ Savory Institute

Case Study

Profile of good stewardship: the Rafter F Cattle Company (2001)

Profile of good stewardship: the Rafter F Cattle Company. The Quivira Coalition, Vol. 4, No. 2, 8-11. (Mar 2001)

Key Takeaways

This case study of a ranch in New Mexico, USA by Quivira Coalition features Rafter F Ranch, a 4,779-hectare property in San Jon, New Mexico. Soil erosion and mesquite tree encroachment were characteristic of this land in the early 1980s.
Owner Roger Bowe began implementing holistic management approach in 1984, with following results:
- Biological monitoring showed marked improvement of the land over 5-8 years:
- Perennial grass species – which provide good forage – tripled;
- Infestation by snakeweed reduced from 11% in some to just 1%; and
- Improved water cycle was indicated by a dry well (dry since 1950) that filled with 9 feet of water and dry springs that began flowing.
Financial performance was also transformed:
- Stocking rate tripled;
- Cost of production more than halved (from $0.60 per pound of beef in 1983 to
  $0.26 in 1990);
- Net income per acre grew from $5.84 in 1984 to $22.5 in 1992; and
- Return on investment in fencing and water points estimated at 1,000%
In 1993 Bowe was selected as a regional winner of the National Cattleman’s Association’s Environmental Stewardship Award.

Summary

Roger Bowe heard the whistle of change long before the train ever appeared on the tracks. For three generations, the Bowe family managed the private, 14,000-acre Rafter F as a traditional cattle ranch. That meant continuous grazing year round at a stocking rate that was commensurate with the ranch's location on the high, windy plains of the New Mexico-Texas state line, near Interstate 40.

Change is no stranger to the area, however. Thirty years after Roger's grandfather homesteaded the ranch in the early 1900s, the Bowe family watched with dismay as a sizeable farming community in the area was literally blown away in the Dust Bowl. In the decades since, families have continued to drift away one at a time. Roger thinks the population has dropped by two-thirds since he was a boy-a trend he believes will likely continue into the future.

"There's not much threat of subdivisions moving in around here either," says Roger with a chuckle. In the early 1980s, Roger and his family, including his brother, faced the possibility that they would be the next to leave. The ranch suffered from a slow, but steady ecological decline. His cattle, though distributed evenly across the ranch, were impacting the land unevenly. They were overgrazing the blue grama and buffalo grasses on the flat mesa tops while underutilizing the tobosa bottomlands.

The cattle didn't mind this arrangement much, but the land did. Roger began to observe a distinct lack of vigor in the plant community across the ranch. The grasses on the mesa tops were never allowed to set seed, and the tobosa grass looked gray and sickly. "I knew the land was unhealthy," says Roger in his quiet plains accent, "but I didn't know why."

That's when Roger distinctly heard the whistle of change for the first time.