Some of my research during the past 30 plus years caused me to spend a fair amount of time on ranches in eastern New Mexico, with an occasional foray into the West Texas and eastern to central Arizona. My studies involved the ecology and biological control of rangeland weeds and pests - native and introduced plants, as well as grasshoppers and other insects that ate forage on the short grass prairie. I spent many hours wondering the paved and dirt (and sometimes mud) roads of Union, Lea, Quay, Colfax, Mora, Harding, and Roosevelt Counties, studying the ecosystems of rangeland. In the process I met with and spent some time with various ranchers, and to a lesser extent farmers, who tried to make a living in the short grass prairie and Chihuahuan desert grassland.
We who consume food often have little appreciation of those who produce it or of the effort it takes to get it on our tables. The western ranchers and dry land farmers were, and are, gritty, strong, and persistent people and I have a deep respect for them. I ran into all sorts, from a rancher in West Texas who took me to land he owned in New Mexico and complained to me about the semishrubs that had completely taken over the area, to the ranch foreman in one of the northern counties who guessed that overstocking had something to do with the brush invasion. The latter was correct, but it was not necessarily the fault of the current ranchers. The land had been overgrazed in the past, often with the encouragement of the government and often with disastrous results. One of the early researchers on rangeland, the Quaker botanist E. O. Wooten, noted the problem in 1916 and eventually his work was instrumental in developing new grazing laws, primarily the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. Still much damage had been done, and in some cases, was still being done.
During and after the First World War vast herds of cattle were pastured on land that in the long run could not support such sustained grazing. Yes, the bison had grazed over much of the area (at least in the shortgrass prairie), but when forage disappeared, they could move on without the barrier of barb wire fences, which soon divided the open range. Farming was also expanded over thousands of acres subject to periodic drought and the plowing did not follow the contour of the land, also leading to erosion. Although better stocking practices and contour plowing after the Dust Bowl days, plus a period of decent rainfall, helped, many of the same difficulties still stand - periodic drought, past and current erosion, and now a likely permanent climate change In essence, all of us have been living in a fool's paradise, with an illusion that the bounty we observe at the local supermarket will always be there and that the United States would always be able to answer any production needs. We may be soon unable to hold on to that illusion, as global climate change alters the landscape, not just in the short grass prairie, but over the entire planet.
In walking the ranches of New Mexico I saw all sorts of conditions. In the north most ranches were lush with grass and prairie flowers during the summer, while long-billed curlews and horned larks flew up as I drove by in my truck. In the south conditions were much different. As one moved off the Caprock toward Texas, the rather sparse (compared to the north) short grass prairie of the Llano Estacado gave way to desert and semidesert. On the transition were fairly vast areas of shinery oak (a dwarf true oak that forms runners and limits grazing, but that also forms important habitat for several important wildlife species, such as the lesser prairie chicken.) In fact I think, based on the economic studies of the area, that in many cases the numerous oil wells were the main source of income. The economic reports from the late 1970s indicated that only about $2000-$3000 of profit actually came from ranching. Much of the rangeland did not look that good, even during this period.
In addition to looking at weeds on various ranches I also spent some time researching the grasshoppers on rangeland. New Mexico has over 150 species of short-horned grasshoppers (Orthoptera: Acrididae) and a lot of U. S. Government money went to control "outbreaks" with aerial spraying. The grasshopper outbreak maps were often lurid red with these areas in eastern New Mexico, based on 9 grasshoppers per square meter. Of course the people who often made the counts had no knowledge of grasshopper taxonomy and to them a grasshopper was a grasshopper - period. I spent some time in one of those outbreaks in eastern New Mexico and later in a real outbreak in Grant County, New Mexico. In the first there were at least ten species of grasshoppers that were common and I could see no real effects of the infestation. In the second only one species of grasshopper was dominate and it was eating everything, except grass, in its path! What was the difference? In the first MOST of the species were weed or native broad-leaved plant feeders and there were actually only two to three individuals of damaging species per square meter. In the second case the grasshopper population consisted of thousands of individuals (probably 10-40 per square meter in some spots) of the lesser migratory grasshopper (Melanoplus sanguinipes), a known destructive species that, while it does not feed on grass (there was none anyway, because of a local drought), eats just about every crop in its path. Grape vineyards were laid waste as the hords of grasshoppers moved through them. By the time a spray program was arranged the grasshoppers had laid their eggs, but that did not really matter. Like a lot of boom and bust organisms that have extreme outbreaks the grasshoppers did not appear the second year.
I also saw an outbreak of the gray bird-wing grasshopper (Schistocerca nitens) in Eddy County that stripped corn plants to the stalks, with dead grasshoppers forming a layer several inches deep after spraying. On the other hand, another "outbreak" in Chaves County, New Mexico, turned out to be 20% grass-feeding and 80% weed-feeding species. We told the rancher not to bother trying to control these as he was actually gaining benefit from the grasshoppers. All grasshoppers are not equal!
The vast rangeland over which I traveled in eastern New Mexico had been the western edge of the worst ecological disaster in the history of the United States - the Dust Bowl of the 1930s (See: Ken Burns "The Dust Bowl" - PBS - a must-see four hour masterpiece.) This was not that evident in the 1970s and 80s, when I was there, but there were traces if one looked hard enough. Some of the rangeland had at one time been dry land farms. I grew to respect the toughness of the people who stayed on the land, despite all, but I could not always agree with them politically. It is interesting to note that in the 1930s and 40s many were firm supporters of Franklin D. Roosevelt and a number worked for the WPA or CCC. They had to do so because there were no private corporations to help them. They in the end needed the federal government in order to survive. It is ironic that this part of the country is so suspicious of government now and while Oklahoma and Texas voted for FDR (who was accused of being a socialist by the wealthier citizens) you could not get them to vote for anybody that liberal now! (see: http://uselectionatlas.org/... 1932, 1936, 1940.)
Ranching and farming are very chancy and now to a large degree have been taken over by big agriculture, although there are still family ranches and farms. In the short grass prairie this is especially so. While dry land farming has mostly gone the way of the dodo, pivot farming has been practiced for a while now, using fossil water from the Ogallala Aquifer. About 50% or more of that water is gone and much of Texas and New Mexico have been under drought conditions. I'm not sure where this will eventually lead as the world is pretty unpredictable, but I doubt that the alterations in climate and the hatred and divisiveness that has been engendered in the country will lead anywhere good. We are all, in some measure or another, guilty in this affair, and we have allowed our constitution's commitment to work for the general welfare to be usurped by greed and perceived need to the extent that we can't even talk to each other civilly, let alone tackle the very serious problems that require our attention. Whether humans can pull together in the current crisis as they finally did in the Dust Bowl is an open question, but I hope that they will.
Literature References:
Holechek, J. L. 1981. A brief history of range management in the United States. Rangelands 3 (1).
Montgomery, D. R. 2007. Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization. University of California Press, Berkeley.