blackfoot-valley

In both these cases, on two continents - one driven by individualism under freedom, the other by collectivism under a totalitarian system - the result was tremendous human suffering and misery, not to mention damage to the land, when good crop years turned to bad. In the United States, the warnings of stockmen were in large measure realized. While the ranchers were not impartial observers, they were more attuned to what this land could realistically support. Those agriculturalists who did come through the hard times were those in the more favorable locations who practiced dry-farming techniques or where irrigation was practical. In any case, most of Montana east of the Divide remains range country - cattle and to a lesser extent sheep having replaced the once-vast herds of grazing buffalo. Farmers point out that growing food crops for direct human consump- tion produces many times the amount of caloric or food value per acre than does livestock raising in which animals eat the crop, which is then converted to human food by growth processes once removed. This is true. Calculations often given state that this efficiency difference per acre is on the order of ten to one, certainly a dramatic contrast. But those who emphasize these raw statistics overlook the fact that in vast areas of the arid and semiarid American West, especially the Great Plains but in other areas too, livestock raising is the only means of food production viable on a longterm basis. As we have seen, huge areas are simply environ- mentally unsuitable for agriculture of any kind. If we are going to use that land for sustainable food production at all, livestock raising is it. And the food produced in this way is a concentrated form of nutrition, high in protein and high in food value per pound. If care is taken to avoid overgrazing, great ar- eas of little potential use otherwise can continue to provide high quality food for today’s population on a sustained basis, much as the wild herds of millions of buffalo once did for the native peoples of the region. Though the Nevada Valley, including the Ranch, does lie west of the Continental Divide, it’s not far west of it. In key climatic respects it’s closer to the Great Plains than it is to the rest of western Montana. True, dust storms were not as prevalent here during the crisis periods because the mountains around the valley did not allow such a clean sweep for the winds to blow across the land as was the case on the Great Plains. The Nevada Creek and the Blackfoot River, with their tributary creeks, do make irrigation practical in certain areas. But locusts were a plague at times. The one attempt to grow grain on a large scale failed here for similar reasons as it did on the plains. Precipitation is likewise maginal and undependable - relatively small fluctua- 95