2/3 Of Grazing On Public Land (For Next To Nothing) Benefits 10% Of Grazing Permit Holders, As Land Health Deteriorates

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ProPublica and High Country News set out to investigate the transformation of the grazing system into a massive subsidy program. In the late 1970s, Congress raised the fees to graze on public lands to reflect open market prices at the time. But the fees have barely budged in decades. The government still charges ranchers $1.35 per animal unit month, a 93 percent discount, on average, on the price of grazing on private lands. (An animal unit month, or AUM, represents the typical amount of forage a cow and her calf eat in a month.) Our analysis found that in 2024 alone, the federal government poured at least $2.5 billion into subsidy programs that public lands ranchers can access, not including the steep discount on forage. Subsidies benefiting public lands ranchers include disaster assistance after droughts and floods, cheap crop insurance, funding for fences and watering holes, and compensation for animals lost to predators.

Benefits flow largely to a select few like (Ed. - Billionaire Stan) Kroenke. Roughly two-thirds of all the livestock grazing on BLM acreage is controlled by just 10 percent of ranchers, our analysis showed. On Forest Service land, the top 10 percent of permittees control more than 50 percent of grazing. This concentration of control has been the status quo for decades. In 1999, the San Jose Mercury News undertook a similar study and found that the largest ranchers controlled the same proportion of grazing within BLM jurisdiction as they do today.

Meanwhile, the agencies’ oversight of livestock’s environmental impact has declined dramatically in recent years. Lawmakers have allowed an increasing number of grazing permits to be automatically renewed, even when environmental reviews have not been completed or the land has been flagged as being in poor condition.

The Trump administration’s push to further underwrite the livestock industry supports ranchers like Kroenke, whose Winecup Gamble is advertised as covering nearly 1 million acres. More than half of that is federal public land that can support roughly 9,000 head of cattle, according to an advertisement in brokerage listings. Last year, Kroenke paid the government about $50,000 in grazing fees to use the BLM land around the ranch — an 87 percent discount on the market rate, according to a ProPublica and High Country News analysis of government data. Previous owners enjoyed similar economic benefits. Before Kroenke, the ranch belonged to Paul Fireman, the longtime CEO of Reebok, who used losses from companies affiliated with the ranch as a $22 million tax write-off between 2003 and 2018, internal IRS data shows. And before Fireman, it was owned by others, including Hollywood superstar Jimmy Stewart of It’s a Wonderful Life fame.

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https://grist.org/economics/the-wealthy-profit-from-public-lands-and-taxpayers-pick-up-the-tab/