The New York Times is already talking about it as one of the biggest fires in US history. Certainly, although it is too early for an evaluation, it has brought Texas cattle ranches to their knees, affecting the county (Texas Panhandle) that alone is home to 85% of the state’s assets of 12 million cattle. An unknown number of cattle died in the flames, which also claimed at least two human lives. For the surviving cows, steers, bulls and calves, however, the situation is critical: pastures are blackened, water is lacking.
Texas cattle farms in crisis
“Justin Homen continued to drive through his vast Texas ranch”, reads the NYT report, “but found only the same bleak scenes: charred pastures, cow carcasses and smoking debris”. The fires broke out on 26 February, and for weeks devastated an area extending over a million acres as far as Kansas and Nebraska. Regions, we said, devoted to animal husbandry. “For ranchers whose livestock were spared, the tasks ahead are enormous”, the NYT reports, “burying dead cattle, repairing broken fences, distributing bales of hay transported from hundreds of miles away”.
The restart
The fires are now tamed. But it will not be easy for Texas livestock farming to restart, because it will be very costly to replace the dead cattle. Because of the last few years of drought, the price of cattle is high, while interest rates make the idea of bank loans inconvenient. Moreover, this is the time of year when spring sowing is being prepared: farms are already having to bear the costs of buying fertilisers and seeds, as well as ploughing the fields and using equipment.
Photo: Shutterstock archive
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