Awards at Annual Convention

Pres. John Helle awarding Dr. Bill Hawkins the Flock Guardian Award.

Jim Hoover and Dr. Bill Hawkins were honored with the Flock Guardian award at the finale banquet. Hoover recently retired from Wildlife Services after working to protect livestock owners from predators for 36 years. Hawkins, a long time member of the Montana Wool Growers and Montana Stockgrowers, has served tirelessly as the Miles City Ram Sale's veterinarian. At 82 years of age, Hawkins is the oldest practicing vet in the state of Montana, and possibly the nation.

In the annual speed shearing contest, Wade Kopren, Chase Cantrell, and Ryan Keyes won the contest with a time of 4:07. "Slow but Steady," Keith Braaton, Brent Roeder, and Ralph McWilliams came in second at 4:10, and "The Guns" Loren Opstedahl, Reid Redden, and Jake Yerger finished third (4:17).

The National Make It with Wool competition will be held January 21-23, 2010 in Nashville, Tennessee. Jasmine Powell will be representing Montana in the junior division and Kacey Gollehon will represent Montana in the senior division at the national contest and style show. Kacie Killen won the adult division and will compete in a mail-in judging in January. The mail-in competition allows competitors to send in their garments, photographs of it being worn, and a short video modeling the garment. THe winner of the mail-in judging will attend the national style show as the national winner. Amanda Powell was the 2009 state winner in the 'Made for Others' category. Powell sewed for her neice, Angelin Toth. The category is district and state level only.

Convention Highlights

Gene Surber and Les Graham provided an ATV Safety seminar for MWGA attendees. Surber urged his listeners not to take ATV safety lightly, citing the fact that Montana has the highest ATV accident claims in the nation. Speaking to the older members of the audience, he encouraged the 'father figures' on the farm or ranch to set the example, thereby inspiring smart decisions in the younger generations. Graham and Surber also advised cooperation with safety auditors. If an auditor contacts you, you are required to let them visit, but you can choose the time and date of the meeting. For more information about Montana ag safety, please visit http://mtagsafety.com/.

Randy Hammerstrom, USDA Market Reporter provided a current look at the wool, feeder lamb, slaughter ewe, and replacement ewe prices. Slaughter ewe prices are picking up again now that JBS has started custom killing mutton and shipping it to Mexico. Imports from Australia and New Zealand have seen a ten percent decrease in the past year. For the monthly market updates, visit www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/gl_ls336.txt.

Dr. Jeff Jacobsen, Dean of the College of Agriculture at MSU and Director of the Montana Ag Experiment Station, said he had met with MSU's new president, Dr. Waded Cruzado, and believes she will be supportive of agricultural education on campus. Jacobsen described Cruzado as "intelligent, experienced, and committed to ag research." He was very optimistic about the future under her leadership.

ASI update

Bill Taliaferro
ASI Executive Board
MWGA Annual Meeting Information Session
Saturday, December 5, 2009

The American Sheep Industry has been facing considerable pressure from environmental organizations, according to Bill Taliaferro. Taliaferro serves on the ASI's executive board and was present to address the MWGA on Saturday. Wildlife Services has been under fire from the Humane Society and Wild Earth Guardians for their predator control practices. Both environmental organizations have been pressing for abolishing Wildlife Services, but currently their pressure has no leverage. Animal rights groups have also been working to ban M-44s. Fortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency sided with agriculture in rejecting their pleas. However, Taliaferro warned that the victories in February and March of 2009 would not mean that the subject was defeated. The USDA sheep experiment station in Idaho has also been under attack from anti-livestock groups for its reliance on forest service grazing allotments.

While the sheep industry has largely been reactive concerning public relations and interactions with environmental groups, Taliaferro described one area in which they are working to be proactive: the protection of guard dogs. At the 2009 Convention, the American Sheep Industry formed the ASI Guard Dog Working Group, to address the increasing contact between rural and urban land use. In several instances in the West, particularly in Colorado where the population density is higher, there has been interaction between guard dogs and recreationists, domestic animals, and wildlife on public and private lands. Guard dog owners are concerned that the negative attention drawn by guard dogs attacking what they view as threats to their herd will result in increased conflict over public lands and hard-to-resolve lawsuits.

Taliaferro touched briefly on other issues being addressed at the national scene. The ag appropriations bill granted Wildlife Services $77.8 million, with an additional $18.6 million allotted for WS research and development. ASI approved spending $50,000 in unrestricted funds for the lamb project headed by the Lamb Council. The lamb project is researching the impact of non-traditional lamb marketing on sales.

For more information from the American Sheep Industry, you can visit their website at http://www.sheepusa.org/.

Undaunted Stewardship®

Cindy Selensky

Undaunted Stewardship

MWGA Annual Meeting Information Session

Saturday, December 5, 2009

The Montana Wool Growers Association is one of 16 organizations serving as Undaunted Stewardship's guidance council. The program and its statewide partners are "dedicated to the environmentally healthy management of grazing lands."

Cindy Selensky described the three roles of Undaunted Stewarship: public education, interpretive site construction, and ranch certification.

PUBLIC EDUCATION: Undaunted Stewardship provides educational information to the public concerning range management practices.

• The media outreach program works to educate urban public about the compatibility between sustainable agricultural practices and environmental principles. Copies of the documentary Undaunted Stewardship are available from http://www.undauntedstewarship.com/, and the acclaimed documentary Path to Eden, funded in part by the program, can be requested at http://www.pathtoeden.org/.


• Undaunted Stewardship also hosts educational workshops and offers a list of 2,300 peer-reviewed articles related to biology, organisms, ecology, and grazing. To access the list of abstracts, visit http://arc.lib.montana.edu/range-science.

INTERPRETIVE SITES: Undaunted Stewardship is currently managing eleven interpretive sites along the Corps of Discovery's route through Montana. The private land owners on these sites sign on to ten-year Historical Site Preservation Agreements, which compensate the agriculturists for preserving the natural landscape and providing limited public access to the sites. The value of these sites, explained Selensky, is greater than mere historical education; they also serve to remind the public of the key role ranchers play in preserving the open space.

UNDAUNTED CERTIFICATION: Undaunted Stewarship certification is open to anyone in the state with greater than 160 acres of agricultural land. The certification process provides land owners with technical assistance and the paperwork to encourage good record-keeping and range monitoring practices. The program, Selensky clarified, is designed to "help you help yourself," but with an independent review of your decisions. The certification process is not a reward, it is not binding, and it is not regulatroy. The rancher benefits by learning how to photo monitor their pastures and establishing a flexible written management plan for their grazing practices. Undaunted Stewarship benefits by gaining documentation of good stewardship to use as promotional material in the media.

American Lamb Board

Megan Wortman
American Lamb Board
MWGA Annual Meeting Information Session
Saturday, December 5, 2009

(Photo shows Megan Wortman with Brad Boner)

Megan Wortman, executive director of the American Lamb Board, fired up the MWGA's optimism for the future of the national lamb market. The American Lamb Board (ALB) was founded in 2002 to increase the demand for lamb and expand markets. Currently, the ALB's "lambassadors" are working to promote the benefits of cooking with lamb among culinary circles, and at local consumer events and retail stores. Their work in nutritional education and promotion has had a positive impact on the presence of lamb in magazines, recipe contests, blogs, and websites.


"Lamb is the new pork," Wortman informed enthusiastically. The public perception of lamb remains questionable, but in the culinary venue, lamb is gaining status. While many consumers cling to the perception that lamb is expensive, has a bad taste, or is difficult to fix, chefs and restaurant owners are becoming more receptive to the product and many top culinary publications are selecting lamb as their protein of choice. Consumers may still be heistant to buy lamb in the market, in fact one third of consumers have never tried lamb, but lamb, Wortman assured, has become "the darling of the media."

Wortman started a theme which continued throughout the remainder of the convention's lamb marketing discussions: presentation and promotion are crucial to the success of marketing.

For more information about the American Lamb Board's work, please visit the following websites: http://www.americanlamb.com/, http://www.lambcheckoff.com/, and http://www.leanonlamb.com/.

I-160 Commentary

John Hughes

MWGA Annual Meeting Information Session

Saturday, December 5, 2009

John Hughes spoke to attendees of the Montana Wool Growers Association annual meeting on behalf of Montanans for Effective Wildlife Management (MEWM). MEWM is an organization formed to defeat Initiative 160, better known as the "Trap Ban."

Hughes emphasized the importance of allowing trapping to remain legal in Montana as a "wildlife management tool." The initiative, he explained, is poorly written and would ban all trapping on public lands. "Public lands" go beyond the obvious to include "parks, hospitals, universities, municipal golf courses, and state, city and county owned land and buildings." Such strict regulations would prohibit even the simple act of trapping mice on public property by anyone but Fish Wildlife and Parks (FWP) personnel.

Hughes pointed out that I-160 would place a tremendous burden on the FWP by requiring FWP employees to receive training and devote more time to trapping--a financial drain on the already burdened environmental entity--when licensed trappers could continue their current work with no additional cost to taxpayers.

Listeners were left with this premonition: the trap ban is only the beginning of what could become a long line of restrictive regulation. First, the focus will be prohibiting trapping on public lands. Next, the attention will turn to hunting. Then, if the movement gains momentum, livestock grazing will be eliminated until everyone has been pushed off public lands. Hughes warned not to take the trap ban lightly and to stop this line of thinking before it gains any more headway.

Rehberg at MWGA Convention

Congressman Denny Rehberg

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Congressman Denny Rehberg, Montana's sole voice in the U.S. House of Representatives, addressed the Montana wool growers with his characteristic vivacity during the association's Saturday session. Rehberg came down hard on the federal government for its failed policies. Concerning the Endangered Species Act, Rehberg explained, "It's not that we can't sustain a little bit of loss for a failed federal program; it's that there shouldn't be a failed federal program." Rehberg has been working to pass reforms to the Endangered Species Act with the rationalization, "You don't have the phrase 'shoot, shovel, and shut up' if [the policy] works."

The Estate Tax remains a priority for the congressman as well. The fight, he maintained, is not between democrats and republicans. In Washington D.C., the discrepancy is between 'urban' and 'rural.' The urban populous is uneducated about the impact the estate tax has on farmers and ranchers. Rehberg and Senator Max Baucus are working together on the estate tax in hopes of reducing its impact in 2011. (Rehberg predicted that the largest tax increase in the history of the country will happen in January of 2011, after the 2001 Tax Relief package sunsets). Furthermore, Rehberg warned against accepting "tax relief" that allows higher taxes than existed before the sunset of former legislation.

Rehberg insisted that the federal government needs to focus on spending reform, tax reform, and health reform in that order. The president, he stated, is "so hell-bent on pushing something he based his presidency on" that he is not looking to resolve the problem of costs before he begins spending. There is a lack of innovation at the national level that is being bypassed by an increase in the size and spending of government.

A questioner brought up Tester's Wilderness Bill. Rehberg explained that he started working with the wilderness issue in 1979. He insisted that in order to protect agriculture, three standards MUST be in any wilderness bill:

1. There must be a "hard release," which clearly states that if certain lands are to be declared wilderness, all other lands will be exempt from the status now and in the future.


2. Timber sales must never be prohibited or restricted. Rehberg explained that currently appeals can prolong litigation so far into a three year logging contract that by the time the conflict is resolved, the remaining time in the contract is inadequate to harvest enough lumber to cover costs.


3. Water rights must never be compromised. The Clean Water and Restoration Act is just one piece of legislation forcing losses of water rights

Rehberg encouraged his audience to be proactive about protecting the rights of agriculture and invited them to visit his Facebook and Twitter pages for updates on his activities.