Tribe to sell ag operations

By Jomay Steen, Journal Staff Writer | Friday, January 23, 2004

Previous Page

Share

• del.icio.us
• Digg
• NewsVine
• Fark

Print

Email

PORCUPINE - It's the end of an era.

On Wednesday, at the Porcupine Year Round Day School gymnasium, the Oglala Sioux Tribe voted to sell the 50-year-old Oglala Farm and Ranch on the western end of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Ruth Brown of the Eagle Nest District and a member of the council's land committee recommended the sale of all cattle and assets.

With an annual operating loan payment of $68,000, the council approved packing up its boots and saddle and selling off the farm. While having only two more loan payments left on its note, changing administrations and bad management had put the operation at risk, she said.

"It was a struggle to let it go," Brown said.

Money from the sale will settle the $110,000 debt owed to First National Bank in Gordon, Neb. With complete cattle and inventory sales to reach an expected $195,000, it was something that the financially strapped tribe couldn't afford to pass up.

On Sunday, stock trucks will arrive at the ranch to ship 267 cattle to market in Gordon. An inventory list of equipment that includes feed bunks, trucks and tractors will be advertised for sealed bid and sold to the highest bidder. The ranch's three units of 19,294.17 acres of grasslands and creeks will go through the range unit process and will be advertised for lease.

The operation began humbly in the 1950s as a prison honor farm, Brown said. It was a place where prisoners went to work off jail time. In the ‘70s, its mission and name changed. The Oglala Farm and Ranch worked as full-fledged ranch with two full-time employees and seasonal help for roundups, branding and animal care.

Struggling for the past six years at an annual deficit of $10,000, Brown said it had run its course.

"The tribe didn't have enough animals to stock the three range units," she said.

The tribe would have needed 507 cattle to meet the required lease. The farm and ranch fell 240 head below herd count to meet the requirements.

With operating costs increasing, an aging cattle herd, a change in managers and little return from cattle sales, the tribe could not afford to sink any more money into the farm and ranch, she said.

"It was an enterprise for the tribe, but now it became a cash flow problem," Brown said.

But there was opposition to the sale.

"The farm and ranch has been operated in the Oglala District for years," Valerie Janis said. "There were years that it ran good, but I think politics ran it down."

Representing the Oglala District, Janis commended its past managers and hired hands for relying upon their own skills as cattlemen and stockgrowers to keep the venture operating.

"All we had was our farm and ranch and the casino," Janis said.

Prairie Wind casino is the tribe's only other business enterprise.

Janis said she saw something positive in the operation beyond dollars and cents. It provided an opportunity for people to learn a work ethic.

If a few bad years and worse political climates could turn the council from a marketable enterprise, it could happen to the tribe's other business as well, she said.

"Is the casino next?" Janis asked.

Contact Jomay Steen at 394-8418 or jomay.steen@rapidcityjournal.com