Drive through downtown Bozeman any day of the week, and you’re guaranteed to see some cowboy hats. Turn on the television and there’s another Montana politician wearing the hat. On Instagram, it’s billionaires with boots and buckles. Stetson even had a hat shortage from demand on the back of the success of Yellowstone and the Barbie movie.
Meanwhile, the cowboy is dying.
This is not a new observation. And it’s not the fault of 99% of folks wearing the boots, buckles, and hats that family farms and ranches are disappearing across the country at a rate of over 5,000 each year. For many, the cowboy represents old-fashioned American values: Independence, hard work, and the iconic landscape of the West.
If asked, most people want the cowboy to survive.
However, there are some wolves in sheep’s clothing out there. Corporate agriculture is the largest threat to family farms and ranches. In the beef industry, four multinational meatpacking corporations control 85% of the market. That means that they have the monopoly power to set prices for American cattle. They also ship millions of pounds of lower-quality beef from other countries such as Brazil and Mexico to increase supply.
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The result is a rigged market where American cowboys can’t get a fair price and consumers get an inferior product held to lower standards. The only beneficiaries are Wall Street shareholders, executives, and their bootlickers in congress.
As a rancher myself, there are a lot of days I want to give up. Both my husband and I work second jobs off the ranch to support our family. And contrary to what is shown in popular media, more of my day is spent mending fences and slogging through cow crap than on epic horseback rides through snow-capped peaks at sunset. We do this because we love the land and our history, not because there is tons of money to be made.
So next time you put on the hat, I encourage you to think about helping the cowboy. Buying local or direct-to-consumer helps, but there are policy solutions out there too. Yes, policy is boring, but it is important. Let’s take Country-of-Origin-Labeling (COOL) for example.
Right now, a cow can be raised, slaughtered, processed, and packaged out of the country, sent to the U.S., repackaged and labeled as American beef. That means when you go to the grocery store, you have no idea where the meat you buy comes from. The meatpacking corporations along with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) want to hide where beef comes from so that they can sell cheap foreign beef at the same prices as our American beef.
COOL is a common-sense policy supported by a vast majority of Americans, but Congress won’t act. Let’s change that.
You can sign our petition asking for COOL in the Farm Bill at NorthernPlains.org/campaign/support-cool-2024. If we are not careful, every person in this country might own a cowboy hat someday and yet, there might not be any cowboys left.
Sarah Christensen ranches in Granite County on a fifth-generation family ranch, and is a member of Northern Plains Resource Council, a grassroots conservation and family agriculture group.
