Montana Rancher Donates 38,000-Acre Ranch, Valued At $21 Million, To Ensure It Remains A Ranch
Donating a legacy to ensure the ranch lives on.
Montana rancher Dale Veseth is making headlines for an unconventional way to adapt to the pressures and changes facing cattle ranchers. And his move might be the model for other farmers and ranchers facing financial struggles.
A real-life Yellowstone moment unfolded earlier this year when Dale Veseth and his wife, Janet, announced they were donating their $21.6 million ranch, spanning over 38,000 acres across Montana, to the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance (RSA).
The RSA is a rancher-founded nonprofit that Veseth helped establish 22 years ago.
The couple decided to gift the land’s legacy to the RSA after facing the struggles of maintaining their cattle operation. The donation is the largest recorded working ranch donation in Montana history.
At 63, Veseth has been implementing a rotational grazing system with her herd of cattle for the last 35 years, keeping the legacy of the ranch his father and grandfather set in motion alive. While Veseth has adapted to the changing landscape of cattle ranching, he’s again adapting to market changes while ensuring the prairie land does not change with the state’s modernization.
Most ranchers know that this is not an easy business to be in, and while it comes with many hardships once you have an established ranch, getting into the industry is even harder. Without being born into a ranching family, the overhead needed to get a ranch off the ground and running is nearly impossible for a young aspiring rancher to do.
“The capitalization to get in and maintain a ranching business was out of the reach of most Americans.
Land is just one aspect. You have cattle. You have equipment, you have labor. And (everything) to make all these things go. We thought it was pretty hard to recruit the next generation of people who produced our food.”
Veseth told Cowboy State Daily.
So what does the donation of this land ensure? The Veseth couple will continue to manage and run the ranch as long as they are able to do so. Still, it ensures that if they ever become at risk of losing the land, it will remain a working cattle operation supporting local ranchers rather than being sold off. This donation also ensures that the land will not be subdivided or converted for other uses.
The choice the Veseths made is leading other ranchers to consider donating their land rather than selling it to hunting outfitters, conservation groups buying land for bison roaming, or the highest bidder who will turn the generational ranch land into a resort or other business venture.
In fact, Haylie Shipp, the communications director of RSA, told the New York Post that they are already receiving calls from ranchers in other states interested in doing the same with their land.
“We’ve had calls from folks as far as Kansas that are interested, and that’s a long way away from our demographic.”
As for Dale Veseth, this decision was made to preserve the heritage of the land in Northern Montana and the surrounding states. Eventually, the land he donated will offer access programs through the RSA for aspiring ranchers who do not have the funds to enter this industry, or, as Veseth says, for those who don’t have “$20 million to buy a ranch and then several more million to equip it.” The programs will provide education and land leases that benefit the land instead of overrunning it.
This arrangement allows more to enter the business, which will be vital for the future of agriculture in our nation, given that the average age of ranchers is 60 and the number of full-time ranchers under 35 accounts for only 12% of those in the agricultural field.
Veseth sees the donation as an essential piece of preserving agricultural production and maintaining rural communities.
“It’s very likely that we’ll be able to use this land to help out the neighbors get a little bit more land to graze on, maybe bring in some younger ranchers that want an opportunity to have access to land, allow them to have some cattle on it. Really create an opportunity where more than one person can now graze on this property, and expand what they are able to do.”
Shipp said.
But for now, operations at Veseth’s ranch will remain status quo, and he will continue to push his cattle 170 times across his land in a year. Veseth can also keep on sharing his passion for rocks… And he can sleep well at night knowing that the vision his father and grandfather had for the land will never change, even after he’s no longer on God’s green earth.
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