What is to be the lease price per acre, or the price per head for grazing steers during the season of 1913? This is a question in Greenwood County that causes the Wilson governmental policy and all other so styled public programs, to pale in comparison. It is generally conceded that grazing is going to come pretty high, but how high? Will it be $1.50, $1.75 or $2 per acre? Is the man who has the pasture going to charge the fellow who has the cattle $6, $7 or $8 per head?
One thing is certain, not many cattlemen are going to be fortunate enough to secure grazing at so low of price as $1.50 per acre, four acres to the steer. On the other hand will the cattleman pay $2 an acre? Can he afford to pay $8 a head for the privilege of seeing his cattle fill up on the Greenwood County Bluestem? Another thing is certain, is that the price will be all the traffic will bear.
Unless there is something that boasts that Greenwood County grass is better than other grass, then the prices here are too high. Greenwood County pastures undoubtedly bring more rental than do the pastures of adjoining counties. Lyon, Butler and other counties have much the same soil on which they produce the same Bluestem that is grown in this county.
Cattlemen from adjoining counties claim there is no difference between our grass and their grass, our cattle and their cattle, and yet Greenwood cattle do outsell, as a general proposition, the grass cattle from adjoining counties.
There seem to be two reasons why Greenwood grass cattle top the market and consequently two reasons why Greenwood County grass is better than Lyon or Chase or Butler County grass.
First, as a general thing, cattlemen in this county winter their cattle that are to be finished on grass better than their brothers in neighboring counties winter their steers. As a result, Greenwood County cattle are fatter than the cattle from other counties when they go to market. Second, Greenwood pasture owners have, for years, taken better care of their grasslands than have landowners in other counties. For years the minimum number of acres for one steer in this county has been four and frequently 130 to 140 cattle are turned into a 640 acre pasture.
Today the renter, who knows his business and is preparing his stuff for market, is just as much opposed to overstocking the pasture as the owner. In fact, many a pasture owned by a non-resident has been built up from poor to good condition through the care of the renter. Thus better care and feeding of pastures have made Greenwood County grass better and consequently higher in price than other counties.
There are a few apparently inconsistent statements that might be made about the local pasturage situation. First, $8 is too much to pay for one steer for four or five months. That appears to be true. Second, $8 will only just about pay six percent interest and the taxes on four acres of grass land at the present average price per acre. That also seems to be true.
Third, the present sale price of pasture land is too high. That looks reasonable and yet never before in the history of the county, even in the days pasture land went begging at three and four dollars an acre, would pasture land pay its owner interest and taxes on his investment.
Grasslands in Greenwood County have not been changing hands this fall and winter to any considerable extent. There are two reasons the land market has been dull and neither is the one that the superficial observer would offer as the cause for the few real estate transfers, name-ly that land prices are too high. In the first place this particular section of Kansas has had several successive short crops. Old-timers say that three poor crops in succession were never before known. As a result, conditions are not such as naturally attract the home seeker from the outside nor incline the local man to take on himself greater financial burdens. But the principal reason why Greenwood grazing lands change ownership less frequently is the fact that the large portion of the grassland is owned by residents of this county.
The pastures are owned by cattlemen who know their value and have acquired them for their own use. It is also interesting to note in this connection that many of the big pasture deals have been consummated during the past few years since land became comparatively high in price, and that as a general proposition the local cattlemen did not buy land when it was cheap. While land as not sold as readily as heretofore, prices in no cases have been lowered, but in almost every instance have mounted steadily upward. Prices in 1911 were considerably higher that 1910; in 1912 while the advance was not so great, there was a perceptible increase in prices, and unquestionably in 1913 there will be no decline, and given a good crop year, satisfactory grazing season (1913 turned out to be one of the driest years and hotter on record) and continuation of present cattle prices, there will be a substantial increase in the price per acres in pasture lands of Greenwood County.
Are prices to high? Perhaps and yet $8 expended on Greenwood Bluestem grass will put more fat on the steer than the same amount put into another fat producing feed, and every cattlemen who can is willing investing from $25 to $30 per acre in Greenwood County pasture land.
