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Opinion
Buffalo what?
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Your columnist received an urgent phone call last week. It was from a loooong time friend one of the foremost agri-business cheerleaders in Southwestern Nebraska. My friend was upset over the action of a small committee of folk who recently decided to brand McCook as "Capital of the Buffalo Commons.""
He opined, strongly, that maybe the annual Buffalo Commons Story Telling Festival did draw in maybe 1,800 visitors to the community, economic value about $10 a head. The horse activities at the fairgrounds brought in 30 times that number of people to the community. Let's see 50,000 people at $10 a head economic impact, whew! "Maybe we should brand McCook", he further suggested, "the 'Horse Capital' of Nebraska"?
Our passionate friend had a suggestion for the branding committee that if they wanted get the public's stamp of approval all they had to do was put a ballot box in the Merchants Building for people attending the fair to vote their opinion of the "Capital of the Buffalo Commons" name or something more agriculture-related like "McCook, the Horse Capitol of Nebraska."
The ballot box caper didn't happen and a cooler voice from a professional man with a foot in both the rural and local city communities suggested that we need both the ag and the tourist related industries.
Actually your columnist is a long time proud member of both the local rural and city communities. I too noticed that when representatives of the community gathered recently to help the new Economic Development Director Kirk Dixon in his efforts to further develop this community there was not a single member of the committee representing the ag or agri-business side of the house. Further it is my opinion that the economic engine that really drives this area truly is agriculture. It is the crops that cross our streets on the way to market. It is the beef cattle that pass through the sale barn on the way to the feed lot and then on to the packing house. It is all the inputs to grow those crops the chemicals and fertilizer the machinery, the irrigation equipment to get it all done.
Possibly ag is a hard sell for the tourist industry. I am reminded of reading some years ago of a farm family up the line by Wauneta or some such community that annually hosted a family from Upstate New York each year at wheat harvest. That Eastern family helped drive trucks, the grain cart and combine all completely strange and exciting events in contrast to their usual way of life. On my own farm operation at corn harvest I would invite my deer hunting ex-military buddies' mid-day to ride the combine or drive the grain cart for me when they weren't out stalking deer. You should have seen the smile on the face of a former B-52 pilot when he slid the tractor pulling the grain cart into formation with my combine to unload the bin of corn. Priceless.
Courtesy of the Air Force back in the early 1960s I lived in Massachusetts with my young family. With a fellow pilot friend I would go climb the peaks over 5000ft in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Reflecting back I have tried to envision just what would entice New Hampshireites to journey to our community here as a tourist destination. They are used to beautiful scenery, cool tree covered mountain vistas. We don't have that here. A great golf course (I've heard tell -- never played it myself) yes. The Buffalo Commons Story Telling Festival, yes. Rodeo, up close and personal, yes. A chance to operate massive modern farm machinery? Well maybe.
The chosen name of "Capital of the Buffalo Commons" is a rather subtle poke in the eye, I like that, to Frank and Deborah Popper, liberal professors from back east who knew how we should live here in Nebraska.
They envisioned our agriculture way of life as bad for the environment or some other dumb thought and the best thing possible for their envisioned utopia was to remove all signs of mankind's presence here and revert the country back to what it had been before white men came to the plains. All land would be publicly owned, hence the name commons like in Boston, and buffalo would be free to graze. I can also remember how angry my father got sitting through Frank's lecture and how dad wanted to go back stage and kick his backside until the professor could gain new insight into how life really is.
"Capital of the Buffalo Commons." No, this area won't revert back to the open prairie of before mankind. It is our home we like it the way it is and we are proud of it.
Still, how do we sell it? The Buffalo Commons Story Telling festival we do well. Selling the impact of agriculture, not so much. Most of our residents know that the hospital and school systems are among the largest employers in McCook.
How many local farmers are there? How about machinery dealers? Where would one go to buy a center-pivot irrigation system? What does one cost? Who local sells farm fertilizer by the hundreds of tons? Who makes it? Unfortunately, I fear the local public has little understanding of our largest economic driver agri-business. Maybe it is we who love agriculture that are doing a poor job of selling it.
Try this one on for size. A mark of success is for a person to build a huge home on a couple of acres right on the city limits. Big house, big lot gee that will cost $500,000. A nice mark of success.
Well, down the road a bit at the same time our neighbor goes into the implement dealer to purchase the largest and latest combine for corn and wheat harvest. Hmm, it will set him back about $500,000. Then in six or seven years that machine will wear out and have to be replaced. The house on the big lot? Well it only becomes more valuable. Gee, but farming is a wonderful way of life!
That is how I saw it.