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You might wonder what a conservation organization is doing running a cattle ranch and selling livestock. The answer is as follows.
Founded in 1997, The Quivira Coalition is a nonprofit conservation organization based in SF, dedicated to building bridges between ranchers, environmentalists, scientists, public land managers, and others around the concept of land health. Our mission is to build resilience by fostering ecological, economic and social health on western landscapes through education, innovation, collaboration, and progressive public and private land stewardship.
The core of our approach is The New Ranch, which is based on the idea that the natural processes that make land productive for livestock are the same processes that sustain habitat for wildlife, increase and protect biological diversity, and promote functioning watersheds. It’s all about healthy land. The goals of The New Ranch are to make grasslands productive and diverse, reduce erosion, reinstate the flow of streams and springs, and provide habitat for wildlife. The result is higher profitability and hopefully, sustainable, locally based agriculture. It’s a great idea but can you actually do this without a huge bank account? Let’s head back to the ranch for the answer…
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The Valle Grande Ranch, located 30 miles southeast of SF on Rowe Mesa, was purchased in 1997 by the Conservation Fund to serve as a grassbank for northern NM Forest Service grazing allotments. The Rowe Mesa Grassbank provided a place to graze livestock while restoration work was being conducted on home allotments. The project was initially funded by a combination of government and foundation grants, with support from the Forest Service. The Quivira Coalition took over the project in 2004. With grant funding running out, we developed a transition plan that makes the ranch largely self-supporting over a period of five years. The business plan is based on building a herd adapted to conditions on the mesa and marketing the meat locally. We hope to sell to local consumers all of the animals we and our neighbors raise. The market is there and the production capacity is there; it is just a matter of connecting the two. While simple in concept, putting a local beef marketing program in place is perhaps the greatest challenge of all.
The Quivira herd will eventually utilize approximately half of the allotment’s annual production capacity with the other half dedicated to grassbank and other
conservation functions. We call it “conservation with a business plan.”
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