Montana rancher gives away $21.6M family cattle instead of selling it

A Montana cattleman and his wife are giving away their $21.6 million ranch instead of selling it, a rare move at a time when land prices are rising and multigenerational ranches are disappearing across the West.

Dale and Janet Veseth, whose family has farmed in northwestern Montana’s Phillips County for generations, are donating their nearly 38,000 acres to the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance, a rancher-founded nonprofit that works to keep land in cattle production.

The couple would continue to manage the ranch for the rest of their lives, with ownership later passing on to the group.

The organization said the donation is the largest record donation to a working ranch in Montana history.

For Dale Veseth, 63, the decision reflects the financial realities facing modern ranchers.

His family’s connection to the land is deep. His father used to raise cattle there. So did his grandfather.

Veseth has spent 35 years perfecting a rotational grazing system at home, which involves using remote-controlled collars to move cattle across the field 170 times a year.

But rising land prices and outside buyers have reshaped the high northern plains, making it harder for family farms to survive.

“For people to go out and pay $20 million for an average job, that’s probably not going to work,” Veseth told Cowboy State Daily.

“Land is just one aspect, you have cattle, you have equipment, you have labor,” he said. “And (everything) to make all these things. We thought it would be very difficult to recruit the next generation to produce our food.”

The farm’s footprint reflects decades of consolidation.

Veseth said that at least 76 houses have been built now.

Including the Bureau of Land Management grazing land, he estimated that at one time about 100 families worked the land which today has only three people.

“They all had dreams and interests,” he said.

The Ranchers Stewardship Coalition was formed in 2003 as ranchers pushed back against outside interests buying up land in northern Montana.

Angel DeVries, the group’s executive director, told Cowboy State Daily that the organization was formed when ranchers began speaking out about what they said had long been “stewards of the land.”

RSA communications director Hayley Shipp explained the group’s goals simply.

“What can we do for farmers so they don’t have to sell their farms outside of production agriculture?” he told the outlet.

Veseth said the donation is intended to create access for people who don’t have the means to buy land, as the average rancher is now about 60 and only 12 percent of full-time ranchers are under 35.

“RSA is going to be a forum,” Veseth said. “They will have an opportunity for people who have lived their lives on the land and want other people to have that opportunity, to raise food and be the backbone of these rural local communities.”

“I am very happy that I am a rancher,” he added. “I think I’ve had some opportunities that most people will never have.”