The Omaha Stockyards (cont'd, pg. 2 of 5)
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The four major packers, Armour, Cudahy, Morris and Swift, continued to expand and improve their operations. In 1915, Armour built a new plant, one of the nation’s largest, and the independent city of South Omaha merged with Omaha proper.
Cattle on a Roller Coaster
In 1926 a magnificent new Livestock Exchange Building towered over the South Omaha stockyards, symbolizing the optimism and strength the livestock industry—and cattle in particular—had enjoyed for nearly a quarter of a century.
Throughout the state mechanization was revolutionizing agriculture. Cars, trucks, and light tractors, along with a growing network of roads and highways, helped ranchers increase the amount of hay they could produce and market. Farmers could cultivate more acres, and with a vibrant cattle market, feeders paid good money for corn.
In late 1929, all that ended. Prices for livestock and grain dropped to unheard of lows, and the rains stopped. Farm income slowed to a trickle, banks collapsed, and mortgages came due. The Great Depression threw agriculture in Nebraska—and throughout the nation—into turmoil.
The Great Depression
The Great Depression and the coincidental drought proved ruinous to farmers throughout America, but in Nebraska many ranchers seemed to do fine. Why?
In a February 1944 the Sunday Lincoln Journal and Star, ran an article by Winn Nelson about Christopher J. Abbott, in which Abbott, the owner of seven ranches and president of nine banks, talked about the Nebraska Sandhills and its unique qualities for raising cattle.
Nelson wrote, “It [the Sandhills] is the only agricultural region that remained financially intact when the bottom fell out of the farm situation in the 1930’s and Old Man Drought stalked the Midwest in his trailing gown of dust.”
“It’s a haymaker’s heaven,” wrote Abbott. “Nature gave Nebraska an ideal water storage area when she formed the Sandhills. . . . That’s why a complete hay-crop failure is unknown to the Sandhills.”
Unlike farmers, who have to borrow money to plant crops in the spring and then hope for a good harvest in the fall, ranchers need no loans. As long as they have cows that calve, hay to feed, and access to water, their herds grow.
Even when cattle prices fall, Sandhills ranchers at least have cattle to sell. In 1929 the state produced 2.9 million head of cattle that sold for an average of $59 each. In 1934 cattle prices had dropped to $17.50 a head, but 3.9 million of them were produced. During the Great depression prices rose and fell, but production continued at about 3 million head per year. Cattle certainly helped Nebraska weather the hard years of drought and depression.
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