19 November 2016 (03:55 UTC-07 Tango 01) 29 Aban 1395/18 Safar 1438/20 Ji Hai 4714

“We bring in as many cattle as the environment can support. By the end of the season we have approximately 2000 cattle.”-Blaze Baker, 9th Civil Engineer Squadron (CES)

2013 USAF pic of cattle grazing on Beale AFB

Not only does U.S. Air Force bases get your tax dollars, but they are so desperate for cash they’re leasing land to cattle ranchers.  Beale Air Force Base, in northern California, just renewed a five years deal for cattle grazing with area ranchers: “The money starts up at the Air Force level and filters down through ACC and eventually to the base. The base gets a percentage of the money to use for base improvements and projects…”-Ed Broskey, 9th CES biological science technician

Ed ‘Government Cowboy’ Broskey points out that the cattle grazing scheme isn’t just about money for the Air Force, but that raising cattle, off-base, in the surrounding area is difficult for ranchers because “The cattle are coming from mountainous areas where there is very little growth. Coming here they can continue to graze and populate their herds.”

In June 2016, the USAF announced that the 70 years old cattle grazing program at Beale AFB was the second largest in the Air Force, and was being done primarily as a form of local economic stimulus and a way to reduce the costs of air-base property maintenance.  But you gotta wounder why people began raising cows in an area so devoid of pasture land.  Competition is so great for grazing space that in 2013 at least 16 ranches bid on a chance to use the taxpayer funded property.

Beale AFB was originally known as Camp Beale, and was home for the U.S. Army’s 13th (Black Cat) Armored Division and the Chemical Warfare School. It also served as a POW camp for captured Deutsches Volk.  The land was bought by the U.S. government during World War 2, and it was named after California National Guard’s Brigadier General  Edward Fitzgerald Beale.  He became famous for convincing the U.S. Army to waste money on imported camels in the late 1850s.

 Now Beale AFB is home to the aged U-2 spy plane and the newer Global Hawk drone (UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle).

When the Air Force broke away from the Army in 1948, Beale became an Air Force Base (AFB).  According to militarymuseum.org, very quickly top Air Force officers realized they could make money by shutting down the Beale bombing range and selling or leasing the land to local ranchers.

It turns out that Edward Fitzgerald Beale was one of northern California’s biggest land owners, and my research has led me to realize that the creation of Camp Beale sucked up all the available pasture land in the immediate area, this is the true reason why local cattle ranchers are forced to pay the Air Force to use its 9.3-hectares (23-thousand acres) of grazing land.

USAF SUBSIDIZES TAXPAYER FUNDED OPS WITH YOUR TRASH!