High costs deter small ranchers from bidding on leases at Nacimiento and San Antonio.

The Monterey County Water Resources Agency is holding a competitive bidding process for a 10-year lease beginning Nov. 1 on five parcels of prime grazing land surrounding the San Antonio and Nacimiento reservoirs. Ten candidates were notified July 27 that they qualified to submit bids on July 29.

“We have in total 16,400 acres of rangeland, a mix of open grazing, rolling rangelands, oak and woodlands,” says Jessell Fenley, administrative assistant with the agency. “For the most part, the grazing is used as the management tool to protect the lands: watershed protection, vegetation management, infrastructure stewardship and wildfire fuel reduction.”

But the rising cost to rent the land has become a hurdle for smaller ranching operations. The five parcels range from 1,512 acres to 4,485 acres, with minimum bids ranging from $17,784 to $80,712. The amounts were determined through a market lease rent appraisal and “consideration of the agency’s annual fixed cost,” according to a bid packet Q&A fact sheet published by the agency on July 21.

“When this came out, I was pretty blown away by the minimum bid requirements for each of the separate allotments – $80,000 is a pretty astounding amount,” says Chris Moon of Lonely Bull Cattle Co.

The pricing is based on a per-acre rate, generally viewed as an outdated approach in the industry; Moon says this makes planning difficult as potential bidders don’t know the land’s carrying capacity or how many cattle it can support at a given time.

“Over the summer, your green grass goes up, which is a rare commodity here and an extreme benefit,” he says of the desirability of the land. “We have very little irrigated ground available, so that’s a big deal.”