You can’t raise cattle inside city limits. Most people would agree on that.

[cointent_lockedcontent] Most land producing cattle or other stock in Pickens County has an agricultural deferment, which means the land is taxed at a lower fee because it meets the criteria for agricultural use.

Until now, no fire fee was applied to agriculturally deferred property. That’s because the S.C. Forestry Service takes care of fires breaking out on unoccupied acreage. Unoccupied by humans, that is.

Cattle and other farm stock don’t just amble around in a pasture eating grass. Pasture grass isn’t enough to take stock through a winter. You have to have hay, among other things, to sustain a herd.

And if pasture land is separate from hay production land, the property owner will now be hit with a double whammy, as each parcel will be charged an extra fee.

Some who run small operations to supplement retirement income will have a difficult time paying the fee.

Where they’ll come up with this kind of money is anybody’s guess.

Two letters to the editor in last week’s paper gave stark examples of how the fire fee is affecting owners of such property

Marie Vaughn of Easley wrote that because her several small tracts of land are being taxed separately, the fee increases her tax burden by 900 percent. She says she doesn’t understand why she is being asked to pay the fee at all since her property is protected by the South Carolina Forestry Service, funded through state tax.

Another letter written by Ruth Clark of Pickens says the county can collect an additional $1 million if 50,000 people pay $20 for each one- to five-acre tract of land.

If anyone is interested, they can go online and see how much profit is possible for a cattle production. There’s a pretty narrow profit margin.

If a farmer produces his own hay, it can cost as much as $435 per acre in seeding, fuel, fertilizer, lime and weed control. That’s not counting labor. And that’s just to produce it.

Cutting, raking and bailing are a whole separate operation. And if the hay gets rained on, it has to be tethered to dry it out before it can be bailed. Otherwise it will contain mold.

If the farmer doesn’t own the very expensive equipment necessary for this operation, he must hire someone else to cut and bail the hay.

Last year, it cost approximately $20 per bale to have a hay field mowed and baled. The bales could be sold for about $45 each.

Some years drought has prevented harvesting a fall hay crop. So even though the production costs are the same, the fall crop is lost.

If it becomes too costly to grow crops or raise beef and pork, how can someone in Pickens County with a small operation justify continuing?

Does every member of county council live in town? I don’t know.

In a county with a population of roughly 120,000, it would be safe to say at least half of the population is scattered among the many rural areas. Many of those living in rural areas do have small farming operations, even if it’s just a garden spot. There are people all over the county raising cattle, goats, sheep, hogs and chickens.

There are people selling fresh eggs and produce every week at the flea market. Has anyone checked the cost of a good laying hen lately? Go to a farm auction and check it out. It will be an eye opener.

The flooding in the Midlands and Lowcountry of our state will have a devastating effect on fall hay production as well as other fall crops. Those people will still have to find feed supplies for their stock. Otherwise the market will be flooded with stock farmers can’t afford to feed, which will send profit plummeting.

I can remember when extreme drought conditions here brought us help from other states in the form of hay.

We were among those who went to the railroad tracks in Easley to get a ration of hay bales donated by Kansas farmers to feed our stock.

I’ve never forgotten how grateful we were for being helped at such a critical time.

So next time, as there will surely be a next time, before an additional burden, such as the new fire fee, is approved, I would urge council members to see if the fee would be punitive for some of the population.

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