Growing crops to feed animals requires a lot more land, energy and fertilizer than growing them to feed people, he says: 70% of the land that was once Amazon rain forest is dedicated to grazing.

FORBES: Technology

The National Forest Service, from which many ranchers rent grazing land, may require them to graze fewer cattle, in order to encourage native grasses and wildlife.

ECONOMIST: Can the rules be bent just enough to keep them alive?

Now, at 43, he and his wife, Julie , have bought two ranches in southwest Montana-the 1, 800-acre Beaverhead Ranch, with 5 miles of the Beaverhead River running through it, and the 2, 000-acre Big Hole Ranch, which rises 1, 500 feet from the Big Hole River up to grazing land for a herd of 400 elk that borders a national forest.

FORBES: Home On The Ranch

The cabin-holders also contend that other users of the forest such as loggers, miners and people who use it for grazing animals get even better terms, acre for acre, than they do.

ECONOMIST: Cabins in the wilderness