Group with Ties to Mormon Church Outbids Bill Gates' Group for Easterday Land - AG INFORMATION NETWORK OF THE WEST aginfo.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from aginfo.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
BOARDMAN â Cody Easterday is still waiting for the Oregon Department of Agriculture to approve his application, submitted in June 2019, for a Confined Animal Feeding Operation near the city of Boardman.
Easterday, a 49-year-old rancher whose family owns a huge agricultural operation in Washington state, proposes to open a mega-dairy that would be the second-largest in Oregon. The Easterday Dairy would have up to 28,300 animals and use more water than most cities in the state.
The future of Easterday Dairy is in doubt, however. On March 31, Cody Easterday pleaded guilty to a âghost cattle scamâ that defrauded Tyson Foods and another company out of more than $244 million by charging for the purchase and feeding of animals that never existed.
3 slides Credit: Anna King/NW News Network
As Easterday Family Property Is Auctioned, Giant Buyers Attracted To Water-Rich Deal May 04, 2021
Redtail hawks glide off telephone poles sailing above verdant fields that scoop downward along a basalt slope to the bending Columbia River.
This unique swath of ground is about to get a new owner; the roughly 12,000 Easterday family acres in Benton County are to be auctioned off starting in mid-June.
The crisis that began with a massive swindle of 225,000 ghost cattle has meant federal charges for Cody Easterday and bankruptcy for a family farming and ranching dynasty as the vast Easterday empire unravels.
Anna King/NW News Network
Redtail hawks glide off telephone poles sailing above verdant fields that scoop downward along a basalt slope to the bending Columbia River.
This unique swath of ground is about to get a new owner; the roughly 12,000 Easterday family acres in Benton County are to be auctioned off starting in mid-June.
The crisis that began with a massive swindle of 225,000 ghost cattle has meant federal charges for Cody Easterday and bankruptcy for a family farming and ranching dynasty as the vast Easterday empire unravels.
Burgers, fries and onion rings
Easterday Ranches and Easterday Farms has provided beef, potatoes, onions and produce to dinner tables for more than three generations.
They call it “Cattlegate.” It’s a modern-day cattle rustling scheme. Let’s start at the beginning.
In 1958, Ervin Easterday moved his family and farming operation from Nampo, Idaho to southeastern Wash., where he purchased 300 acres of undeveloped land in the new Columbia Basin Reclamation Irrigation project. With a meager annual rainfall of 7 inches per year, the new supply of water from Grand Coulee Dam changed this land forever.
As a young man, Ervin’s son, Gale, said he worked what seemed like endless hours on a Caterpillar leveling and clearing this new ground so water had access to run down furrows.