A Quiet Christmas

I awoke to the soft sound of a gentle rain falling against the windowsill.  It was my first day back home on our family farm after another semester at Kansas State University.  I eventually looked over at the clock, and after blinking twice noticed it was already 8:30 in the morning.  I nearly leapt out of bed to get dressed to help feed the animals before church.  But before I did, I noticed something. Other than the soft rain, the farm was quiet. 

As my brain resumed functioning, I remembered the decision our family had made to sell our livestock before winter hit.  Outside, only a single barn cat roamed the corrals once home to 80 meat goats and about a dozen cattle. 

This decision didn’t just come about overnight, but had been considered for a number of years.  The primary driver of selling our livestock was our small family farm did not produce enough to be profitable with the amount of labor it required.  As my older brother and I moved off to school, the brunt of the farm labor fell upon my mother, who put in hours a day taking care of the livestock.  During high demand times like kidding and calving seasons, the required work hours increased drastically.  In comparison with the earnings my mother could make working an hourly, entry-level position, running the family farm became unprofitable. 

 

I know this story isn’t just specific to us, but has been shared by thousands of small family farmers throughout the US in the past century.  Ever since the industrialization era, men and women have left the farm to find jobs and different lives in our quickly expanding cities.  Just as it was in the early 1900s, farming and ranching both produce commodities subject to the large variations of market prices.  A bad year in the market with low prices can do great damage to an agricultural producer, and if they do not have enough resources to last through hard times, they may have to sell out or face defaulting on loans. 

Because of these factors, relying solely on a system of small family farms to provide our entire nation’s food supply is unrealistic.  I am a full supporter of family farms, as they have provided me with great experiences that I will never forget and hope to provide for my own children someday.  As well, it is hard to beat fresh sweet corn picked from our own garden or a local farmers market.  But the belief that our entire food supply can be produced entirely by small, local farmers is unrealistic economically, unless America is willing to pay substantially more for their food.  Because larger farming operations are also great stewards of the land, I am a full supporter of them.  Larger farms have the resources necessary to survive market fluctuations and produce safe, plentiful, and inexpensive products raised as efficiently as possible.  There is room for all types of agricultural production systems in America, but we need to get over some of the economic fantasies presented in the media.

This Christmas, I did not have to run outside after a big Christmas dinner to feed our livestock in the cold.  I was missing the animals a little bit, but know that there are others that made the sacrifices to provide all the fixings for our Holiday celebration. 

Cheers,

Kyle Apley

USDA Ag Census - Geeking Out Over Agriculture

Big ranches. Small farms. Community supported agriculture programs. All of these are outlets where food is planted and raised for American citizens and, in many cases, the world.

But unless you live near a rural community, it can be really difficult to find a farm or ranch to visit in order to learn more about the food you eat, the farms that produce it and more importantly, the farmers and ranchers raising and producing it.

To make the vast endeavor of learning about your food a bit more manageable, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has recently published the results of the 2012 Ag Census. Yes, I am aware it is 2014 but the USDA collects, combines and categorizes millions and millions of data points so it takes a while to make it easy to share.

A new facet to the Ag Census data are the easy-to-read infographics. Generally, if an individual wanted to look up how many operations in the U.S. specialized in beef cattle (619,000 according to the census), that person would have to scroll through pages of reports, Excel files and other documents looking for the exact right piece of information. However, this year the USDA has created some really nifty infographics that highlight some important and key components of American agriculture.


Click to enlarge
Source: USDA Ag Census 

You can see in the infographic above many answers to questions regarding current agriculture issues. For example, more than 57,000 farms or ranches employ the use of alternative energy sources (wind, water, etc). How cool is that?! Farmers and ranchers using alternative energy to produce food for the world in an environmentally sustainable way!
 
Another fact that isn't necessarily cool but provides some insight into the costs behind farming: Farmers spent almost $20 BILLION on seed in 2012, which is a 66% increase from 2007.
 
There is also a tool called Quick Stats, which allows you to build a specific query. For example, if you wanted to look up the average age of the principal operator on California farms that have only one owner/operator, you could do that with a few clicks [the answer to that query is 60.7 years old, btw].

I hope you'll take the time to geek out over these cool tools that USDA has developed - I have been playing with the Quick Stats function a lot and the infographics page says that new inforgraphics will be added in the future, so I am checking that page often!

What are some questions you have about ag that you are going to research using the USDA data?

Until next time,
~ Buzzard ~





Farming Practices... And Why We Do Them

Hey everybody, my name’s Bruce Figger and I’m from a small town in central Kansas called Hudson.

I’m currently a 2nd year veterinary student at Kansas State and I did my undergraduate work at Fort Hays State where I majored in Animal Science.  My family has a farm where we grow wheat, milo, and alfalfa in addition to raising Angus cattle.  In my spare time I like playing guitar, going to the lake, and just hanging out with my friends.

I have been involved with agriculture pretty much all my life.  Unfortunately not everyone has had the same opportunities to be involved with food production as I have.  The gap between food producers and consumers is growing and I am excited to be part of what Food For Thought is doing to bridge that gap.    

I recently came across an article on Huffington Post titled “9 Facts About Factory Farming that will Break Your Heart.”  This article was full of misconceptions and scare tactics about how terrible conditions are at these “factory farms.”  Now, I could go through these so-called scary facts about food production one-by-one and explain why these practices are performed or how they’ve been over exaggerated for a good news story (that was sponsored in partnership with Chipotle… riddle me that), but since I was home on spring break last week I decided to take a look around our family farm and see what I could find that, if spun the wrong way, could be seen as heartbreaking.

So here are four practices on a non-factory farm that could break your heart, and why we do them:

#1 We Confine Our Cattle… Sometimes:

Everybody knows that cows eat grass and grass grows for free, so why would anybody need to keep them locked in a pen?  Multiple reasons exist for this practice.  One of the biggest ones is to feed cattle a specific ration so that they can gain weight as efficiently as possible to make it to slaughter weight using as few resources as necessary, this is the idea behind feedlots.  But cow-calf producers occasionally keep their cattle in pens too.

 

The pictures to the left show two groups of cattle in dry lots.  The group in the top picture is heifers that are getting ready to give birth to their first calves, they will join the group in the bottom picture after we make sure they have delivered their calves safely and everyone is healthy.  They will all go to pasture once the grass is ready.  We keep them in confinement to make sure they are healthy, have access to good feed throughout the winter, and to catch them if they need help calving, which brings me to...

 

#2 We use Chains to Deliver Calves… When Necessary:

This is a picture of my dad and me helping a cow who was having trouble delivering her calf.  This may seem unnatural, after all there are chains involved.  But sometimes during calving, difficulties can occur that require assistance, and these are big, slippery calves, so we use small chains that are like a choke collar for dogs.  We put the chains on the end of the calf’s legs near the feet to pull the calf out.  This practice is far from the norm for births, most cattle have no trouble delivering calves all by themselves.  But these calves aren’t out of the woods yet because...

#3: We Pierce Ears of Calves at Very Young Ages:

This is my brother tagging a calf that was born today, these tags have a sharp point that pokes through the cartilage of the ear then bends down to hang visibly from the ear.  This can be painful to the calf, no way to deny that.  Also it can be stressful to the calf and its mother because for all they know, we are attacking.  Pain and stress are things we try to avoid in our livestock, but in a procedure like this the benefits outweigh the costs by a long shot.  Tagging takes less than a minute and results in a calf that can be identified if it gets lost or sick or has to be moved to a new pasture.  A few seconds of pain and stress makes it possible to take care of these animals on an individual level.

#4 We Feed Antibiotics to Our Cattle to Enhance Their Growth:

To the right, is another picture of my brother hard at work putting out mineral supplement to our yearling calves on wheat pasture.  This mineral contains Monensin, which is an antibiotic in the category known as ionophores.  Ionophores make up about 30% of the antibiotics sold for use in animal medicine.  They kill a specific group of bacteria in the rumen (a compartment of cattle’s stomachs where fermentation takes place).  These bacteria produce methane, which the cattle belch off.  Killing these bacteria lowers the amount of methane produced and allows other microorganisms to make products cattle can absorb and use to grow.  Ionophores are not used in human medicine at all, so using them in cattle won’t lead to development of resistant bacteria that could harm people. 

So there you have it, folks, four common practices that could be seen as cruel or unnecessary if spun the wrong way, and that’s just in two days.  I’ll keep an eye out for more, but until then if you see or hear of something that concerns you about where your food comes from, ask a farmer. 

Eat Beef,

Bruce Figger