Here is a link to a TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) video talking about the environmental conditions the world is facing and how this will affect the production of livestock.

Allan Savory is an environmentalist that has spent his entire work evaluating how livestock are bad for the planet and are part of the reasons for climate change and desertification. However after evaluating all of his work, Allan now says that livestock are the solution for climate change and determining ways to fight hunger, poverty, and violence across the world.

Take a few minutes and listen to the video which can be found here.

Until next time,

Miles Theurer

Dr. Upson Speaks on Sustainability in Beef Production

Dr. Dan Upson, Miss America 2011 Teresa Scanlan, Dr. Dan Thomson

Picture taken by: Wrenn Pacheco at our Fall Upson Lecture Series given by Teresa Scanlan

It was my pleasure to sit through another lecture given by Dr. Dan Upson, Professor Emeritus at Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine, tonight when a group of food animal veterinarians, veterinary students and college professors got together to learn more about the industry we love to work in - the beef industry.

Dr. Dan Upson lecturing to a group of Bovine Practitioners, future veterinarians and Professors at Kansas State University.

Dr. Upson's talk centered on how we utilize beef cattle to sustainably produce food for the world's people. I summarized a few facts that he brought up and I thought you, as a consumer, would find interesting: 

• Beef has the ability to provide a very high biological and nutritional protein from the world's most abundant natural resource, grass.
• grass --> cattle --> people
• 70% of the Earth’s surface is water
• Of the 30% of land, only 9% of that land is used for food production

• This is how many acres of land, on average, it takes to raise 1 beef cow: 
• In New Mexico – arid land – 160 acres per head
• In the Kansas Flint Hills – during warm weather – 6-8 acres per head

Veterinarians are dedicated to a lifetime of education and part of that education is how we can help producers of beef cattle provide a safe, nutritious and economically sustainable product for future generations of beef consumers. If you would like to learn more about the veterinarians role in raising animals for food, please comment!

Best,

Tera Rooney

Farming the Wind

Welcome to the Gray County Wind Farm

On my way home for spring break, I know, such an exotic spring break location, I stopped and snapped a few pictures of one of the most beautiful farms near home. It's not your average grain farm, but it sure is a sight to see! Today, we're going to take a trip today to Kansas' largest and oldest wind farm. You might have not thought about harvesting this type of crop, but these farms are popping up across Kansas and it all started back in 2001 in Gray County near my hometown.

The Gray County Wind Farm has 170 turbines that generate enough electricity to power 33,000 homes. The towers sit on over 12,000 acres of farm land, but only 6 acres are directly used for the towers and roads. The rest of the acreage can still be farmed traditionally.

A couple of turbines at the Gray County Wind Farm

One of these turbines is 217 feed high. Each blade is 77 feet long. Why are sites chosen for wind farms to be built? The turbines only produce power when wind speeds are between 10 and 56 miles per hour. At the Gray County Farm, average wind speeds are 20 miles per hour.

Turbines in a corn stalk field near Montezuma, KS.

How many tons of carbon dioxide emissions does this farmer save in a year by having these turbines on his land? 585,000 tons

How much money does the farmer make from each turbine? $2,000 per turbine for 20 years

What are some major benefits of owning a wind farm? It produces no pollution while allowing ground to remain in agricultural use and supporting the local economy.

Will You Eat Beef in 2012?

I hope so. I know I will - I'm addicted and I know I'm not the only one. I live in a town with a very heavy population of farmers, farm kids and rural dwellers who are all very proud promoters of beef. Don't forget about the countless burger joints in Manhattan that are frequented by a hungry college town. However, with all the love we give beef, consumption is predicted to fall this year. Why? Instead of telling you, I'll just let you read this article.
Is Beef Still on the Table?

Within it you'll find scientific data to show that beef producers have become much more efficient with their natural resources. You'll also find out why beef consumption could decline, while pork and poultry are holding steady.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Until next time,
~ Buzzard ~

Conserving the Gulf Coast

I ran across a neat blog post I'd like you to see.

It's all about working together to preserve the land to the south known as the Gulf Coast.

Farmers and conservationists. Farmers as conservationists.

During the next 3 years, a program being formed by the USDA will provide farmers and ranchers in the Gulf Coast states with program assistance that will invest in the future of 16 priority watersheds in 7 major river basins. This project is being conducted with the NRCS.

The NRCS is the National Resources Conservation Services which was established during the 1930's. You'll remember from your American History courses that the Dirty 30's were a rough time for Americans because of the severe drought. Today the NRCS has expanded as a program that helps to establish conservation programs for all natural resources, and ensuring private land conservation, restoration. 

One way the GoMI program in the Gulf Coast area is working with area farmers and ranchers is to provide on-site watering technology for people who raise cattle. In the area, ranchers let their cattle graze lands that have access to streams and creeks that feed into major river basins. This can contaminate the water and threaten wildlife species. By fencing off the cattle and not allowing them to access these water sources, ranchers are playing their part in the conservation world. The NRCS is helping ranchers accomplish this goal by providing financial assistance for them to drill wells, put in wind mills or install solar-powered pumps.

I see this program as an investment in the future of this important region to the U.S. economy. The Gulf Coast employs thousands of fisherman and is home to some of the busiest tourist attractions.

What's your take on it? 

Tera

Winter Woes? Think about Spring!

Winter is underway in Kansas and snow has blanketed the state and is slowing melting away with warmer temperatures. For those of you who are wishing for spring to be here already, here is a glimpse of the green prairie grasses and some beautiful (in my opinion, of course) Red Angus cattle.

Taken in the Flint Hills of Kansas, the pictures detail one of nature’s gifts to mankind – a gift that we have the responsibility of caring for and preserving. Farmers and ranchers take great pride in acting as caretakers and environmentalists, and you can see why above. This beauty is a reason in itself.

There’s your glimpse of spring (and summer, as the cattle picture was snapped in June). Hope you enjoyed it! You can almost feel the warm breeze as it causes the grass to sway and the leaves of trees to rustle…

Wishing you a Happy New Year!

Cassie Kniebel

Red Meat - Green Facts

That's a fun little way of saying meat is sustainable and environmentally friendly. It's also the name of a website, which was created by Meat and Livestock Australia, that aims to "discuss the issues of sustainable farming practices." On the site you can further explore information about the "impact of farming on our environment and the proactive initiatives undertaken by farmers and processors across Australia."
One of my favorite features is a visual aid that helps consumers better grasp the supply chain from farm to fork. Check it out below:

Image courtesy www.redmeatgreenfacts.com.au

Other links include facts about reducing water usage, myth busting (similar to this post), responsible land management and school projects. The myth busting tab is one of my faves.

 

For anyone looking to delve further into the facts behind food production, I highly encourage you check out this site. Although it was developed in Australia, many of the same principles and practices apply to farmers and ranchers here in the U.S. Furthermore, it's always a bonus to learn about agriculture in other countries, because it fosters critical thinking on how the global agriculture industry can improve worldwide.

 

Until next time,

~ Buzzard ~

 

Ivy League Cowgirl

Jen Johnson holds a degree from Princeton and has a strong tie to the land her family has been ranching for generations. This video is a great example of how one passionate young woman has decided to make agriculture her livelihood.

Watch the full episode. See more America's Heartland.

Hope you enjoyed the video as much as I did!
Chelsea

What is sustainable farming?

Sustainable agriculture is a buzz word that seems to fly frequently when talking about food production these days. It is truly important because we have to think about feeding the current population as well as the future.

What does sustainability mean to an agriculturist?

Sustainability means that a farmer's son can come home to farm the same acres of ground he inherited from his father. Sustainability means that a rancher can turn his cows out on the same pasture year after year. What could be more important to an agriculturist than the sustainability of his or her family business?

To further explain sustainable farming, I think it's best to use a real life example from my back yard.

Royal Farms Dairy is near Garden City, KS is managed by Kyle Averhoff and the Irsik family. They milk around 6,000 cows each producing around 6.7 pounds of milk per day. That is a total contribution of about 14,673,000 gallons of milk to consumers in a calendar year! When I visited Kyle's dairy farm, he talked about the environment and the measures that Royal Farms take to ensure that they are doing things correctly. By taking these measures, he can provide a sustainable approach to producing milk and I know that Royal Farms Dairy will be around for years to come.

Royal farms uses a milking parlor like this and water is flushed down it to keep it clean. It's important to keep the parlor clean to help maintain food safety standards. The water that cools the milk is also re-used to clean the feed alleys outdoors and is ultimately pumped in to a center pivot to water the nearby corn fields. Royal farms irrigates 1,600 acres with the water from their dairy. The manure that is hauled away from the farm is also incorporated into the soil to increase water holding capacity and provide natural fertilizer for the crops.

Air quality is always something that gets brought up when a large number of dairy cows are kept in one area. One thing that I thought spoke to Kyle's dedication to properly maintaining his dairy farm is that his house is literally across the road. He raises a family using the same ground, water and air that his dairy does. Air quality was superb when I visited Royal Farms Dairy.

One of Kyle's best examples of sustainability and something that really hit home for me was when he brought up a simple relationship. I don't remember the numbers exactly, but Kyle related the amount of water that Royal Farms Dairy uses in a year and compared it to the 62 employees his farm provides jobs for. In a rural community, if you look at the number of children that will be enrolled in the local schools because of the increased employment at a nearby farm, you can't get a better deal! Enrollment numbers are important to rural schools and farms like Kyle's boost the economy of a small town and help add to those numbers. The amount of water used really becomes minuscule when you think of it from this angle.

Sustainability at it's finest at Royal Farms Dairy.

For more information about the dairy industry, I've found this site really useful.

http://www.midwestdairy.com/0t2p8/all-about-dairy/

Kyle's farm was honored at the World Dairy Expo and there is a lot more information on this site.

http://www.worlddairyexpo.com/seminars-tours-virtual-farm-tours.cfm

All my best,

Tera

Young Producers from around the World

This video features young livestock producers from five countries - Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and the United States - talking about their farms. I think it's interesting to see similar themes running through the lives of these young people from around the world. They're all very passionate about caring for animals and feeding the world. Additionally, they all care about the environment and sustaining it for future generations of livestock producers. Hope you enjoy the video as much as I did!

Best,
Chelsea

Efficiency in Ag Benefits Environment

Efficiency, in my opinion, is what made our country so dominant in the past. The productivity that comes from American companies innovating new ways to do more with less is what spurred our international success.

However, somehow, efficiency has become a dirty word when it comes to food and agriculture. There's a scene in Food, Inc. where the narrator talks about McDonald's revolutionizing the way hamburgers were made by bringing efficiencies such as training to do just one thing to the back of the restaurant. "It was inexpensive food, and it tasted good," the narrator says - like that's a bad thing.

I propose that turning away from efficiency when it comes to agriculture is not just regressive but also dangerous. Just 1/32 of the earth’s surface is arable land we can depend on to produce food. This is a finite resource – one that is decreasing with urban sprawl. Additionally, this land is going to have to feed a rapidly growing world population.

Feeding more people with less land? Sounds like efficiency is going to have to play a pretty big role.

Critics of modern agriculture claim current mass production practices are wasteful. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Being efficient means doing more with less – which includes using less environmental resources. A recent study backs this up.

According to the study released last month, advances in productivity over the past 30 years have reduced the carbon footprint of modern beef production in the U.S. The study was conducted by Washington State University assistant professor Jude Capper and compared the environmental profile of the U.S. beef industry in 2007 to its historical production practices in 1977.

Capper’s research revealed improvements in nutrition, management, growth rate and processing weights significantly have reduced the environmental impact of modern beef production and improved its sustainability.

Another study shows the dairy industry reduced its overall carbon footprint by 41 percent from 1944 and 2007. Improved efficiency has enabled the U.S. dairy industry to produce 186 billion pounds of milk from 9.2 million cows in 2007, compared to only 117 billion pounds of milk from 25.6 million cows in 1944.

Earth Day in SEK

Hello blogging fans! I hope you all celebrated Earth Day by taking out the recycling and sharing how farmers practice environmentally friendly production methods every day.  Recently, I attended the Master's of Beef Advocacy Commencement that took place on the KSU campus.  Daren Williams, Exec. Director of Communications for NCBA, encouraged all participants to submit letters to the editor about how Earth Day is everyday for farmers.  I sent my letter in to the newspaper in the closest town, Garnett (my hometown of Colony, KS, population 343, doesn't have a newspaper) and unfortunately it wasn't printed.  However, I figured someone should read it so I've posted it below! Happy reading!

Dear Editor:
The 40th Anniversary of Earth Day is fast approaching and I decided to take it upon myself to compile a list of environmental practices I, and fellow agriculturalists, do to preserve our environment.

- Provide a habitat for Kansas’ wildlife in our green, grassy pastures
- Graze our cattle on grass for as long as possible to preserve and oxygenate topsoil
- Recycle the constant flow of Dr. Pepper cans that accumulate in the feed truck
- Efficiently raise beef on land that is otherwise not viable for crop production
- Convert some of the waste products created by my animals (cattle, horses) to make compost for my backyard vegetable garden
- Utilize the best management livestock production practices that have been passed down from generation to generation in order to allow us to do more with less
- Adopt new technology as it comes along to reduce our carbon footprint

This is far from the entirety of the environmental initiatives farmers exemplify. However, it’s the daily ‘go green’ practices that farmers, ranchers and agriculturalists exhibit everyday that will allow our children and grandchildren to enjoy the same blue skies and green grass in their childhood that we were so fortunate to experience.
I’ll leave you with this line from the old Alabama song Pass it on Down, “So let's leave some blue up above us; Let's leave some green on the ground; It's only ours to borrow, let's save some for tomorrow; Leave it and pass it on down.” Happy Earth Day!


Until next time,
~Buzzard~

Tailgate Lectures: Call the Fire Chief - Better Safe than Sorry

I can remember sitting on the back of a tailgate with my Grandpa after feeding the cows. Looking out over the sandy hills of our pasture, through the dust haze settled over a feedlot and right along the horizon seeing a flicker of orange blaze. He told me to grab the bag phone (yes we had those sweet bag phones) and dial the fire department. He rattled off the intersection of old county roads committed to memory and told me to relay the information to the fire chief, Sonny. Always be safe, he said, it's far better than sorry...

Now, I still get that urge to call in a field fire if I happen to stumble upon one driving around the Manhattan area. If you are from the Flint Hills of Kansas you would probably laugh at that urge. If you aren’t, then let this post help you out. It’s pasture burning season in the Flint Hills and if every country kid from Western Kansas called in a pasture fire, I have a feeling the Fire Department would laugh into the receiver. Here’s the low down on why farmers and ranchers must burn off the grasses in the Flint Hills every year about this time.

•  Cedar trees and scrub brush are considered noxious weeds to pasture managers. They must be eliminated so that they don’t choke out the nutrients that grass needs to grow. Burning is both an economical and environmentally friendly way of eliminating such growth.
  
• The dead grass needs to be removed to promote the new fresh growth of nutrient dense grass. Burning is the only way to accomplish this, unless you could invent a mower that could bag thousands of acres and remove the blades of old grass. That’s a big Grasshopper!!!
  
• Sometimes cattle are picky and favor one side of a pasture. The grass then grows unevenly and is less desired. Good pasture management and prescribed burning can take care of this problem too. 

Farmers and ranchers have an important environmental impact in the Flint Hills.  They have the ability to harvest thousands of acres of natural grasslands that would otherwise go unused because of the inability to farm the rocky soils. By harvesting the Flint Hills, utilizing cattle as natural lawn mowers, they can produce a nutrient dense food product for consumers around the world.

I’m from the very southwest part of Kansas. That’s past Salina, and Great Bend and even Dodge City, for some people who have trouble with Kansas geography. So I was in some of your shoes when I first moved to Manhattan and experienced the burning of the Flint Hills. For a while I just thought everyone in the neighborhood was grilling out. That’s a lot of hot dogs!

Talk to a stranger about why pastures are being burnt off. I often hear people complaining about smoke in the air this time of year. Maybe if they understood the importance, the smoke doesn't seem so bad. A little understanding can go a long way!

Don't Dis Cows for Climate Change

At the recent American Chemical Society National Meeting, a report from University of California-Davis, Clearing the Air: Livestock's Contribution to Climate Change, was presented and soundly refuted the claims of Livestock's Long Shadow, the controversial U.N. report that stated livestock production is responsible for 18% of GHG emissions annually. According to Frank Mitloehner, Ph.D, (pictured) presenter at the meeting, "giving cows and pigs a bum rap is not only scientifically inaccurate, but also distracts society from embracing effective solutions to global climate change." As it turns out, the actual percentage of GHG's contributed by livestock is a mere 2.8%. Mitloehner, associate professor at U.C. Davis, also stated that "producing and consuming less meat and milk will only contribute to more hunger in poor countries."

Clearing the Air has been receiving tons of great media attention and has been highlighted in articles in The Washington Times, The Register (UK), The Daily Telegraph (UK), The Des-Moines Register and has had postings on Yahoo! News online and broadcast reports on FOX news and BBC. To add to the good news, the U.N. admitted that the figures concerning livestock in Livestock's Long Shadow were exaggerated in comparison to transportation. Pierre Gerber, Policy Officer for the U.N's FAO, replied to Mitloehner's criticisms after Clearing the Air came out: "I must say honestly that he has a point - we factored in everything for meat emissions, and we didn't do the same thing with transport."

Click to read more about Clearing the Air.

This a great triumph for the agriculture industry -- people are paying attention to the facts about livestock production. Hopefully, The NY Times will follow suit and print an article highlighting the hard facts from Clearing the Air.

Until next time,
~Buzzard~