Earth Day is Every Day for Farmers and Ranchers

Earth Day - a day that reminds us all to recycle more, use less and think about future generations when making decisions that can affect our environment for years to come.

But guess what? We should be cognizant of our choices more often than just once per year - as consumers we should be striving to lessen our environmental footprint every day in order to preserve our world for future generations.

Good thing that farmers and ranchers have been working towards sustainability and resource conservation for as long as they have been producing food. Here are some hard facts about food production and resource conservation:

• Farmers who grow crops like corn, soybeans and wheat, will practice crop rotation which is the process of changing what is planted in a particular location on a farm from season to season. This helps with nutrient management of the soil and soil erosion.
• Hog farmers use manure from their farm as a valuable organic fertilizer that is readily used by crop farmers to help build beneficial carbon content in soil.
• Hog farmers have also streamlined their production practices which have led to a 35% decrease in carbon footprint from 1959-2009. That's quite an improvement!
• The beef industry reduced its water use and greenhouse gas emissions by 3% and 2%, respectively

The beef industry works towards sustainable production every year.
Courtesy www.factsaboutbeef.com

What are you doing in your life to lessen your environmental footprint? How could you improve?

Until next time,
~ Buzzard ~

Bruce Vincent Lecture Now Online!

Bruce Vincent speaking at K-State as part of the Upson Lecture Series

If you weren't able to attend the Upson Lecture Series event featuring Bruce Vincent, which is highly unfortunate, but were still wanting to hear his message, I have great news for you!

The lecture is now available online on the Food For Thought YouTube channel - you can click over there and watch or you can view it below.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this event happen - specifically the K-State College of Veterinary Medicine classes of 1962 and 1966 for fully endowing the Upson Lecture Series. Sincere gratitude is also extended to Frontier Farm Credit and American Ag Credit for their generous role in bringing Bruce to K-State!

Chipotle - Back to the Start Rebuttal

I enjoyed reading this official comment on the recent Chipotle commercial that aired during the Grammy's. The gross misinformation presented in the video made a lot of agriculturists feel offended.

You can read the comment put out by the American Society of Animal Science here.

I think what I enjoyed most was the following direct quote -

“The world can afford for a few wealthy people to get pork and other animal products produced in outdoor extensive systems,” said Pettigrew. “But we cannot sustainably produce nearly enough for all the world’s people that way. Such systems require too much land and feed to be sustainable if applied across the industry.”

Sourcing food from places that Chipotle does is not wrong. It's a valid option to give consumers. However, I disagree with presenting it as a replacement for conventionally produced meat products. We have a lot of mouths to feed and we have to provide protein products for people who make $5 an hour AND for people who make $50 an hour. 

What are your thoughts?

A cattlewoman's trip to the farmer's market

Growing up in Nebraska and attending college in Kansas... and then moving to Washington D.C. presents a study in contrasts. DC is split up into smaller districts within itself and through the magic of Craig's List I managed to accidentally find housing in the "hippy area" of Takoma Park. As you can imagine, there aren't many square-toed boots to be seen and Cinch shirts are unheard of, in fact, Tom's Shoes and tie-dye seems to have replaced them. I live with some really great people who are very, VERY removed from agriculture and they have found my animal science degree a fascination. My land-lady was amazed by how chicken eggs are produced and how fertilization occurs, she was also surprised to know that just because the eggs she buys at the farmer's market on Sundays for 5 dollars a dozen are organic, that doesn't mean the chickens are free-range. I attended the Takoma Farmer's Market yesterday and couldn't help but laugh a bit at the premium prices people were willing to pay for "hormone free" eggs. Nothing is "hormone free" if it comes from any kind of living organism... and additionally hormones are illegal to be fed to chickens (even though they would have zero benefit to growth or productivity). My roommates had told me that pretty much everything in the market was organic and that people were willing to pay the extra money for the perceived health benefits from consuming those foods, but after asking couple vendors I quickly found that only one of them was actually certified organic. For many of the smaller producers it is just too expensive to be certified so they advertise with words like "ecoganic" and "raised in an organic style." Either way, these are small, many times very young farmers who probably could not make it in the DC area using conventional farming methods. They have found an ingenious niche market among the urban, health savvy, green generation and they intend to develop their market share. In an age of incredible competition to maintain oneself on the right side of the bottom line there has been much discussion of Organic vs. Conventional. In reality there is plenty of room for both. There is no way that these small farmers who charge exorbitant prices can begin to feed billions of hungry people, but on a sunny Sunday afternoon they seem to be doing just fine catering to the wants of a specialized group of consumers. Through cooperation and mutual advocating conventional farming practices and organic methods can help to provide a career path for a new generation of agriculturalists interested in feeding the world.

Photo: www.takoma.com/green/market-thumb-500x332.jpg

Diary of a Dairy Farmer

In 1944 the US Dairy Industry produced 117 billion pounds of milk from 25.6 million cows.

In 2007, 9.2 million cows produce 186 billion pounds of milk.

If that’s not actively practicing sustainability in an industry for both production and the environment, I don’t know what is!

Congratulations to American Dairy Farmers during Dairy Month!

Kill it, Cook it, Eat it

Sounds pretty gruesome doesn't it? Actually, I'm quite a fan of this show featured on BBC that started in 2007. This show takes a group of 6 participants through the process of how livestock are raised in the UK, slaughtering and processing the carcass and eventually eating the resulting product. Designed similar to a reality show format, this show is not simply a tutorial of how to butcher animals, but brings together participants from a wide array of backgrounds and everybody gets their hands dirty. Participants are shown everything from how to castrate baby pigs and deliver vaccines to properly stunning and exsanguinating the animal to maintain the integrity of the meat. After slaughter, trained butchers take participants through the process of how the carcass is utilized for a variety of meat products.

In the 2011 season, the cast includes both vegetarians and meat-eaters, including those who were raised on the farm and urban socialites. Throughout each episode, there is dialogue between the participants about how animals are housed, slaughtered and consumed and their personal opinions about each step in the process.

Designed to show viewers the real process from pasture to plate, Kill it, Cook it, Eat it does a masterful job of providing an unbiased view of livestock production and the slaughter and butchering process. Whether you are an avid meat-eater, cautious skeptic, or a life-long vegetarian, this show has appeal for everyone so be sure to check it out!

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