gf beranek
Old Schooler
food tax
alternatives in land use
- Thread starter DMc
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- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #502
The agricultural juggernaut is not about food.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
Oh great. Like I needed to be pissed off this morning.
Ha, Jim, that was funny, but were you serious? If so, why.
Interesting article.
In the 3 years since it was published, afaik, high fructose corn syrup is much less widely used now.
It pointed out how corn could be providing more food calories if more went to food than fuel, etc., but there isn't a hunger issue in America due to lack of corn for food, is there?
Interesting article.
In the 3 years since it was published, afaik, high fructose corn syrup is much less widely used now.
It pointed out how corn could be providing more food calories if more went to food than fuel, etc., but there isn't a hunger issue in America due to lack of corn for food, is there?
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #505
Did you ever wonder why it is we need overseers like the FDA and others to ensure safe food manufacturing? We get lied to a lot. High fructose corn syrup hides under many different names and has been legally designated as only HFCS-90 so other forms such as HFCS-42 and HFCS-55 are technically not it.
The gist of the article was not about calories but about a bad system.
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
I got permanent tire marks down my back from getting thrown under the bus.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #510
Just for you, Jim.
"It is important to note that these criticisms of the larger corn system—a behemoth largely created by lobbyists, trade associations, big businesses and the government—are not aimed at farmers. Farmers are the hardest working people in America, and are pillars of their communities. It would be simply wrong to blame them for any of these issues. In this economic and political landscape, they would be crazy not to grow corn; farmers are simply delivering what markets and policies are demanding. What needs to change here is the system, not the farmers."
"It is important to note that these criticisms of the larger corn system—a behemoth largely created by lobbyists, trade associations, big businesses and the government—are not aimed at farmers. Farmers are the hardest working people in America, and are pillars of their communities. It would be simply wrong to blame them for any of these issues. In this economic and political landscape, they would be crazy not to grow corn; farmers are simply delivering what markets and policies are demanding. What needs to change here is the system, not the farmers."
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
You guys are too generous in your accommodations to me.
It was a good article.
There needs to be a change, thats for sure. I am still encouraged in the small/local idea..........the demand so far has been lackluster up here.
I dont even want to get into the grass/grain finished debate......both are swell. I just dont get how people can pass up oppertunities to have a supply of beef that is better tasting, and cheaper.
Of course the post holiday season is a tough time to market anything.......you damn city folks with your new years resolutions and all that......but to be able to buy better tasting beef for half the money is a no brainer to me.
The consolidation of the feeding/packing capacity to a few states has been a mistake.
Question about corn squeezings......ethanol is an oxygenate right? Is there a better product out there to use instead of ethanol?
It was a good article.
There needs to be a change, thats for sure. I am still encouraged in the small/local idea..........the demand so far has been lackluster up here.
I dont even want to get into the grass/grain finished debate......both are swell. I just dont get how people can pass up oppertunities to have a supply of beef that is better tasting, and cheaper.
Of course the post holiday season is a tough time to market anything.......you damn city folks with your new years resolutions and all that......but to be able to buy better tasting beef for half the money is a no brainer to me.
The consolidation of the feeding/packing capacity to a few states has been a mistake.
Question about corn squeezings......ethanol is an oxygenate right? Is there a better product out there to use instead of ethanol?
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
Hasn't the switch from MTBE been a positive one?
kevin bingham
TreeHouser
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2010
- Messages
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http://www.beefproducer.com/management/more-soil-organic-matter-makes-more-rain
here is a little hope for y'all out there!
here is a little hope for y'all out there!
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
Interesting article.
He makes it sound like 1% is nothing. 1% is HUGE.
Going from say .5 to 1 takes a lot of good management. 1 to 2.......is a huge step.
He makes it sound like 1% is nothing. 1% is HUGE.
Going from say .5 to 1 takes a lot of good management. 1 to 2.......is a huge step.
kevin bingham
TreeHouser
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2010
- Messages
- 4,788
http://onpasture.com/2016/11/14/farewell-allan-nation/
this is very sad news, i did not realize that he had passed. A real foward thinking man whos presence on earth will be sorely missed. His newspaper, "The Stockman Grass Farmer" has been an inspiration to me over the years... even as a city boy in Detroit with not a cow to my name. RIP.
this is very sad news, i did not realize that he had passed. A real foward thinking man whos presence on earth will be sorely missed. His newspaper, "The Stockman Grass Farmer" has been an inspiration to me over the years... even as a city boy in Detroit with not a cow to my name. RIP.
kevin bingham
TreeHouser
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2010
- Messages
- 4,788
yeah, I thinm he was guided by true passion and an exeptional understanding of ecology but also life and financial management. Just one of those people that had it figured out and was willing to share.
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
Did you ever get the chance to meet him Kevin?
kevin bingham
TreeHouser
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2010
- Messages
- 4,788
no. just through his writing.
pantheraba
More biners!!!
Sounds like he was an inspiration to a lot of people. People can be awesome.
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
Well, I am pissed off again. Not at anything that Cory posted this time, although I am starting to think he does that on purpose.........
La Wife-a went to a crop insurance meeting the other day. Damn meeting lasted 4.5 hours and was a wreck.
Very down on cover crops and crop rotations. She got pissed and texted me, and I got pissed. She asked the insurance man, who untimatly works for RMA, a federal outfit, why covers were so bad. He was rude to her.
When she asked what could be done about it he told her to write her congressman.
I went to town and sat down with the NRCS district coservationist for a couple hours. He suggested that we skip writing the letter and instead show the bastards how and why cover crops, sustainability and rotations are the way forward.
Great idea. We have lots of plans now. I am going to become a member of the local Coservation District. We are going to put together some programs and talks to present to the local 4H and FFA kids.
We are talking about setting up some quick and dirty tours, and getting some speakers together.
We talked about getting the ranchers and the farmers together. Thats an interesting one, the farmers have all this land that they fallow, the ranchers leave the area to find grass.
Perfect.
We are making huge changes in our ranching operation, like haying less and grazing more. Calving the end of May first of June on green grass and so forth.
We think we can show that we can be as profitable at least, and I think we will become more profitable.
I know that I run down crop insurance a lot, but it really is the biggest hurdle in the way of profitability that we have. Farming the way the govt wants us too virtually ensures that we will continue to buy high priced fertilizer and chemical, stay in debt with the banks and get buried by the machinery companies.
One of the "sustainable" practices the organic guys were using was to plant yellow clover seed with the wheat seed. Yellow clover sprouts and grows the next year after seeding, providing some cover and organic material...along with a nitrogen boost.
They had to plow that cover down before July to maintain their crop insurance. Shitty deal, but that was the rule. I would have rather had that cover as long as I could.
They have decided now that no matter what is planted, or when it is plowed down, it makes the next years crop qualify as recrop. The insurance coverage goes down and the premium goes way up.
I am concerned that producers will abandon the practice, and that pisses me off.
More to follow.
La Wife-a went to a crop insurance meeting the other day. Damn meeting lasted 4.5 hours and was a wreck.
Very down on cover crops and crop rotations. She got pissed and texted me, and I got pissed. She asked the insurance man, who untimatly works for RMA, a federal outfit, why covers were so bad. He was rude to her.
When she asked what could be done about it he told her to write her congressman.
I went to town and sat down with the NRCS district coservationist for a couple hours. He suggested that we skip writing the letter and instead show the bastards how and why cover crops, sustainability and rotations are the way forward.
Great idea. We have lots of plans now. I am going to become a member of the local Coservation District. We are going to put together some programs and talks to present to the local 4H and FFA kids.
We are talking about setting up some quick and dirty tours, and getting some speakers together.
We talked about getting the ranchers and the farmers together. Thats an interesting one, the farmers have all this land that they fallow, the ranchers leave the area to find grass.
Perfect.
We are making huge changes in our ranching operation, like haying less and grazing more. Calving the end of May first of June on green grass and so forth.
We think we can show that we can be as profitable at least, and I think we will become more profitable.
I know that I run down crop insurance a lot, but it really is the biggest hurdle in the way of profitability that we have. Farming the way the govt wants us too virtually ensures that we will continue to buy high priced fertilizer and chemical, stay in debt with the banks and get buried by the machinery companies.
One of the "sustainable" practices the organic guys were using was to plant yellow clover seed with the wheat seed. Yellow clover sprouts and grows the next year after seeding, providing some cover and organic material...along with a nitrogen boost.
They had to plow that cover down before July to maintain their crop insurance. Shitty deal, but that was the rule. I would have rather had that cover as long as I could.
They have decided now that no matter what is planted, or when it is plowed down, it makes the next years crop qualify as recrop. The insurance coverage goes down and the premium goes way up.
I am concerned that producers will abandon the practice, and that pisses me off.
More to follow.
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
A month ago or so I had to meet my wife and kids at a 4H meeting after my EMT class.
I finally went inside, did not know that the parents were in there too. They were all ranchers from north of town. Dryer country, all native grass.
Those guys are always looking for pasture and mostly go to the reservation. The folks on the Rez do not have many cattle. Mostly good folks on the rez, but it is still a hassle, some bad things happen out there.
The feds recently gave the Tribal Council a pile of money to buy back indian owned land within the boundary of the rez. Now the Council will lease the land out and mostly squander the money.
F'ed up the leasing process and lots of ranchers lost the grass they have been using.
At the meeting I talked on and on about covers and late calving, as I am prone to do. I figured they were uninterested, most people are. My wife said that cover crops is all they talk about now.
That got me thinking when I met with the NRCS man. He mentioned another county in south east Montana that has winter meetings between the ranchers and farmers. Meetings that are facilitated by the Coservation District. The farmers have big printed out maps of their farms that they can use to plan grazing with the ranchers. That way everyone has an idea of acreages, water and fences.
At the end of the meetings agreements are made. We thought that maybe we could set something up like that here. Think back to your junior high dances where the boys stood on one side and the girls on another. Neither knew how to approach the other. The idea that individuals like me could be the person to bring these folks together was really interesting.
The farmers need the ranchers to manage the cover crops, the ranchers need the forage. Perfect.
Our county has the ability to produce twice the forage for animals through the use of cover crops. That number increases again when you implement intensive grazing practices.
The number increases again with the implementation of late calving. When you calve later, and can graze the cattle longer you can free up lots of acres that were previously used for hay. Hay is a single use proposition, expensive to produce and is pretty much a mono culture. Not to mention that haying exports the biological matter.
A plant contains a lot of organic matter and nutrients. When you export that from your land you cant get it back. You run a deficit unless you supplement that with chemical fertilizer.
It is so much better to grow a plant and have it consumed where it was grown. Animals allow you to put those valuable resources back into the soil.
Much of that irrigated land could be used to grow cash crops for half the year and forage crops in the form of covers for the other half. When ranchers move calving dates back to green grass, the cows are not as heavily pregnant during the coldest part of the year. If they are on good forage they dont need fed expensive hay or supplements. A 8 month pregnant cow is very, very expensive to maintain when it is cold.
Pretty quickly, it becomes apparent that our little county, 4020 square miles, could support probably twice the animals, for less money. Profits could go up.....up from zero, for farmers and ranchers.
When you start day dreaming about this stuff it is easy to think that we might be able to shrink the size of the average operation. If farms and ranches can turn a profit with less land and fewer animals there becomes more room for the next generation. Less land means less machinery expense, less debt, less reliance on others.
My wife and I now manage an operation that is twice as big as what I was raised on. We operate a place that was my grandfather's and father's. We had to combine the two places to make it, and we are struggling.
The option the govt, Insurance companies, banks, and machinery companies want us to use is to buy more land, more machinery and more chemical.
Right now 40% of the ag producers in the US have no equity left. Next year it will be worse.
The Insurance man told my wife that 2017 is going to be worse than 2016, but offered no alternatives. He told the producers to keep doing things like they did last year! Lunacy!
I am starting to believe my own bullshit..........There aint a single bleeding problem I cant fix with a cover crop!".
I can see a way out of this mess. We have to manage our soils as our first priority. Profit will follow.
The way it is done now we mange our soils last, as an afterthought.
I finally went inside, did not know that the parents were in there too. They were all ranchers from north of town. Dryer country, all native grass.
Those guys are always looking for pasture and mostly go to the reservation. The folks on the Rez do not have many cattle. Mostly good folks on the rez, but it is still a hassle, some bad things happen out there.
The feds recently gave the Tribal Council a pile of money to buy back indian owned land within the boundary of the rez. Now the Council will lease the land out and mostly squander the money.
F'ed up the leasing process and lots of ranchers lost the grass they have been using.
At the meeting I talked on and on about covers and late calving, as I am prone to do. I figured they were uninterested, most people are. My wife said that cover crops is all they talk about now.
That got me thinking when I met with the NRCS man. He mentioned another county in south east Montana that has winter meetings between the ranchers and farmers. Meetings that are facilitated by the Coservation District. The farmers have big printed out maps of their farms that they can use to plan grazing with the ranchers. That way everyone has an idea of acreages, water and fences.
At the end of the meetings agreements are made. We thought that maybe we could set something up like that here. Think back to your junior high dances where the boys stood on one side and the girls on another. Neither knew how to approach the other. The idea that individuals like me could be the person to bring these folks together was really interesting.
The farmers need the ranchers to manage the cover crops, the ranchers need the forage. Perfect.
Our county has the ability to produce twice the forage for animals through the use of cover crops. That number increases again when you implement intensive grazing practices.
The number increases again with the implementation of late calving. When you calve later, and can graze the cattle longer you can free up lots of acres that were previously used for hay. Hay is a single use proposition, expensive to produce and is pretty much a mono culture. Not to mention that haying exports the biological matter.
A plant contains a lot of organic matter and nutrients. When you export that from your land you cant get it back. You run a deficit unless you supplement that with chemical fertilizer.
It is so much better to grow a plant and have it consumed where it was grown. Animals allow you to put those valuable resources back into the soil.
Much of that irrigated land could be used to grow cash crops for half the year and forage crops in the form of covers for the other half. When ranchers move calving dates back to green grass, the cows are not as heavily pregnant during the coldest part of the year. If they are on good forage they dont need fed expensive hay or supplements. A 8 month pregnant cow is very, very expensive to maintain when it is cold.
Pretty quickly, it becomes apparent that our little county, 4020 square miles, could support probably twice the animals, for less money. Profits could go up.....up from zero, for farmers and ranchers.
When you start day dreaming about this stuff it is easy to think that we might be able to shrink the size of the average operation. If farms and ranches can turn a profit with less land and fewer animals there becomes more room for the next generation. Less land means less machinery expense, less debt, less reliance on others.
My wife and I now manage an operation that is twice as big as what I was raised on. We operate a place that was my grandfather's and father's. We had to combine the two places to make it, and we are struggling.
The option the govt, Insurance companies, banks, and machinery companies want us to use is to buy more land, more machinery and more chemical.
Right now 40% of the ag producers in the US have no equity left. Next year it will be worse.
The Insurance man told my wife that 2017 is going to be worse than 2016, but offered no alternatives. He told the producers to keep doing things like they did last year! Lunacy!
I am starting to believe my own bullshit..........There aint a single bleeding problem I cant fix with a cover crop!".
I can see a way out of this mess. We have to manage our soils as our first priority. Profit will follow.
The way it is done now we mange our soils last, as an afterthought.
MasterBlaster
Administrator Emeritus
Hella post, brother!
Aren't you glad it didn't disappear when you hit "submit!"
I've had that happen before - a pisser!
So, are they gonna go for it?
Aren't you glad it didn't disappear when you hit "submit!"
I've had that happen before - a pisser!
So, are they gonna go for it?
FireFighterZero
Captain Zero!
I think so. I have lots and lots of support, wife, parents..... and scientists!
The NRCS man is passionate like me, and is very well read. We are of the same mind. If we get something like this going he should be able to build a really nice and distinguished career right here in the sticks.
Being the NRCS District Conservationist in Chinook Montana is not a dream job, unless you make it so.
I think we can make it go. We are offering a viable alternative. We have ideas and are passionate about them.
Next week or so the NRCS man and I are going to a meeting about the pros and cons of cover crops. The meeting is hosted by a chemical salesman and the main speaker is from the State of Montana extension service.
We know how that meeting is going to go, the chemical men and the State of Montana hate cover crops!
I suspect it might get a little heated with the two of us there!
The NRCS man is passionate like me, and is very well read. We are of the same mind. If we get something like this going he should be able to build a really nice and distinguished career right here in the sticks.
Being the NRCS District Conservationist in Chinook Montana is not a dream job, unless you make it so.
I think we can make it go. We are offering a viable alternative. We have ideas and are passionate about them.
Next week or so the NRCS man and I are going to a meeting about the pros and cons of cover crops. The meeting is hosted by a chemical salesman and the main speaker is from the State of Montana extension service.
We know how that meeting is going to go, the chemical men and the State of Montana hate cover crops!
I suspect it might get a little heated with the two of us there!
