Real Farms

Farming is one of the most simplistic parts of life, the most complex, and one of the few activities that life can not exist without, at least in the way we live life today.  Unless all man was willing to become hunters and gathers, we must farm to live.  We must farm in a way that is sustainable, this is a method that can be extended into the future for generations to come.

 http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/speechesandarticles/a_speech_by_hrh_the_prince_of_wales_to_the_future_for_food_c_848967946.html
 
The mechanisms within our bodies demand the fruits of the earth.  We can not survive on artificial organisms.  The life giving organisms that our bodies require for sustenance are all derived from the earth's production either originating from soils or water.  If our system of agriculture does harm in any way to this soil or water we are practicing a form of self mutilation. It is an arrogant personality that practices food production in a way that requires the pollution of our limited supply of drinking water or contamination of our thin layer of top soil that all life depends upon.

Today's agribusiness promotes, at the highest levels, mono culture agriculture with unprecedented levels of artificial inputs that degrade top soil, drinking water, and the human body.  This is done primarily out of ignorance from an uneducated support system trained entirely from its own agribusiness financial system designed to perpetuate its own existence. This is an artificial system which continues to develop an infinite number of additives in the form of more pesticides, GMO's, abusive technology, and so called educational institutions to support its bad habits.  Because of its strength in momentum the monetary gain received by its supporters has far outpaced almost all levels of good logical judgement that an educated society would generally represent.  For no practical human would poison his only means of his life giving sustenance.  This artificial system of mono culture farming has been substituted for real farming which understands the full circle of biological life.

Some call biological farming organic or natural, but in reality it is only farming.  It is also the only possible method to put back into the soils what we extract in the form of food for our own bodies.  Earth is not all that different from a large piggy bank.  If we continue to take withdrawals with out dropping in more coins from time to time, the bank will eventually be broken.  Farming under our current modern system with artificial inputs is like depositing only wooden nickels in that piggy bank.  Real farming requires of us a very simple system or protocol.  This protocol demands birth, life, death and decay.  This is not at all different than what human life demands.  I believe this to not be by any accident.  A multi species and diversified farm  in which grazing animals are an integral part of contributing back to the soil for the production of not only more foraging plants for those animals, but soil building components for vegetable, fruit, and grain production primarily for human maintenance is required for life.

It is also by no accident that a small farm can produce an enormous abundance of food under this system.  And it requires only a very minute part of the entire farm to produce gigantic quantities of body building nutrients leaving the bulk of the farm for proper management in order to build in the sustainable system described.  In sharp contrast our current system of agribusiness in its mono cultured practices not only degrade and diminish all chances for life's sustainable requirements but its production level is so substandard that it has no possibility in mass producing the demand of the earth's population of human beings. 

Grazing, Science or Art

Many livestock producers in the US have no idea what this title is referring to or even care.  The attitude is, primarily, "open the gates and let them eat, that's all there is to it".  This has led to an industry that is more hobby than business, and an end product that little or no thought is given to its safety and nutrient content, or quality of eating experience. 

Grazing is a whole lot more than just the quote in the previous paragraph.  Now at a time when I have been observing the grazer at work for over forty years on these Missouri rock prairies, I continue to be amazed at how much more there is to be learned.  Greg Judy says there are over 1 billion life forms in a table spoon of good soil.  And most of those life forms have yet to be catalogued.  It is these lives in real soil that make livestock grazing a science.   It is combining the necessary parts in a systematic approach that create the art in grazing. 

We must learn better ways to propagate and build larger populations of these micro organisms living in the soil.  It is certainly a biological world understood best by the scientific mind of these miniature life forms.  There is an artistic flow that encourages and improves on the symbiotic relationship between grazer, man and the soil structure in which all this life is dependant upon.  Any product or practice that depletes the effectiveness or efficiencies of the animal, man or this ecological matrix is considered by the grazer as not allowable.  The ends do not justify the means.  This is a phrase utilized by those who have either an alterior motive or have not yet reached a level of understanding of the enormous consequences of neglecting his responsibilities.

A rancher by the name of Tom Lasater said, "...this business is very simple, the hard part is keeping it simple...".  This simplicity is part of the down fall and has opened some doors to opportunists each building on his predecessor's successes.  What I mean is grazing is so simple that our logical minds have been developed to not accept that simplicity has a chance of being the best bet.  After twenty five years of operating more or less under contemporary practices in the cattle business, I had decided Mr. Lasater may actually have something of value.  We went simple, and discarded most all modern technology, chemical innovations, Grant University methodology, the current failed genetic merry go round, and began to undue just about every rung on the ladder I had spent time and money on since I started this business now almost forty years ago.



Some of the new but yet very old practices we began putting in place were things like moving the herd into a pasture that has only enough forage for about one day.  Creating enough of these pastures so that the soil and forages could rest without disturbance for at least 90 days before grazing them again  (planned grazing, mob grazing). This practice alone eliminated all requirements for the expensive use of chemical parasite control.  The animals that had lossed their abilities to fend off even a low level of parasites were eliminated from the herd.  This was a step forward on the genetic pool at a cost of zero.

Another step was to eliminate the use of all salt chemical fertilizers.  Along with the elimination of residue from the once used chemical parasite control on the animals, the microbiological life in the soil began to flourish.  These two simple steps were a gigantic move forward towards increasing total annual forage production.  The complete elimination of mechanically harvesting forages on the ranch put the ranch over the top on production and was at that time beginning to produce more forage than the then current herd could utilize in a growing season.  Changing the shape of standing forages into a bale of hay does not increase the quantity of forage produced on the farm.  It actually reduces total forages available to the livestock by a significant amount.  And the costs of all these inputs were completely removed after we understood simplicity better.

The genetics of the cow herd began a slow change for the good by replacing the once used inefficient grain induced bull power with bulls who have a propensity to produce on forage alone. Replacing older cows with younger heifers out of these bulls that have grazing abilities eventually has created a fat calf that can grow completely out to finishing stage right here on the ranch on nothing but grass and a little salt.  This began to put beef on customer's plates that increased in nutrient content and removed all chances for pathogen contamination now running rampant in contemporary grain fed operations.  It also gave the customer for most what was the first experience of tasting real beef flavor instead of ground up Bt corn. 

With all this extra forage, and to increase bio diversity and utilize it's efficiencies, additional species of grazers and browsers have been added.  It has been proven many times over that a rancher can run two sheep for every cow he grazes with no loss in forage utilization.  And we have found that these sheep will earn more profits than what the cow herd does.  By adding even more species of animals efficiency continues to climb.  This ART of combining animal species has been all but lost in modern agriculture.  The profit potential and ecological advantages gained by these techniques are the cornerstone for a sustainable farm or ranch. Without these very simple practices, livestock production becomes a poor substitute for a petting zoo and yet something completely short of a productive, sustainable farm.     

Biological Farming

The average American corn farmer spends three bushel of soil to produce one bushel of corn.  About 80% of the nitrates, that are applied in the form of anhydrous amonia and/or other chemical fertilizers, are generally soluble and erode into the water system including eventually the dead zone now residing in the Gulf of Mexico on the far end of the Mississippi river.  Most cattle feeders spend more on transporting feed and purchased inputs than many times the value of the animals in several years out of many.  The typical livestock farm in any state you care to travel through will have primarily if not only one species of animal on that farm. Most of our grazing livestock in the US have lost their innate ability to survive in a grazing environment.  This agricultural system professed as being highly productive is in reality a poor example of food production.  What was once the wealthiest nation in the world now spends more on health care than it does on food as a percentage of household income.  We have more prison inmates than we do farmers.  One might be questioning what these seemingly unrelated issues all have in common.  By my observation I conclude these are all one in the same problem caused by the same source.

If you ask yourself to take out a piece of paper and write down the number of farmers you know who make their living completely from their farm your list would be short.  I venture to say most of us do not know of a single person or family in this category unless we include retirees who contribute part of their pension towards support of their farms.  And if we do not include those households who have outside income as from the wife's job in town, our attendance of the population of full time farmers might be zero.  Again, I see this all being caused from the same source.

We have become a specialized, industrial, chemical, technologically driven many persons removed professional agricultural knock off.  And remember a knock-off is a copy cat of the actual thing and never can live up to the original standards.  And it is usually driven by greed and with a bag of a-moral tactical methods.  Since we as humans are biological to the bone, bar none, our survival will always depend upon our abilities to produce and maintain biological standards that up hold these requirements our human bodies demand.  A knock-off will simply not due.  Our agricultural experts, with the help of congressional and industrial greed, have made every attempt known to man thus far to by step this primary requirement for the sustenance of life, the propagation of biological life.

Since we are on top of this grand pyramid of biological life, we must be dedicated to the base of this pyramid and its propagation, less we continue with our current down fall.  This base has been right under our feet all the time.  And its access is free for the taking.  I am talking about the biological life in the soil that all life above the soil depends upon for its sustenance entirely.  Man is at the top of this biological pyramid and the mostly micro sized life below the surface of the soil is at the bottom.  If we will re-learn to utilize soil biology as the basis for all farming enterprises, all health, including economic health of our nation, will surely improve. 

A Real farm has many species of animals grazing and browsing an almost unlimited number of species of plants, forbs, leaves, trees, grubs, insects, grains wild and domesticated, etc.  Most farmers put all the emphasis on the single species of animal they have on their so called farm and tend to see them as only eaters.  These farm animals are actually feeders of the biological life beneath the soil.  The farm animal itself is almost inconsequential.  When in fact, most of the farmer's time should be spent on propagating the life beneath the soil.  If we become successful with increasing sub soil life in our management of the farm, the by product produced from this micro biology will in turn provide us with all the sustenance our farm animals can need.  And instead of the farmer choosing what animals his farm should employ, the farm itself will choose which animals to propagate and what that animal should look like.  

Our country needs at this time about 6 million more of these kind of farmers.  This kind of farmer will have to learn these methods which are no longer considered viable agricultural activities.  The farmer that is now working a job off the farm in order to meet his obligations must learn these concepts if he desires to reach sustainability.  These concepts will at first seem contradictive to everything he has learned about his farming or his animals.  And in all practicalities the animals or the type of farming he currently practices will have to be extremely modified and his reluctance to make these improvements must be over come.   

Fall Growth

It's November 12th and the fescue is bright green and growing very well.  The growth rate this week, following a good rain we had earlier, is probably close to one half inch per day, or about fifty pounds of forage per acre per day.  On one thousand acres of grass that could be as much as about fifty thousand pounds per day.  A cow herd of five hundred head consuming thirty pounds of forage per head would be taking out fifteen thousand pounds per day.  So in realty, for the week, we are still producing more forage than what we are taking.

Several things must have come together to put this growth scenario in place.  One really big factor is the location of our ranch.  Here in fescue country, which is cool season grass country, the thirty degree nights and sixty five degree days is almost perfect conditions for growth of our type grasses.  Even after a very dry summer, almost no rain in July and August like normal, our grass continues to grow.  I can expect some growth maybe on up until mid December on a good year. 

Now the other important condition that also must exist is the grazing plan must have been put into place to take advantage of what rain we did get this summer.  We also must learn how to manage our grazing so that we go into these cool growing days with plenty of root system and leaf to take advantage of the photosynthesis and wicking ability of the plant.  About seventy percent of our annual growth comes in the spring time.  This is the one time of year that we are given the opportunity to advance as much growth as possible all across our ranch to increase that root mass and improve our ability to collect as much of those early heavy rains as we can.  We know we will need that precip later in the year.  One tool we do not want to use is mechanically harvesting of our forages.

It is natural to have the idea to process and store a great deal of this spring growth in baled hay or baleage.  This will only reduce the total forage production for the year.  What happens so often is we will mistakenly go into the paddocks and mow down the forage for hay so low that when it gets dry in the summer, like it always does, the root system is so diminished that the plant simply sets there and suffers until later in the year when rains do come and the weather improves.  The plant is starved for water and other nutrients.  If we will manage the plants in a total grazing plan we can eventually double the forage production or more.  Spending a lot of money putting the plant into a bale of hay will not give us more feed than if we left it standing.

Another key component to pull this together is multi species plant growth.  A mono culture planting can only take benefit from one very narrow window of temperature, precip, and growing conditions.  Our cool season grasses take off like a race horse in early spring.  When it gets hot and dry during the summer our warm season grasses like lespadeza, red clover, forbes, and many other plants take off.  In one years growing season we have catalogued over one hundred different edible plants for our animals on the ranch. 
I think fescue country really is a great place for grazing the right kind of animals.  But no matter where your ranch is, putting together a planned grazing program is a major step towards reaching a level of sustainability. 

Farming For A Living

As we drive across the state of Missouri the fertile green pastures are dotted with livestock, mostly beef cows.  It is more unusual now, more than it was forty years ago when I was a kid, to see a family sized dairy farm.  I remember the 1960's and many neighbors of ours milked twenty or thirty cows and appeared to have plenty of food on the table.  And it was unusual for the family to have to have permanent jobs off the farm.  Today it is almost impossible to find a family farm where at least one of the family members if not both adults don't hold down full time employment off the farm and then come home to their night job with the livestock. 

Something very significant has taken place on today's farm that has changed this system.  I believe this change has not been for the good.  Yes, part of what is going on is that we expect a higher and higher lifestyle as each generation comes by.  Just take a look at our costs of housing we demand and the dollars we are willing to put into our transportation.  I mean really now, can any vehicle in which its main purpose is to simply get you to town and back be worth over $50000.  We are talking a pick up truck here.  But the problem is also related to the methods we employ today compared to the methods of farming decades ago have changed.

Cows, both dairy and beef, have historically been allowed to graze in order to supply their primary daily fix for nutrition.  Somewhere along the way, maybe the upswing was about 1971, we began to think we knew more about nutrition than the cow did herself.  Regardless of the fact that she does have a few more years of experience than we do, we chose to begin the process of taking feed to her instead of allowing her to walk to the feed.  Now this sounds really simple, and it truly is simple, but most of us will never understand this concept. What I mean here is that instead of allowing these animals to do what is natural to them, graze, we chose to pen them up and began a very expensive process of mechanically harvesting, storing and then mechanically feeding what was already feeding the cow at a very low cost to begin with.  We then got real smart and started mechanically planting different crops in order to 'be more efficient', because we didn't think the old crops were producing enough milk or meat.  This added even more costs.  Then came the next step.

We thought since we are now feeding all this expensive feed including the most expensive feed of all which would be grains, we needed cows that would 'be more efficient'.  So we began breeding for animals that only produce high quantities of milk and meat when fed grains. We began a breeding process known as single trait selection.  The only thing we became interested in was production.  This is primarily because we mistakenly confused high production with high profits.  When in fact, these two are almost always antagonistic.  That is when one goes up the other goes down.  Something else also happened during the last fifty years or so.

Many of us old guys who can still remember that a cow can feed herself by grazing, died off, got lazy, or just quit talking about the old days because we got tired of being made fun of.  So during this period of time we completely changed the genetics of these cows, some refer to these new cows as welfare cows because they can't seem to make it on their own accord.  These type animals have much shorter lifespans, reproduction problems, and higher nutritional demands which equate to higher production costs.  We chose to increase the size of not only the animal but also the size of the farm because we got confused and thought increasing numbers was the direction towards profitability.  When that didn't work we sent our wives to town to get a job.  After a few more years, her pay check wasn't near enough.  So then we went to town and got a job as well and began working the night shift on the farm.

We now have gotten to the point with most livestock production that this once thriving industry is nothing more than a past time or hobby.  If you doubt this statement, I challenge you to locate three persons you know who now can say they make their entire living from their farms.  Most will never find a single person in this category.  We must accept the fact that agriculture as a hobby is not sustainable for the human race.  We will become extinct ourselves if this system of failed agriculture continues.  I have spoken about animal agriculture in these few words but I see the same scenario in most all areas of food production.  We do not have to live in quarter million dollar houses and drive fifty thousand dollar transportation devices.  But we do have to eat regularly.  

Fall Planning

Today is the first Monday of October and as I just got back in the house from morning chores I can report a fantastic temperature of 58 degrees F.  The gardens got frost bit for two nights in a row so they are really shrinking fast.  Thank goodness for cool season grasses though, our fescue has really taken off.  We will have enormous growth for the next 60 days in our pastures.  It is our ability to have not only substantial forage growth in the spring time, like most places, but our fall growth is like earning 10% over prime. 

However, this fall growth is not a time to begin stockpiling for winter feed.  If we have done nothing all year long to prepare for this growth spurt, little can be gained over the next two months, of almost perfect growing conditions to reduce and especially to eliminate winter feeding of hay.  What I mean is all year long up to this point we will have had to be moving the herd through our many paddocks in a planned grazing program in order to keep the root system and biology in the soil ready for this time.  It is also very important how we managed these paddocks in the prior year.  How I grazed this spring will have a direct consequence on next years growth. 

 Even if you do not farm or ranch where cool season grasses thrive, a system of planned grazing is absolutely necessary for optimum growth of forages.  Even in Southern Missouri where stocking rates can be very high, we can easily double our forage production or more.  Other types of growing areas will have even a greater need to learn the requirements of capturing every drop of rain water that falls during the year, gain the understanding of feeding the biology in the soil, how to maximize photosynthesis, so that mechanically processed feeds can be reduced or eliminated.  First we eliminate these high costs of processed feeds then we begin to add additional animals.

Not only will the need be to add more to your current herd once progress appears in your paddocks.  But the need will be to add other species to not only promote more growth but to better utilize what grows there already.  It has been a naive agriculture community to believe that single species farming was sustainable.  Farms of distant past involved rotations of crops and many different species of animals and plants.  This was not only a good idea because of nostalgia, but because of the symbiotic relationship between these different species and the improvement in the whole system when the farm is not subjected to the limited potential that single species environments perpetuate.  

So I encourage all to learn more about multi-species farming and to implement a strategy to gain from what advantages it will bring.  Farming without animals is not farming at all.  The life cycle of birth, growth, death and decay are essential for a planet based on a biological structure.  Science has benefits when applied in a constructive manner.  It helps teach us how and why a system functions in such a way for all to benefit.  A science that makes an attempt to replace a biological world with man made chemistry and or technology will surely succeed.  It will succeed so vehemently that all biology will in deed be ultimately and completely dismantled. 

Raw Milk

By estimation made by the USDA about 12 million people across the US drink raw milk every day.  Of course the opposite of raw milk is generally considered to be pasteurized, homogenized milk from large commercial dairies.  In controversy all across this country, not so in many parts of Europe where raw milk is accepted as nutritionally demanding, is not only should people drink raw or processed milk, but the USDA would claim that Americans do not even have the rights to drink raw milk if they choose to.  And of course since practically never do any of the 12 million raw milk drinkers fall to their health demise, as suggested by the USDA. I'll take my chances drinking milk from cows standing on grass instead of in their own feces.

Since I have been drinking raw grass fed milk daily for most of my 50 some odd years I am extremely biased and can't for the life of me see what all the hoopla is about.  Since the government is suspected of more than one disservice to it voters, I suspect they must have their hand somewhere in the milk bucket or why else would they even care.  People die everyday from car accidents, cancer caused from tobacco, drowning in swimming pools, and the list goes on and on but all of these highly dangerous activities are allowed.  I think it's pretty easy to put the economic pieces together.

Some may think that drinking raw milk is some sort of new fad and practiced by only the liberals from California or some other forward thinking local.  Nothing against my friends from California.  Anyway, raw milk is drunk all over the world and has been for centuries.  Many believe raw milk has important nutrient content and has even been used as a treatment for illness by yes, real certified doctors.

One very interesting medical practice is to utilize the immunity offered up in colostrum, milk from a ungulate who has just given birth, for fending off diseases or pathogens.  There is even a US patent from work done back in the 1950s describing the process.

It seems the medical profession was injecting serious antigens into the teats of the cow just before calving.  The biology of the cow lends itself to the manufacturing of antibodies to combat these deadly pathogens.  From a cowboy's perspective what they were doing makes all perfect sense.  Once the cow, goat or sheep, gave birth and began producing colostrum, this colostrum would contain the antibodies to fend off the disease.  Once the infected individual consumed the colostrum with the produced antibodies, the healing would take place at phenomenal rates.

This appears to be a very economical and efficient way to fight disease.  I in fact have a friend who was deemed terminal from a well known disease, and went through this very process on his own.  He has told this story for many years now and obviously has outlived his termination date.  I can't imagine our current day highly esteemed medical profession accepting this sort of human treatment for disease.  And I even have a greater problem living long enough to see this ever get FDA approval.  I guess there is more money in statins.

But whether or not raw milk from grass fed cows contains disease fighting qualities from the manipulation described above, I feel much healthier personally when I get my daily fix.  And knowing how dangerous driving a car is compared to drinking raw milk I intend on doing both.  And surely common sense would dictate that no one else, and particularly the government, should be given the authority to dictate over our diets.  And besides, it tastes like drinking the best milk shake in the world.  And to my friend, Dr. ####, anyone who can't taste the milk shake in my raw milk has lost the battle of mind over matter.  But then I can't force myself to eat cottage cheese.  At least we now know our weaknesses don't we, Doc?