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I have to agree with Organic Cowboy and SCGranny... don't blame the farmer and rancher, blame the agri-corps who corner the market and price fix, and blame the government that lets them get away with it (and subsidizes it, and promotes it).
Here's a little thought about our lovely gov't... take a good look at the Food Pyramid. Even the new one is wrong. 9 servings of grain a day?! For a human?! We're the only country that recommends that much to it's people... could it be that, ummmm, the government is promoting one of over-produced cash crops instead of really being concerned about our healthy eating?!
LOL - Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox all over again!!
There is that one guy breeding dwarf cows (http://www.kcra.com/news/3660898/detail.html?fr_story=4ac32ea86c52dabd076407505aade 98d5613c107 - broken link) that are only about 3 ft tall... guess they'd probably weigh about the same as an adult human at that size, maybe a little heavier. But yeah, I don't know to many people who are the size of a Holstein or Gurnsey!
That reminds me, I seem to remember hearing a news item on the radio saying that the smaller cows are the "in" thing.
That reminds me, I seem to remember hearing a news item on the radio saying that the smaller cows are the "in" thing.
You guys make me laugh, but then again I am a farmer and its one thing to hash this stuff out and quite another to feed the nation and and your family at the same time. I don't have enough time this morning to debunk all the myths, mis-truths and out and out lies proposed so far on here, but I will say farming is just like any other industry and gets its fair share of farming fads.
Small cows, grass fed only, naturally raised...neat ideas but they are just that, farming fads. They allow a small farmer to compete only as long as they are niche markets, but once they get popular, the competition gets fierce and those bloated prices start to drop and the farmer that got into it can no longer operate on lower prices. The only way to survive is to find another niche market so a new farming fad emerges. The sad thing is, we have become so distanced from our food supply as a nation of consumers, that when supposedly "experts" speak about food, its taken as gospel.
My family has been farming here in Maine since 1757, and we have changed as the markets changed, but we are very careful about what we get into. I just laugh when I read about grass fed only livestock because there is nothing natural about grass fed only livestock in Maine. Corn was here long before domesticated animals arrived and there are some compelling reasons; nutritionally speaking, to fed corn. There is a lot to be said for a varying diet and the taste it gives to the animal that eats it. I happen to raise both grass fed only lambs, as well as corn fed lambs and the latter are far superior in both genetics and nutrition.
Now I do say this with one caveat...I am not a feed lot and I know my animals quite well. Even on the dairy farm is is surprising how well we know each one of the 700 cows. I guess you get that way when you spend 365 days a 18/7/365 with them though You will also notice I use the word corn a lot and not grain. We grow 800 acres of corn which means our dependence upon imported grain is vastly reduced. This corn is also a hybrid-that is slightly different then feed corn...it has less starch so that the entire plant is more palatable to the cows and sheep.
You're right BrokenTap, farming and eating fads effect farmers a lot and if you want to stay competitive you have to evolve your niches. It's a shame that people have forgotten where their food comes from because I think it makes the smaller farmers more at the mercy of those fads than if everyone ate seasonal and ate local. If people were actually being fed by their local farmers instead of supermarket agri-corps, then there is already a ready-made "niche market"... your community.
I really have to agree with you, a farmer that personally knows his animals raises healthier ones than you can find in any feedlot. There was a feedlot operation near where I used to live and the younger animals coming from the ranches looked great, but after a couple of weeks on the lot they looked horrible and listless. I've got nothing against feeding your animal whatever grows best on your land... that just makes sense.
You guys make me laugh, but then again I am a farmer and its one thing to hash this stuff out and quite another to feed the nation and and your family at the same time. I don't have enough time this morning to debunk all the myths, mis-truths and out and out lies proposed so far on here, but I will say farming is just like any other industry and gets its fair share of farming fads...
My dad was a farmer, raising cotton and cattle. His idea was to use Black Angus heifers with Charolais bulls. He figured the Angus was one of the better breeds for beef. He decided the Charolais bull, being a larger animal, would give him a faster growing calves.
BTW, his cattle were largely grass fed (wheat, oats, a bit of hi-gear here an there,)and in dry times, he would take them to the back pasture where there was scrub oak. Otherwise it was just natural pastureland where the mesquites were.
My dad was a farmer, raising cotton and cattle. His idea was to use Black Angus heifers with Charolais bulls. He figured the Angus was one of the better breeds for beef. He decided the Charolais bull, being a larger animal, would give him a faster growing calves.
BTW, his cattle were largely grass fed (wheat, oats, a bit of hi-gear here an there,)and in dry times, he would take them to the back pasture where there was scrub oak. Otherwise it was just natural pastureland where the mesquites were.
Just to clarify, Grass-fed-only livestock pretty much means green grass. Wheat, Oats, corn, etc may be a derivative of grass, but its generally considered grains. Its no so much that people take issue with what's in the grains, it is the fact that many feedlots use unhealthy amounts of grains to increase weight.
I don't use grains for quick weight gains in my sheep, I use grains (corn) to augment some deficiencies in grass. For instance, it is loaded with protein, but with sheep, sufficient protein is kind of easy to get. What is hard to get is high levels of energy from straight grass, so corn helps boost the energy levels, which in Maine is important when it dips below -20º. There are sugars and trace minerals needed as well, like selenium that is deficient in most of North America.
Grass fed only livestock is actually quite tricky to do properly. What angers me is people feel they can simply drop grain from a animal's diet, call it grass-fed-only and think its superior. This is not the case. Grain feeding has always been the shortcut...to do grass-fed-only properly, you have to supplement the fed with the proper trace minerals. That means testing you forage and feeds and then adding what the diet is missing. Few people do this because it is expensive.
I had one guy tell me he was doing grass-fed-only and after three years of having cows,told me he read an article saying that cattle needs salt in their diet. I'm glad he bought a salt block, but it was about 3 years too late. Of course he told me he was doing winter grazing too,when actually all he was doing was throwing hay to the cows out in a pasture...that's different then winter grazing.
You're right BrokenTap, farming and eating fads effect farmers a lot and if you want to stay competitive you have to evolve your niches. It's a shame that people have forgotten where their food comes from because I think it makes the smaller farmers more at the mercy of those fads than if everyone ate seasonal and ate local. If people were actually being fed by their local farmers instead of supermarket agri-corps, then there is already a ready-made "niche market"... your community.
We kind of have that going on here in New England. The number of dairy farms have dwindled in number, but the production rate has stayed pretty flat. All in all the amount of milk available in New England, is about the same as consumption. This does not really raise the price of milk, but it does keep the cost up high enough so dairy farmers can make money on it. Its not a lot, but enough.
Other parts of the country like New York have more supply then demand,so they want to push their milk into New England. Maine has the Maine Dairy Initiative in place which does not allow raw milk to be exported out of Maine, or raw milk to be imported into Maine. What this does is basically force Mainer's to buy Maine milk.
In some ways this sounds bad as no one likes to be forced into anything, but without this in place, the price would plummet to 12 bucks a hundred weight...down from the 16 bucks a hundred weight it is now. IF the price of milk went down...then it may be good for Maine milk buyers but the milk would not be coming from Maine.
Now some people are advocating the Maine Dairy Initiative be eliminated. There may be farms in Maine that are using Artificial Growth Hormones, but most (if not all) creameries in Maine have farmers sign a pledge that they won't use them. I know for a fact that on our 3 farms, we DO NOT use them and do not know of any farm that does. All in all, if Maine loses the MDI...they will swap a few cents off from a price of milk and pay a few more dollars to their Doctor instead.
That is what it boils down to. Pay a farmer, or pay a Doctor. Historically American's have chosen to pay the Doctor instead.
Just to clarify, Grass-fed-only livestock pretty much means green grass. Wheat, Oats, corn, etc may be a derivative of grass, but its generally considered grains. Its no so much that people take issue with what's in the grains, it is the fact that many feedlots use unhealthy amounts of grains to increase weight.
I don't use grains for quick weight gains in my sheep, I use grains (corn) to augment some deficiencies in grass. For instance, it is loaded with protein, but with sheep, sufficient protein is kind of easy to get. What is hard to get is high levels of energy from straight grass, so corn helps boost the energy levels, which in Maine is important when it dips below -20º. There are sugars and trace minerals needed as well, like selenium that is deficient in most of North America.
Grass fed only livestock is actually quite tricky to do properly. What angers me is people feel they can simply drop grain from a animal's diet, call it grass-fed-only and think its superior. This is not the case. Grain feeding has always been the shortcut...to do grass-fed-only properly, you have to supplement the fed with the proper trace minerals. That means testing you forage and feeds and then adding what the diet is missing. Few people do this because it is expensive.
I had one guy tell me he was doing grass-fed-only and after three years of having cows,told me he read an article saying that cattle needs salt in their diet. I'm glad he bought a salt block, but it was about 3 years too late. Of course he told me he was doing winter grazing too,when actually all he was doing was throwing hay to the cows out in a pasture...that's different then winter grazing.
Yep, corn and the other grains are technically grasses and in a normal grazing pattern most animals will eat it right along with the green legumous grasses and the regular field grasses. It's part of their rounded diet and you can't ignore it when considering winter feed in cold climates. Lots of livestock will eat scrub grass, but it can't be the only thing they're eating or they will get sick. Goats love brush, but I'd never dream of only grazing them on brush without good hay and some sort of grain and definitely not in the winter.
I think a lot of people forget that a plant only has the minerals that are present in the soil, it's not like they can spontaneously create selenium from nothing. That's why it's really important to periodically check your soil and your forages.
You're right that conventional, commercial feed lots and such are basically force-feeding the animals an unhealthy amount of grain to fatten them up quickly; while a responsible farmer is supplementing grass and good hay with grains to make sure the animal has enough protein and calories in their diet. There's a big difference! (Sorry if any of my previous posts made it seem that I was advocating total grain/corn elimination!). Saying that livestock should only eat pasture grass is just the same as people who have cut out an entire food group from their diet because someone told them it's bad... and then get sick and can't figure out why.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrokenTap
We kind of have that going on here in New England. The number of dairy farms have dwindled in number, but the production rate has stayed pretty flat. All in all the amount of milk available in New England, is about the same as consumption. This does not really raise the price of milk, but it does keep the cost up high enough so dairy farmers can make money on it. Its not a lot, but enough.
Other parts of the country like New York have more supply then demand,so they want to push their milk into New England. Maine has the Maine Dairy Initiative in place which does not allow raw milk to be exported out of Maine, or raw milk to be imported into Maine. What this does is basically force Mainer's to buy Maine milk.
In some ways this sounds bad as no one likes to be forced into anything, but without this in place, the price would plummet to 12 bucks a hundred weight...down from the 16 bucks a hundred weight it is now. IF the price of milk went down...then it may be good for Maine milk buyers but the milk would not be coming from Maine.
Now some people are advocating the Maine Dairy Initiative be eliminated. There may be farms in Maine that are using Artificial Growth Hormones, but most (if not all) creameries in Maine have farmers sign a pledge that they won't use them. I know for a fact that on our 3 farms, we DO NOT use them and do not know of any farm that does. All in all, if Maine loses the MDI...they will swap a few cents off from a price of milk and pay a few more dollars to their Doctor instead.
That is what it boils down to. Pay a farmer, or pay a Doctor. Historically American's have chosen to pay the Doctor instead.
I think more states should have local food initiatives like this. It makes sense on so many levels, even if it costs a few cents more for the consumer. Cheap food is cheap for a reason... mostly because all the goodness has been stripped out of it and it's heavily subsidized (the corps, not the farmers). Local purchase from local farmers keeps the money in the community. Local food means it's fresher and hasn't been transported from God-knows-where. Local food systems are more secure than a centralized system because there are no single points of failure.
I'm personally opposed to GMO and AGH... in both the animal and their feed. If an F1 hybrid is a product of controlled pollination, that's one thing. Many plants, especially corn seem to due much better with hybrid vigor. But if it's some weird franken-seed that they concocted in a lab somewhere, that just gives me the heebie-jeebies. I understand GM, and if it's done carefully and responsibly it's not such a bad thing. But if the agri-corps can't manage to guarantee us untainted food, can we really trust them to start messing with something's genetic code carefully and responsibly?
I totally vote with my dollars and pay the farmer!
And just an aside on the 'smaller' aka miniature cows....
There are cows being bred to be small, like mini-jerseys, but Galloways and Dexters are naturally small - well, um, smaller, 700 to 900 lbs on the hoof. They were considered "family cows" in Ireland, and are tame enough to have children care for them. The Dexters and Galloways are not a fad, but have a long history of production for not only meat (they are foragers and are less particular about their feed) but their milk (which averages about 21% butterfat content) as well as used as oxen to pull small carts and sleds. The Dexters are starting to become the darling of the homesteading set, because of their tameness and size as well as their ablity to forage and willingness to eat and ability to process non-perfect diets. While I may be able to run 25 head of Angus on my acreage with rotational grazing, I can supposedly run twice that many of Dexters! (I won't, but I could.)
To find out more about Dexters, you can go to Dexter Cattle For Sale Dexter Cattle Breeder . Like I said before - folks are not going to give up beef or milk, no matter what others say. Sorry, I don't know why it came up like that - it is the link to the American Dexter Cattle Association, not a sale page!
When my local ranchers are getting $147 per Angus steer - 1200-1500 lbs of meat on the hoof at today's prices - and you can't buy a pound of Angus beef (post-feedlot) at Kroger's for less than $5 a pound, that pretty much tells you who is profiting. I buy my beef from local ranchers or the local butcher who isn't stymied by Fed regulations, and it is fork tender and sweet, grass-fed and luscious. Of course the FedGov being what they are, they are rapidly trying to force smaller farmers and ranchers to PAY THEM for the privilege of owning cattle - between $300-$800 a year for the privilege - you can tell who is trying to eliminate the small rancher and farmer and to turn it all over to the conglomerates. When Monsanto tests every single beeve sold at auction for their specific genetically altered grain components (and charges the rancher for doing so) with the FedGov's enthusiastic support, one can pretty much figure out who is running the feedlots.
If you want to see a revolution in this country, just wait... the airwaves in the Great Plains and Texas are full of outcries against this sort of machination of prices and GM feed; there are organizations being formed to combat it, and farmer's unions and inherent organizations are banding together to fight it. But they need the help of the consumer, who needs to educate him/herself, or they may end up with nothing but the overpriced, undernourished, and overdosed and -medicated conglomerate beef from which to choose. Farming and ranching is hard and very underpaid work - and if the conglomerates (hand in pocket with the FedGov) have their way, then the eco-terrorist vegetarians may actually get their wish - no decent, edible, beef available at any price.
Actually, much of the beef raised and sold in the US is not eaten in the US... but that's a whole 'nother rant.
Just to clarify, Grass-fed-only livestock pretty much means green grass. Wheat, Oats, corn, etc may be a derivative of grass, but its generally considered grains. Its no so much that people take issue with what's in the grains, it is the fact that many feedlots use unhealthy amounts of grains to increase weight.
I don't use grains for quick weight gains in my sheep, I use grains (corn) to augment some deficiencies in grass. For instance, it is loaded with protein, but with sheep, sufficient protein is kind of easy to get. What is hard to get is high levels of energy from straight grass, so corn helps boost the energy levels, which in Maine is important when it dips below -20º. There are sugars and trace minerals needed as well, like selenium that is deficient in most of North America.
Grass fed only livestock is actually quite tricky to do properly. What angers me is people feel they can simply drop grain from a animal's diet, call it grass-fed-only and think its superior. This is not the case. Grain feeding has always been the shortcut...to do grass-fed-only properly, you have to supplement the fed with the proper trace minerals. That means testing you forage and feeds and then adding what the diet is missing. Few people do this because it is expensive.
I had one guy tell me he was doing grass-fed-only and after three years of having cows,told me he read an article saying that cattle needs salt in their diet. I'm glad he bought a salt block, but it was about 3 years too late. Of course he told me he was doing winter grazing too,when actually all he was doing was throwing hay to the cows out in a pasture...that's different then winter grazing.
Oh yeah, the grain grasses were all I was talking about. He never waited until it matured with the heads and so forth. Also, he always made sure there were salt blocks near the windmills. During winter months, if there was snow, we fed them cake. The cake or any hay we gave them were temporary measures, only.
He never took cattle to feedlots which kept them for any appreciable amount of time. There was always some weight loss during the trip to wherever the auctions were held, but I'm sure they made up for a lot of that when they were watered. If they were fed any grain, it was a for a very short period of time.
BTW, you earlier mentioned something about the farmer knowing his cattle. My dad literally knew each one was which, just like he would with people. I wouldn't be surprised if he named them, though if he did, he never told me. Also, he remembered which calf came from which cow and which bull was the daddy...
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You will also notice I use the word corn a lot and not grain. We grow 800 acres of corn which means our dependence upon imported grain is vastly reduced. This corn is also a hybrid-that is slightly different then feed corn...it has less starch so that the entire plant is more palatable to the cows and sheep.
