slifnom

Member
I don t know if this is the right form for asking about Organic Farming, but are there any farmers doing Organic? There is alot of talk in my area, but I think it is still comfined. Any ideas out there? I have a farm(40 acres) East of Green Bay, Wi.
 
Talk to Animal down on the Using your tractor and crop talk forum.

While we're on the subject,what the devil does "suatainable" really mean anyway??!!
McDonalds says that by 2016 they will only source beef from "sustainable sources". They say they will work with producers to achieve their goal. So what the ----? Some college boy from a McDonalds corporate office is going to come out here and tell me how to farm? It might be his last stop.
Crop talk
 
Organic operations tend to be short lived operations. You cannot take nutrients from the soil for many years before production drops off substantially. Weed and pest concerns will become a great problem over the course of a couple seasons. Then there's the marketing. Some are willing to pay extra for "organic," just try to find them!

Unless you have a neighbor with a huge dairy/pig/poltry/operation with a surplus of nutreients and no where to put them, you're going to be in trouble in a couple-three years.
 
(quoted from post at 10:39:03 01/14/14) Talk to Animal down on the Using your tractor and crop talk forum.

While we're on the subject,what the devil does "suatainable" really mean anyway??!!
McDonalds says that by 2016 they will only source beef from "sustainable sources". They say they will work with producers to achieve their goal. So what the ----? Some college boy from a McDonalds corporate office is going to come out here and tell me how to farm? It might be his last stop.
Crop talk

Sustainable means just that. You have to be able to sustain over a long period of time a farming operation. So you put things back into the soil, rotate crops, use manure and compost to sustain the soil long term. Some people mistake it for no chemicals but that isn't true. It's limited application as needed so you don't wind up with resistant weeds. If you weed out the wild idea folks and look at what they are preaching about sustainability some of it makes a good deal of sense. They question how long you can maintain a piece of ground only using chemicals and not putting anything else back into the soil. Do some research. So is going to come across as the next hippy commune type thing and some will make sense.

Rick
 
Soy bean field with a few sunflowers. Large organic farmer in area. He had a crew of Hispanics working on it for several days but I gu ess they had to give it up.
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(quoted from post at 10:31:24 01/14/14) I don t know if this is the right form for asking about Organic Farming, but are there any farmers doing Organic? There is alot of talk in my area, but I think it is still comfined. Any ideas out there? I have a farm(40 acres) East of Green Bay, Wi.


Get on line and look up the process to get certified. That may scare you away. Look at both WI rules and USDA rules.

Rick
 
Animal, Kowfarmer, and several others do organic or natural operations. Good folk, good operations.

There is some kidding back and forth, as you see.

Its a good nitch market, you can get more per bushel or lb of product you produce, but likely you will produce a bit less, have more paperwork, and will cost you more to haul your crop to its market.

Be sure you find a place to seel your stuff for a premium before you hop on board, organic production is much more about salesmanship than it so about growing. You need to find who your customer is and what they want, you can't just grow stuff and see if it sells later.

Paul
 
(quoted from post at 10:58:27 01/14/14) Organic operations tend to be short lived operations. You cannot take nutrients from the soil for many years before production drops off substantially. Weed and pest concerns will become a great problem over the course of a couple seasons. Then there's the marketing. Some are willing to pay extra for "organic," just try to find them!

Unless you have a neighbor with a huge dairy/pig/poltry/operation with a surplus of nutreients and no where to put them, you're going to be in trouble in a couple-three years.

Some of what you say is right, some is wrong.

You mistake organic farming for farming by neglect. Sometime they go hand in hand, often they do not. Unfortunately, lots of bad organic farmers started out as bad conventional farmers. they think that all they have to do is "not spray chemicals"

I grew up on a conventional 60 cow dairy. Dad still farms, but no longer has dairy cattle. He has 2800 pigs grown on contract, 100 head of beefers, 400 acres crops, and a full time off-the-farm job. I married a wonderful girl 11 years ago and bought her dad's farm in 2010. We have been farming organic crops since 2005 and now also have 8400 organic laying hens. You are right that cropping would be difficult without the hens for manure. I am not farming by neglect.

My feed guy has been farming crops organic since the mid-2000s. He has to buy all his inputs and they get pretty expensive. He had a test plot on his farm last year and it averaged 137.5 bu/a over 27 varieties from 89 day to 112 day corn. This is about 50 bu/a below average for my county, BUT that corn is worth 10.50 to 12 per bushel right now. His plot sheet worked out all costs to be $702/a. At $10/bu, that's $673 profit.

But DON'T get into it for profit. I sprayed crops for UAP for 8 years before I bought this farm. I'm here for the lifestyle, not the profit. Some years, I could make more money conventional farming, some years, I do better because I'm organic farming.
 
I really appreciate the organic producers, and the farmers market type of operations.

But, yes, I have great difficulty with that 'sustainable' type of label.

Really looking at the issue, if you haul any sort of food or feed off an acre of land, you need to haul the same or a bit more nutrients back onto that acre.

It does not matter if it is manure, sea kelp, fish guts, rock phosphate, nitrogen made from natural gas, commercial fertilizer pellets, waste water sludge, idle the land a year to grow a legume you do not harvest, .......

In some way, somehow, you need to replace what was hauled away.

So both organic and conventional farming in the exact same boat - one is not different from the other in that respect.

So these sorts of claims make no sense to me.

Farming in general, either type, Is either sustainable or not. Can't have them both ways!

Paul
 
neighbor with a large animal operation will not help unless he is organic himself. if the animals are not fed organic feed, the manure is not organic and can not be used for fertilizer on organic farms
 
Sustainable? Look at a old Amish farm community and learn to ask questions in German. New Church Mennonites another group o ask--and they"ll be "familiar" in English. Rodale Press had a Small Farm Journal with sustainable ag features, a selected feature collection for that- not sure if still in print since the Small Farm Journal was a personal project of Rodale and was stopped printing when he died few years back. Organic Gardening still round and there reference library section still shows the old issues on occasion. RN
 
Sustainable is basicly like we lived in 50 and 60 if we needed we got it. it means sitting down with a pen i farm that way not strictly organic but close. i penciled out imputs from plow down plus manure i didnt need fertilizer . the guy next door buys ever bit of fertilizer spray etc yield differance 1 bushel. i also remember an old guy telling me how alot of people buy there milk unless good genetics you are going to get so much you can buy fancy equipment get high powered rations but is that sustanable? I had holstiens pushing out over 100 lbs a day on 5 lbs of grain and rotational pasture. they also breed back good and gained weight.
I also smile when i see guys with shiny new lawn mower mowing acres of grass. my lawnmower is a four wheel drive solar powered fermentation vat who weeds feeds and trims the lawn throw a wire up let them have it for a day or two and find anthor chunk. once in a while i might mow but very little.only one accident turned mutt out one night forgot had wire by front door she wouldnt go out that door for a long time .
 
Don't we all do that?!

Good God! I guess McDonalds just had to come up with some buzz word gimmick to appease the stupid brain dead fad followers.
 
If that brainless crap is what McDonalds is using as a standard,I wish them a lot of luck in sourcing the billion pounds of beef a year that they need.
 
"lots of bad organic farmers started out as bad conventional farmers"

My guess would be that lots of bad organic farmers started out as yuppies with stars in their eyes and a political agenda.
 
In Lafarge Wisconsin is the corporate office of Organic Valley (608)625-2602 You could call them and they should be able to answer any ? you have.

Bob
 
Im not sure if you want to call the amish sistanable differnt groups do it differnt.the ones in my area farm like we did in the 70's.
I've talk to some that do rotational grazing and they also question it . with strip grazing your labor is higher but the have big familys.i cannot see how the can profit hauling all the feed in storing it taking it out then digging the manure out by hand then hauling it out. my grazing set up probably cost around 300 dollars if you compare that to the extra wear a.d tear on equip its cheap .instead of replacing a haybine say every 6 years you can get 12 out of it. also figure the cost of gas for putting up crops . the fencer i use takes as much as a 100 watt bulb thats what it cost me to feed cattle and haul manure in the summer
 
(quoted from post at 12:43:50 01/14/14) Don't we all do that?!

Good God! I guess McDonalds just had to come up with some buzz word gimmick to appease the stupid brain dead fad followers.

Actually there is a lot of "sustainable" beef out there. It's more or less pasture raised animals. No restriction on grain inputs but the cows can roam and graze too. I know a lot of guys in our area that raise beef that way. Very few feed lots in our area and a lot of land that's only good for pasture. Now a lot of sustainable farmers do rotational grazing to try to keep their pastures in better shape.

As far as the "fad followers" are concerned, there are more and more each day as people become more educated as to what they are stuffing into their mouths.

I'm way out in west MN. I raise pastured pigs every year that I buy as 40-50 pound feeders. I DO NOT advertise. This is mostly for meat for the family. I have people from as far away as the Twin Cities contacting me about pigs. I didn't sell any this past year because of corn prices. Just didn't pencil out. Now if I have people contacting me like out here in the middle of nowhere it's more than just a fad. This past spring I had at least 20 different people wanting to know if I was going to be selling any.

Colin from the N forum sells organic. He's a little closer to the cities than I am but he has customers buying produce and chickens from the cities. Now if folks from the Twin Cities are coming out this far to buy pasture raised animals and organic produce it's more than just a fad. I'm still a little shocked by it. I had your attitude about it several years ago. I'm not organic and will not be. But I am trying to sustain my land for following generations.

Rick
 
One way to look at sustanable is simple put would you buy a new tractor every year or fix and maintain the old one ?what one will keep you going longer
 
If you want to have fun check out the rising sun farm over by river falls . its organic and well you can find out so many good jokes come to mind
 
I think you're confusing "sustainable" and grass fed. I pasture my cow/calf herd too,but I creep feed grain to the calves then put them on silage and grain to finish them after I wean them at 5-600 pounds. Again,if it's grass fed that Ronald McDonald wants,good luck and they'd better take a look at what happened to Coca Cola when they changed their formula.
 
(quoted from post at 13:47:08 01/14/14) I think you're confusing "sustainable" and grass fed. I pasture my cow/calf herd too,but I creep feed grain to the calves then put them on silage and grain to finish them after I wean them at 5-600 pounds. Again,if it's grass fed that Ronald McDonald wants,good luck and they'd better take a look at what happened to Coca Cola when they changed their formula.

Sustainable has become a useless word when it comes to food, just like "natural" and "fat free". There's no teeth behind it. My definition of sustainable is gonna be different than your definition.

Perhaps one person's version is to stick 10,000 head in dry lots in Kansas, keep them on an antibiotic-heavy all-corn & milo ration, slaughter them as fast as you can administer the pneumatic kill pin, and sell the beef cheap. Perhaps my version is to put that animal on grass (which it evolved to eat), not use any antibiotics, have the animal processed in a local, small abattoir, and sell the meat within 100 miles of where it was raised and butchered for more money. Perhaps another's version is to only eat wild game that they shot and processed themselves. Any of these can be justified as "sustainable".

McDonalds isn't gonna go grassfed unless they can find a way to still make a buck per burger AND I doubt they're gonna double the price of the burger.
 
I agree with you 100% but if he is interested in Organic he can get info. from them.

Bob
 
You seem like an awful nice guy and I sure don't want to start something with you,but what you're talking about is the exact opposite of "sustainable". I've been in the cattle business since I was 15. Everything I grow either gets fed to cattle or ends up under them for bedding. The only way anything leaves the yard is in the stock trailer or the manure spreader. My cattle don't,and never have produced enough manure to fertilize the ground that it takes to feed them. Granted,I don't use as much commercial fertilizer as the cash croppers do,but if I didn't supplement the manure with the commercial fertilizer that I need to use,crop production will drop off,I wouldn't be able to keep as many head,meaning less manure,even lower crop yields,fewer cattle and on and on until all I'd have is empty barns and barren fields of weeds. That's not sustainability.
 
But that is what i would call sustainable use what you got and buy the extra you need. what i call non sustanable is the large mega farms that basically live off goverment payments. we have one place next to me hundreds of cattle outside they haul feed in and no manure out .then go buy more chemicals get new machinery etc . if it wasnt for govt payments i doubt they would make it thats why i like shows like dr poll .it was to help a mega farmer that the bank tried to sell me out.
 
Nature is organic by definition .
It has sustained itself for a couple billion years just fine.It was not until man started to fart around thinking it could improve upon things with fertilizer and chemicals and monoculture that things started to go wacky.

I raise bison the organic(natural) way(am not certified) have not used chems and fertilizer for 20 years, don't use vaccines or meds and don't use grains for feeding either
The land is healthier now than when i first started.
My bank account improved right along with it to the point it is nowadays always in the plus.

Just saying
 
I get the farm fresh, or farm market, or grass fed, or what have
you, type of marketing. It ebbs and flows in popularity, and I
like it.

But I don't see how it is different as far as 'sustainable' one
way or the other?

I'm certainly not against it. Just don't get how one way of
farming is more sustainable than the other somehow.

Its like advertising some meat or gain as 'chemical free'. Well.
Everything is made of chemicals, including the most purest
organic pork...... It seems to be some sort of false advertising.

Again, most certainly not opposed to it, its the cool hands on
segment of farming, should be more of it!

But - then we get into these buzz words of sustainable or
chemical free, and it kinda makes a person mad, when it is
clearly such false advertising. Unfortunately.

If you haul a pig to town, you need to either haul that same
amount of nutrient back to your farm, or you need to rob your
soil of the nutrients you hauled away.

Just like any conventional farmer. Got to be one way or
another.

Nothing especially sustainable one way over the other? If you
need to haul in manure to keep your farm in good shape,
where does that manure come from? You are robbing
someone. If you use fish broth or kelp, it has to come from
somewhere - you take away from someone else. That is no
more sustainable than hauling in commercial fertilizer to keep
your soil healthy and well for decades to come......

Again, I'm for what it is you are doing. Not against te market
farms at all, wish there were more!

Just don't care for the false advertising is all.

Paul
 
I don't know about the rest of you but if it ain't Organic I ain't eaten it. Just to dam hard on the teeth to chew those rock and other stuff.
Walt
 
So instead of supplementing the nutrient needs of my own land by buying the fertilizer that I need,I should let my land get run down and pay a price that's profitable to somebody else so they can use fertilizer and grow feed for me? OK.
If you think Dr Pol is some "organic","natural"or "sustainable" vet,or that his clients are,I don't even know what to say. That show is filmed right here locally. All I could do is invite you here to see how wrong you are about the way we farm here in mid Michigan.
 
My place is as organic as I can go. But I do not have any row crops. I do hay and run my animals on the same field that I cut the hay off of so they put back pretty much what I take off. My garden is also as organic as I can get it
 
Maybe im misinterpating dr pol i was thinking he did small farms thats what im thinking and thats the guys i like. yes i buy outside feed and fertilizer . But i use as much compost and cover crops as i can most of the guys that i know work that way.
 
Cheerios are now going to be made with Non GMO grain look for more things to follow.Consumer demand will eventually be the nnalert Card as always. The handwriting is on the wall but don't expect the ones closest to it to be able to read it.
 
You're not alone.... The odd cow might do it but it's coming off her back to do it. The other half of that equation is that the 100# is about 2.3% fat and 2.1% protein. My observation over the years of pasturing like that was that you could make a lot of volume but you couldn't make much of a cheque without some source of fibre going into them.... We did a lot of pasturing on Italian rye grass... and they'd milk good and sh!t through the eye of a needle... but the components were not in the milk. The same herd on good silage would make 4% + milk.

Rod
 
Keep dreaming America would starve in two months without GMO.. If in fact anything the worm is turning more the other way toward overall acceptance and just a very SMALL group of tree huggers who can,t get it.
 
I tend to agree with RRlund and Paul on their versions of "sustainability". It makes no difference if you're "organic" or "conventional" in your farming practices, you still need inputs. Period. When the cost of those inputs exceeds the returns, then your method of farming is not "sustainable". I view the recent high grain costs as one of the culprits we "all" have dealt with. Never......Never....have I seen "agribusiness" as opportunistic with their run up in ALL of our input costs. When it "appears" like the farmer will make a good return, UP go his costs. Agribusiness has to make a profit too, but recent actions on their part have been blatant. So, it doesn't matter if you consider yourself "organic" or conventional....both groups will have to deal with being "sustainable". AS for the organic parade, I think most view this as zero inputs resulting in a more "natural" production scheme. I had an old farmer neighbor one time who made the statement, "I'm just going to farm with what God gave me". The appearance of his farm looked like God had not given him much. 'Sad deal really.
 
(quoted from post at 17:20:48 01/14/14) Keep dreaming America would starve in two months without GMO.. If in fact anything the worm is turning more the other way toward overall acceptance and just a very SMALL group of tree huggers who can,t get it.

Long before GMO the federal government was buying surplus grains every years and destroying them by the thousands od tons. So that statement isn't anywhere near the truth.

Rick
 
We weren't producing the ethanol back then that we produce now.
Anybody who wants to talk about how "natural" things were on Earth for hundreds of millions of years isn't considering the 7 billion people on the planet now who weren't here then either.
If somebody wants to come up with a way to get rid of about 6,999,900,000 of them,we can probably feed the remaining hundred thousand "naturally" for a few years. Any volunteers to be the first to go?
 
This should be easy to do since there is no such thing as gmo oats.
http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-agriculture/modern-farmer-explains-why-there-are-no-gmo-oats.html
 
Some of you guys are full of the output of a bull.

My land has been farmed 100% organic for 30+ years. My brothers as well. There is no extra of anything hauled from neighbors to replace nutrients. This year my brother planted 90% of his farm in beans. Average yield on 400 acres was 1560 LBS per acre. My flax went 15bushel per acre cleaned. Average oats on 10 years is 42 bushels /acre at $5-$7 a bushel beans right now $0.75 a lbs. flax $32 a bushel. we are certified have cows, sheep, hay, and summer fallow and plow down alfalfa or buckwheat every 5-7 years. My uncle is not certified and 25 years ago he quit buying spray and fertilizer as he was almost bankrupt. He sold all his crop conventionally and got out of the hole and retired 2 years ago. These are sustainable and organic farms. You can have sustainable non organic farms which means the farm is using practises that will keep it going weather the price of grain, cattle or whatever goes up or down. Farms that think there is no end to how much chemical they can dump on will some day collapse because the yield and price of crop will be less than the input costs.

Farming organic is really healthy on the brain as you don't get very far in debt , if at all, and don't have the stress.
 
(quoted from post at 14:28:56 01/14/14) You seem like an awful nice guy and I sure don't want to start something with you,but what you're talking about is the exact opposite of "sustainable". I've been in the cattle business since I was 15. Everything I grow either gets fed to cattle or ends up under them for bedding. The only way anything leaves the yard is in the stock trailer or the manure spreader. My cattle don't,and never have produced enough manure to fertilize the ground that it takes to feed them. Granted,I don't use as much commercial fertilizer as the cash croppers do,but if I didn't supplement the manure with the commercial fertilizer that I need to use,crop production will drop off,I wouldn't be able to keep as many head,meaning less manure,even lower crop yields,fewer cattle and on and on until all I'd have is empty barns and barren fields of weeds. That's not sustainability.

The whole thing most people miss is that with sustainable farming you can use chemical fertilizer as needed. But it also includes putting something back into the soil besides just the chemicals. Most people mistake what it's all about. I know a college professor who taught sustainable farming. That is what he was teaching. He honestly believes that some guys who only put chemical fertilizer in are going to eventually kill their soil. I don't know about that. I do know that he finds it perfectly acceptable to use hybrids, chemical fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides as needed, but not as an end all. He will tell you that you need manure or other things to put back into your soil besides just chemical fertilizer.

Rick
 
we can usually raise 100bu oats fetilized with 25-25-20 and 40-50 bushel beans so at current market prices tell me how you are ahead with organic? I'm not against the idea but I but if comercial fert ect. makes me money then I have to go with works. you are averaging 40 some bu ats and 28 bu beans, do the math.
 
To be TRULY "sustainable", you would need to capture the "guano" from the people who bought your product and the offal from the animals that were slaughtered and return it to your ground. Unfortunately, this byproduct does not end up back home. Much of it ends up out into the oceans.

People who claim organics can't feed the world better not be eating meat. Meat is a very inefficient way to get your nutrients,and the ground used to produce the feed for the meat could be better used to feed the world by producing high density human food.
 
this topic is sure to create much heated discussion. my feelings are that we don't need gmo crops but we sure need spray and fertilizer. I don't understand why people will pay twice as much for a lesser product. just the way I look at things.
 
(quoted from post at 10:31:24 01/14/14) I don t know if this is the right form for asking about Organic Farming, but are there any farmers doing Organic? There is alot of talk in my area, but I think it is still comfined. Any ideas out there? I have a farm(40 acres) East of Green Bay, Wi.

I've seen a number of wannabees come and go in the last couple of years around here. Most are California or west side city folk that think research on the internet, a Troybilt tiller and a few acres are all it takes to be an organic farmer. Joel Salatin is their hero! Unfortunately guys like this make more from books and seminars than farming.....but they won't tell you this LOL!

I am in my 7th year of growing produce "sustainably", not certified organic, but close. Around here, price sells so the record keeping and jumping through hoops just isn't worth it. We have been gaining customer base every year and we do have a low overhead. Excluding labor, our costs are around 10% of gross sales. I do supplement our income with custom farming in the area, which helps. I usually have a steady source of free manure that I haul in from my custom farming contacts.

The buzz words around here are CSA - community supported agriculture. People that sell CSA's have to be damn good salesmen as I think the turnover rate is over 50% each year. I guess you can only screw half the people once......

We retain our customers by selling fresh, naturally grown produce at a good price. Check us out on Facebook "AC Starr Farms.
 
This is my argument word for word. LOL. Those who want to go back should be the first to volunteer to go without when the shortage comes.
 
(quoted from post at 17:48:41 01/14/14) We weren't producing the ethanol back then that we produce now.
Anybody who wants to talk about how "natural" things were on Earth for hundreds of millions of years isn't considering the 7 billion people on the planet now who weren't here then either.
If somebody wants to come up with a way to get rid of about 6,999,900,000 of them,we can probably feed the remaining hundred thousand "naturally" for a few years. Any volunteers to be the first to go?
Feeding the bloating world population obviously can not be done with organic farming but that is not the point.
The question was how to go about starting a organic farm.
 
What's the world population got to do with anything being talked about here? It's not like the American farmer is feeding the world. If that were true the US would not import simple things like milk and beef. The Black Sea states wouldn't have a world market for their wheat, South America wouldn't have a world market for beef and so on. The American farmer feeding the world is nothing more than an outright lie.

Guess it's true. Some people do subscribe to the good old if you can't win an argument with facts ridicule it and it will go away idea. Well from watching this over the last several years it isn't going away. People don't trust GMO crops. And more people each day are starting to question them. It isn't the farmer they don't trust. It's Monsanto and the chemical companies they don't trust.

You same guys who yell about corporate greed are doing the exact same thing with crops. Going for high yields without regard to the safety of the product you are producing. The anything for a buck attitude. While no has proven GMO's to be unsafe no one has 100% proof they are safe. I darn sure would not sell you something to feed your kids that I wasn't 100% sure was safe. Makes my laugh. The same bunch that keeps posting on how lack of church'n is ruining the country failing to show those same values you hold so dear.

Rick
 
(quoted from post at 12:04:16 01/14/14) Sustainable? Look at a old Amish farm community and learn to ask questions in German. New Church Mennonites another group o ask--and they"ll be "familiar" in English. Rodale Press had a Small Farm Journal with sustainable ag features, a selected feature collection for that- not sure if still in print since the Small Farm Journal was a personal project of Rodale and was stopped printing when he died few years back. Organic Gardening still round and there reference library section still shows the old issues on occasion. RN

Small Famers Journal is published by Lynn Miller out in Sisters Or. Bob Rodale publish Organic Gardening and The New Farm, but Bobs been dead for about 20 years now. I did a google search but can't find and pubs named "Small Farm Journal" associated with Rodale. What am I looking for?
 
Yep...Handwriting is on the wall ok...And it says:

Some people are gullible enough to believe "organic" is somehow safer than GMO... and those same people are generally less educated in the subject they feel as if they're experts.

Got to give the organic scammers credit where credit is due though. They've taken their lessons from all the con men that preceded them by taking something of lesser value, and selling it for a higher price.
 
Sure I will do the math

100 bushel oats at $3 average last 10 years=$300-fertilizer and spray and fuel
40 bushels at $5(low end)=$200-fuel only


In your area you might make more but I compare to neighbors. Around here there are very, very few years that any conventional farmer can get over 2500 lbs an acre beans. I'm talking pinto beans.
Average bean crop here is 2200 at $0.30lbs=$660+fuel fertilizer spray
organic is 800 lbs average at $0.75-0.80=$600=fuel

Where my uncle lived in Saskatchewan where till 5 years ago rain was a commodity you wished you had,you could pour all the fertilizer on you wanted and could not get a crop. Different areas work differently. if we end up with 3-4 years of drought all that fertilizer will be dept you will never get out of unless on poor years you back off on the cost of input. We all know that God makes the rain and with out it we get ZIP,no matter how good we think we are. We see to often where the rich big farmers go bankrupt and keep farming because the gov. bails them out and they screw every person including me out of money.Sucks when the small guy sells the big guy seed and he turns around and don't pay his bills because the price of grain drops so far that if he paid ALL his bills he wouldn't make his half million or more for that year. Got real bad here when BSE. hit the cattle farmers. They went to every small guy they could and bought feed mineral and whatever from as many people and places they could charge and walked away without paying any of it. We had a string of small guys go under because the big guys wouldn't pay there bills. Us little 20-50 cow guys have hay as a side market and when you get stiffed on 200 bales of hay that hurts. The biggest feed lot in this area we hauled hay for stiffed one trucker over $50,000 That trucker still had to and did pay his fuel bill . but had to sell his cows to live on for another year. Needless to say the feedlot never blinked an eye.
 
Organic Fad came and went around here, SE MN, about 10 years ago. Few guys went gungho with it but in 5 years they couldn't grow anything but weeds. They all have since went back to conventional with the exception of one guy. He has hog finishers so he has a supply of fertilizer. He goes one year corn then direct seeds alfalfa for two years. I'm down stream from him and have a dam full of his soil. He is always plowing, cultivating ect, and in these hills that's not a good idea. Very abusive to the land for just a food label!
 
Just curious about that better use claim. Unless humans are going to start eating grass there isn't much else large sections of the country can produce. It's not like you plant soybeans or watermelons in the flint hills. If the cattle don't eat the grass there aren't any other takers.
 
(quoted from post at 15:34:57 01/15/14) Just curious about that better use claim. Unless humans are going to start eating grass there isn't much else large sections of the country can produce. It's not like you plant soybeans or watermelons in the flint hills. If the cattle don't eat the grass there aren't any other takers.

How many cattle are finished out in the flint hills?

How many pounds of grain does it take to finish out a beefer?

How many loaves of bread would that grain produce?

How many gallons of water for the beefer?

Where does water come from in Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm a meat eater. I'm sure not giving up my steak any time soon. BUT, I'm not the one that gets my fiddle out and start crying about feeding the world every time organics comes up. The world could far more benefit from an extreme reduction in meat production (especially beef and pork), than it could from me and my fellow organic farmers giving up and spraying out crops.







If you want, I could help you out on the quiz I gave you...
 
(quoted from post at 20:01:38 01/15/14)
(quoted from post at 15:34:57 01/15/14) Just curious about that better use claim. Unless humans are going to start eating grass there isn't much else large sections of the country can produce. It's not like you plant soybeans or watermelons in the flint hills. If the cattle don't eat the grass there aren't any other takers.

How many cattle are finished out in the flint hills?

How many pounds of grain does it take to finish out a beefer?

How many loaves of bread would that grain produce?

How many gallons of water for the beefer?

Where does water come from in Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm a meat eater. I'm sure not giving up my steak any time soon. BUT, I'm not the one that gets my fiddle out and start crying about feeding the world every time organics comes up. The world could far more benefit from an extreme reduction in meat production (especially beef and pork), than it could from me and my fellow organic farmers giving up and spraying out crops.







If you want, I could help you out on the quiz I gave you...


Point is there is a lot of land in the US that is only good for grazing. So raising meat isn't necessary a bad thing. I've seen places in KS with decent grass and bedrock 6" down. Good for beef, not so good for crops. Lot of hill side in KY that the only farm value is pasture too. Now here, in MN where I'm at, land is or can be about 50/50 tillable non tillable. Here the problem is you have to raise hay to feed through the winter. So here it's an economic question of where you are going to make your best money. Feeding cows 4 or 5 months a year or raising a cash crop. Well unless you are going to dump a lot of money into chemicals about the best you are going to do is with hay. So here it's more of each to their own.

If you look at just how many acres are no longer being farmed feeding ourselves really isn't an issue. If needed there is a lot of land that can back into production. Plus world wide there are millions of farmable land that not farmed or under farmed.

Rick
 
You mean you are government-controlled, or that you can continue farming the same ground for years to come, like pretty well anyone that's not within 5 years of retirement with no one to pass things on to?
 
If all farms were forced to go organic and non GMO seeds, like back in the 30's, like a lot of the hippies want, there would be lots of starving people.

Gene
 
(quoted from post at 18:47:26 01/14/14) this topic is sure to create much heated discussion. my feelings are that we don't need gmo crops but we sure need spray and fertilizer. I don't understand why people will pay twice as much for a lesser product. just the way I look at things.

Well there are a lot of lies being spread out there on the world wide web where anyone can profess to be an expert on organics. You only half to scare a small percentage of the sheeple out there to sell a product at an unreal price....that is what I am up against. That is my major pet peeve about organics....people spreading lies in order to justify their prices. Many gullible consumers out there, but I am not going to play that game.
 
(quoted from post at 20:55:10 01/16/14) If all farms were forced to go organic and non GMO seeds, like back in the 30's, like a lot of the hippies want, there would be lots of starving people.

Gene

Gene I think your wrong there but there would be no CRP or ethanol. Younger farmers would learn what a cultivator is again. No till would die. Heck if they just stopped the ethanol thing we could do away with GMO's and not even miss em. Lot of farmers would go broke though when corn hit 2.50 a bushel. If forced to go organic hybrids would be gone too. That could hurt.

Rick
 
(quoted from post at 21:06:32 01/16/14)
(quoted from post at 18:47:26 01/14/14) this topic is sure to create much heated discussion. my feelings are that we don't need gmo crops but we sure need spray and fertilizer. I don't understand why people will pay twice as much for a lesser product. just the way I look at things.

Well there are a lot of lies being spread out there on the world wide web where anyone can profess to be an expert on organics. You only half to scare a small percentage of the sheeple out there to sell a product at an unreal price....that is what I am up against. That is my major pet peeve about organics....people spreading lies in order to justify their prices. Many gullible consumers out there, but I am not going to play that game.

Eldon, that's where some people are messing with what sustainable farming is all about. They want sustainable to be one step away from being organic with only the certs not being done. But with what sustainable is supposed to be and what some would call it are 2 different things.

Rick
 
Point is there is a lot of land in the US that is only good for grazing. So raising meat isn't necessary a bad thing. I've seen places in KS with decent grass and bedrock 6" down. Good for beef, not so good for crops. Lot of hill side in KY that the only farm value is pasture too. Now here, in MN where I'm at, land is or can be about 50/50 tillable non tillable. Here the problem is you have to raise hay to feed through the winter. So here it's an economic question of where you are going to make your best money. Feeding cows 4 or 5 months a year or raising a cash crop. Well unless you are going to dump a lot of money into chemicals about the best you are going to do is with hay. So here it's more of each to their own.

If you look at just how many acres are no longer being farmed feeding ourselves really isn't an issue. If needed there is a lot of land that can back into production. Plus world wide there are millions of farmable land that not farmed or under farmed.

Rick

Well said. People saying raising meat instead of green stuff is wasting land or something have never looked at the sub-marginal land (USDA term) we have that would never raise grain or veggies but can grow fine sheep or other ruminants. Where's the waste? If the sheep or cattle aren't on it, it returns to thornbush and scrub brush. Who benefits from that? Deer and rabbits. The land will carry 3 or 4 deer per acre in scrub, but clear it and keep it managed and it'll carry 20 sheep.
 
(quoted from post at 05:11:32 01/17/14)

Well said. People saying raising meat instead of green stuff is wasting land or something have never looked at the sub-marginal land (USDA term) we have that would never raise grain or veggies but can grow fine sheep or other ruminants. Where's the waste? If the sheep or cattle aren't on it, it returns to thornbush and scrub brush. Who benefits from that? Deer and rabbits. The land will carry 3 or 4 deer per acre in scrub, but clear it and keep it managed and it'll carry 20 sheep.

When was the last time you went into a store and bought a pound of mutton? Or a wool sweater?

NO meat is being finished on "sub-marginal" land. That land is used to feed cow/calf pairs. BUT then the calves are put into feedlots and stuffed with corn and milo. That's where beef's huge inefficiencies come in.

A rich nation with large arable land mass can afford to grow meat, but the meat takes many more acres of land than grains and vegetables fed directly to humans. This ain't hard math, man.
 

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