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farm production more than doubled, and farm size increased from an average of 215 acres in 1950 to 464 acres in 2023. is losing an average of two tons of topsoil per acre annually. Irrigated acres have more than doubled since 1960. On a conventional row crop farm, any given acre only produces one type of food annually.
Early spring grazing is another advantage to having a stockpile of forage. When the snow melted off the fields, there was some green growth available amongst the stockpiled forage, and when spring arrived, we observed that the cattle were ready to return to grazing pasture rather than bale grazing.
Half the largest herd—which lives in a 2,900-acre reserve with a fence that protects nearby ranches—died mostly due to insufficient forage. A spokeswoman said the Park Service will ultimately consider the effect of fence removal on the ranches and dairies in the new plan—but it has yet to provide that information.
Fescue toxicity is the most devastating livestock disorder east of the Mississippi,” said Craig Roberts, a forage specialist at the University of Missouri (MU) Extension and an expert on fescue. Instead, in 2012, they converted 90 acres of pasture to native warm-season grasses, using their own money and cost-share funding from the U.S.
If you grow forage for grazing or haying, youve probably wondered whether Pasture, Rangeland, Forage (PRF) insurance is worth it. PRF insurance is a federal area-based program designed to help protect a producers operation from forage loss risks due to lack of precipitation on acres grown with the intended use of grazing or haying.
“Driving the I-5 between LA and San Francisco, I was like, ‘Oh, this is what people think cattle ranching is.’” Carman didn’t intend to stay on the ranch on which she grew up. She witnessed how difficult it was for them to work the ranch alone. Carman uses the principles of regenerative soil management on the ranch.
Surveying the aftermath of the Kula Upcountry Fire—one of three devastating wildfires that raged across Maui last month—Brendan Balthazar noticed a striking pattern emerge across his cattle ranch. Peppered throughout some 500 acres of charred pastureland, he found sizable patches of grass left unscathed by the blaze.
It is crucial that you understand how to estimate forage DM availability per acre so you can build appropriately sized paddocks. you will need to start stockpiling forages for winter stockpile grazing by August. of available forage DM. Perform the Haney Test annually on each major area of the ranch. per day of DM.
He and 100 caprine teammates can clear about an acre a day. “I Founded in 2020, Happy Goat farm sits on a 2,000-acre property in Mariposa County, near Yosemite National Park. That amounts to approximately 200 acres in addition to the 220 acres the goats take on each year back at the farm. Photo by Craig Kohlruss.
But in 1981, a northern Wyoming ranch dog proudly presented his owners with his most recent treasure: a dead ferret. Researchers, however, say the effects of prairie dogs on livestock forage are mixed. A local taxidermist confirmed that it was, in fact, a black-footed ferret, a member of a tiny remnant population. And they make holes.
It’s no wonder that hospital food gets a bad rap, says Santana Diaz, executive chef at the University of California Davis Medical Center, a sprawling, 142-acre campus located in Sacramento, California. As such, strictly grass-fed or grass-finished operations tend to be modest in scale, says Cheung, with the majority of ranches in the U.S.
Tony Prendergast’s XK Bar Ranch sits slightly south of Crawford, Colorado, near the Smith Fork of the North Fork of the Gunnison River on the southern edge of the agriculturally rich North Fork Valley. We bought the ranch by forming a land cooperative with three other families and collaborating on different uses of the land,” he said.
As the Salton Sea Shrinks, Agriculture’s Legacy Turns to Dust As drought dries up the shallow sea, near a half-million farmable acres in the Imperial Valley, farmworkers living nearby are exposed to toxic dust and airborne pollution from algae blooms. Can Point Reyes National Seashore Support Wildlife and Ranching Amid Climate Change?
For three generations, Fanny Brewer’s family has been ranching the same land in South Dakota’s Ziebach County. million-acre Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation , where she grew up, the county is among the poorest areas in the United States. Encompassing part of the 1.4-million-acre
Pasture, Rangeland, Forage (PRF) insurance is a vital tool that helps protect against weather-related forage shortages, ensuring the sustainability of your operation. PRF insurance offers financial protection when precipitation falls below historical averages, affecting forage availability. What is PRF Insurance?
The ice cream shop is an extension of the Nicholson family’s sixth-generation, 120-acre farm in nearby Ferndale. More Eyes Per Acre As one of California’s oldest cheesemakers, Rumiano Cheese has a storied presence in the North Coast’s dairy shed. Proper rotational grazing relies on pasture as the primary forage, cutting feed costs.
These much-needed payments are helping farming and ranching operations recover following natural disasters in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Ranchers who lost grazing acres due to drought and wildfire and received assistance through ELRP Phase One will soon receive an additional payment through ELRP Phase Two.
slide-intro --> The ranching industry’s toxic grass problem By Robert Langellier , March 27, 2024 Buzzkill By Dan Charles , December 18, 2023 How mushrooms can prevent megafires By Stephen Robert Miller , July 10, 2023 A remote Alaska village depended on the snow crab harvest for survival. million acres of the Central Valley.
In central New Mexico, for example, Christy Everett ’s family ranches, Jones Corona Ranch and Jones Mountainair Ranch, have seen not only hotter, more challenging summers, but a shift in the summer monsoons. Some selections can increase yields and profits per acre.
By Trina Moyles Glen and Kelly Hall have been managing Timber Ridge Ranch, a 480-acre farmland situated an hour south of Calgary near Stavely, Alberta, for over 40 years. Over the last four decades, they have seeded an impressive 5,000 acres, aiming to enhance biodiversity both above and below the soil. Absolutely.
land, with cropland expanding by 1 million acres per year, fueling habitat loss for wildlife and mammals. For instance, agriculture can destroy forest habitats that certain bat species, like the endangered Indiana bat or northern long-eared bat , use for roosting and foraging. Agriculture already takes up over half of U.S.
As such, his grandfather, who lived through the 1955 deluge, often stressed the proper maintenance of the berms protecting the ranch from the nearby Tule River—a lesson echoed by his father, who faced a similar event in 1983. His 580-acre farm grows enough forage to supply the herd, so “I’m good with where I’m at,” he adds.
Maintaining and building fences is a yearly job on every ranch, costing at least $20,000 per mile. Environmental benefits Regenerative grazing—or closely managing where and for how long animals forage—is a farming practice that can improve soil health and plant diversity. Ranchers think virtual fencing helps them be more efficient.
Introduction to Key Metrics When you’re managing a ranch, it's important to track key metrics that tell the story of your herd. The calculation can be done two ways: Using an average of every animal on your ranch, or Using an average of all animals that were born within a certain year (this will only include cows that have calved once).
Prairie strips are one means of increasing biodiversity and perennial presence in fields Diversification in practice Diversification may mean a variety of changes in a farm or ranch system. Mixed summer forage in the Southeast U.S. The mix of species includes sorghum sudan-grass, sunn hemp, cow peas, and millet.
Each of these three conservation activities represents a holistic approach to improving conservation across an entire operation, either by requiring producers to adopt multiple practice enhancements on the same acres or to pursue ambitious, measurable soil health goals, such as increasing organic matter (OM) over the life of their CSP contract.
Focus on forage earns Cope Grass Farms 2023 Missouri Leopold Award Cope Grass Farms of Truxton, Mo., Cope Grass Farms is one of seven farms in Missouri certified by the Audubon Conservation Ranching Program as producing grassland bird-friendly beef. 17 during the Missouri Governor’s Conference on Agriculture in Osage Beach.
It’s late October and Jon Griggs, manager of Maggie Creek Ranch in Elko, Nevada, still has more than a thousand Angus-cross calves left to wean. It’s been a decent year at the 200,000-acre spread, with enough forage for the 2,000 mother cows and their calves. A beaver is released at Maggie Creek Ranch.
That changed, however, after Moyer and her partner established an organic farm on 10 acres in the Sierra foothills of California. She leans hard into tahini, pairing it with tomatoes and dates; transforming it into a ranch dressing to coat a broccoli salad; or whipping it with sweet potato and harissa for a spicy dip.
As farm and ranch managers, we control the timing, intensity, duration, frequency and pattern of the disruptions. To be effective in building resiliency in our farm and ranch operations, implementing our disruption cannot violate the Six Principles of Soil Health. Lets take a closer look at each aspect of a grazing disruption.
Hes also an accountant, squaring the numbers for his central Minnesota farm by hand; a herder, rotating 75 cows between pastures; a crop farmer, raising 300 acres of feed like corn and hay; and a mechanic, repairing the equipment necessary to tend that acreage. Ben Wagner may be a dairy farmer, but that job description is woefully incomplete.
On a crisp weekend this past fall, 30 state legislators from across the nation descended on TomKat Ranch , an 1,800-acreranch focused on regenerative agriculture in Pescadero, California, an hour south of San Francisco. Attendees at the TomKat Ranch tour organized by the State Innovation Exchange (SiX).
The US agriculture sector covers 654 million acres of pasture and rangeland for grazing cattle and another 391 million acres to produce corn, soybeans and other field crop monocultures—and all of them pollute one way or another. Let me give you a better idea of what we’re up against. By 2017, they accounted for only 1.6
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