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Last month, the Thrall family announced it had reached an agreement to protect the over 54,000 acres of native grasslands in southern Alberta that make up the historic McIntyre Ranch through a conservation easement with the Nature Conservancy of Canada and Ducks Unlimited. Read More
Worsham farms, growers and producers of over 1,500 acres of sweet corn, 1,200 acres of peanuts, and 2,500 acres of pecans—with trees over 100 years old—allowed us to document their journey and share the story of what it takes to be a resilient farmer in an industry where you risk it all to work the land you love.
They grow a variety of crops including corn, soybeans, rye, wheat, sorghum, and peas; pasture-raise pigs for specialty meat company Niman Ranch; and care for chickens, sheep, ducks, geese, alpacas, and numerous cats—in addition to raising two young children and running a farm stay experience. We don’t have to invest in huge buildings.
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.
Over a 50 year time period, the returns from grain farming are $508/acre higher than cow-calf production, according to the research modelling. Read More
Over-winter feed costs are often the largest expense for livestock owners, and in many parts of the country where hay is more expensive, it can rob the profit out of cow/calf pair production. We had 200-plus acres of stockpile from the previous year to graze throughout the green up process. What class of livestock are they?
The disorder, fescue toxicosis, costs the livestock industry up to $2 billion a year in lost production. 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. And he can point to some wins.
There are not a lot of hog farmers…But there are kids that want to be handling livestock.” Often families will purchase livestock for these types of programs using interest-free youth loans. She since partnered with Niman Ranch, which is a network of more than 600 small and mid-size farmers and ranchers across the U.S.
Wildfires leave damages across more than 1 million acres Donations of hay, feed, fencing supplies, cow feed and milk replacer are needed to support livestock owners impacted by the devastating wildfires that have scorched ranchland across a large portion of the Texas Panhandle.
“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.
Patrick Brown, who was named North Carolinas Small Farmer of the Year by North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University this year, grows almost 200 acres of industrial hemp for both oil and fiber, and 11 acres and several greenhouses of vegetablesbeets, kale, radishes, peppers, okra, and bok choy.
Eric Boor took over his great-grandfather’s nine-acre farm in southern Iowa four years ago. Eric and Mikala both knew that they could raise hogs outdoors, but it wasn’t until they started partnering with Niman Ranch that they could make it work financially and begin to grow their business. “I
AgriLife Extension helps Texas Panhandle ranchers identify nutritional needs of displaced livestock Truckloads of hay are rolling in from across Texas and beyond, bringing much-needed feed for cattle in the wake of more than 1.2 million acres of ranchland and pastures blackened by wildfires across the Texas Panhandle. According to U.S.
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.
Nearly four decades ago, Ron Mardesen and his wife Denise stopped using antibiotics on their hog farm, A-Frame Acres, in Elliot, Iowa. In 2002, Mardesen started selling his pork to Niman Ranch, a network of independent family farmers that raise livestock without antibiotics or added hormones.
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.
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.
Today, he’s a sixth-generation pig farmer partnering with Niman Ranch. Williams, his wife Hannah, and their toddler Lyle now live on Williams Family Farms, sustainably and humanely raising pigs and farming about 400 acres of cropland. The best thing about Niman Ranch is how transparent they are.
Without farmland to grow crops or ranchland for livestock, we don’t eat. The ATF predicts that more than 300 million acres of farmland and ranch land could change ownership within the next two decades, with some of it transitioning out of agriculture use permanently. Conserving farmland underpins a stable local food supply.
Mickey Steward has worked hard to rehabilitate her ranch. You can’t buy a good ranch,” Steward jokes. You have to buy a ranch that, for whatever reason, has gotten rundown.” Steward runs Red Angus cattle on about 1,000 acres of land over the Crow Reservation in Montana, right at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains.
Colorado’s semi-arid climate can be unpredictable, presenting challenges for ranchers and livestock producers. PRF insurance is available for haying and grazing, and you can insure part or all your acres. Contact your local insurance agent today to learn how PRF insurance can benefit your ranch. What is PRF Insurance?
Brisa Ranch went through their first 3rd Party Audit in 2020 because they participated in the USDA’s Farm to Food Box Program (a COVID-19 response program) and needed the certification to sell to the program. Crops, livestock, and other essential farm (and community) resources often need to be carefully tended to during evacuations.
Monitor Livestock: Many ranches utilize livestock RFID tags to track their herd movements and easily scan and understand their health and wellness. The Precision Farmer Case Study One inspiring case is a midwestern farmer who adopted drone technology and IoT sensors across their 500-acre corn farm.
Recognizing the vital role that four-legged friends often play on family farms and ranches, Farm Bureau launched the Farm Dog of the Year contest several years ago now a popular feature of the American Farm Bureau Federations Convention.
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.
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
The certification, funded by the Rodale Institute, Patagonia and Dr Bronner’s, insists on five practices to improve soil health: integrating livestock, keeping the soil covered, minimizing soil disturbance, incorporating diversity and zero chemicals, as well as a soil test every three years. Photography courtesy of Cabriejo Ranch.
After creating a plant-based meat alternative that caught the attention of the entire food system, Brown is now trying to figure out the best way to repurpose land once used by cattle and other livestock. The episode takes viewers inside what Brown calls the Carbon Ranchand Ill leave it at that. No spoilers! You can watch it for free HERE.
In 2019, they connected with Niman Ranch, which is a network of more than 600 small and mid-size farmers and ranchers across the United States. Niman Ranch offers a guaranteed market for its farmers’ and ranchers’ products in exchange for a high standard of practices. Right now, Steven and Alaina both work off-farm jobs.
Furthermore, new and beginning producers , defined as farmers and ranchers who have operated a farm or ranch for not more than 10 consecutive years, increased in both the number of producers and the share of all producers. million farms and ranches across the U.S. – farms and ranches produced $543.1 million acres to 196.5
Whenever you introduce a disruption, make certain to be highly observant and to observe how the disruption is impacting the soil, the plants, and the livestock. It is crucial that you understand how to estimate forage DM availability per acre so you can build appropriately sized paddocks. Well, a lot. Timing of impact.
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.
Maintaining and building fences is a yearly job on every ranch, costing at least $20,000 per mile. Once these fence posts are hammered into the ground, ranchers battle trees, wind and damage from livestock knocking them over. The livestock impact is what most fields have been lacking for the last 75 years.”
Alfalfa hay, the nutrient-rich backbone of the dairy, beef and horse industries in the West, produces more protein per acre than any other field crop. Al Noorda of Cedar Fort, Utah started using fodder for his grass-fed beef cattle and horses in 2014, following years of drought at his mixed-use ranch.
We should feed the soil more like we feed ourselves and our livestock. Living ground cover is especially critical on acres receiving manure from confinement operations. Critics of this approach will likely argue that it would require too much labor and take too many acres to grow cover crop seed. These are features, not bugs.
But Sonoma has a less genteel side: The area is also home to approximately 3 million head of livestock held in concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. In November, county residents will have the unique opportunity to ban CAFOs with a ballot initiative that would completely prohibit industrial livestock operations.
acres of corn and 10 acres of hay to feed them. Winter is underway, and people, land, and livestock are still struggling to recover, but I am impressed with the outpouring of assistance and volunteers who are still trying to get lives back to normal. Gene has a small beef farm with 15 cow/calf pairs and raises 1.5
billion in emergency relief payments to eligible farmers and livestock producers. These much-needed payments are helping farming and ranching operations recover following natural disasters in 2020, 2021 and 2022. FSA is closing out the Emergency Livestock Relief Program (ELRP) for losses suffered in 2021.
Finding adequate, affordable health insurance can be a huge challenge for people who run small, family farms or ranches, said Alana Knudson, director of the NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis. Texas leads the nation in the number of farms and ranches, with 248,416 , and has the highest rate of uninsured residents, at about 18%.
A project let by TH Cattle Company is quantifying the soil and biomass impacts of climate-smart ranching practices and rewarding livestock producers through premiums for added-value beef. Over 5,000 acres of ranchland are participating by implementing climate-smart grazing practices that will enable access to these markets.
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. The more dairies, the more farmer “eyes per acre,” Baird says, referencing Wendell Berry.
I just returned from one of my favorite events, the Niman Ranch Hog Farmer Appreciation Celebration in Des Moines, Iowa, at which Food Tank is honored to co-host an Educational Summit. I have been fortunate to call Niman Ranch Founding Hog Farmer Paul Willis a friend for many years, and I still get emotional at this event.
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