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In the following discussion, I would like to share some thoughts on how to add net profit into a grazing operation, as well as share my own experiences reducing hay inputs with the grass-finished beef herd that roams across our northern Michigan family farm. Each year provides new opportunities to incorporate more regenerative practices.
For the past 40 years, our farm was in a hay, pasture and cereal grain rotation. Local practices included moldboard plowing to reseed perennial hay fields and as part of the plowing procedure, it is common to place drainage furrows with a plow on 30-60-feet centers. At first, I thought this was what I needed to do.
For example, it can assist in monitoring crops, optimizing irrigation, and even predicting weather patterns to make farming more efficient and productive. This collaboration resulted in tractors that could guide themselves with accuracy down to a few inches. But what some people don’t realize is that AI already is.
Farmers have been navigating the same farm lending company practices for more than a century. When the Federal Farm Loan Act was passed in 1916, it gave farmers access to desperately needed capital. But since then, farm lending companies have remained stuck in the past and seen little change. had reached an all-time high of 6.8
While ag tech might conjure images of robots and satellite-driven tractorsplowing vast acreages, some innovators are focusing their ingenuity on the needs of smaller-scale farmers. For those on a smaller-scale, this smaller-scale mode of transportation will offer a quick, easy and affordable way to get around the farm.
One of the things that I have a love/hate relationship with on the farm is time. But on a farm of our scale and crop mix, time is the main limiting factor! When you think of farming, likely tractors and planting and weeding pop into your brain. Note Beulah’s careful supervision of the plow.
The Rodale Institute , a nonprofit research institution for organic farming, cites that every acre of land farmed with plastic mulch creates upwards of 120 pounds of waste that typically end up in landfill, or otherwise break down into the soil or nearby watersheds. However, no biodegradable films meet the NOP’s minimum threshold.
This [farm] has been in my family for over 125 years, she said. So its all on me, and its my family farm. Keeping her farm well-managed is a responsibility she doesnt take lightly. I do everything from banking to planting to spraying, everything. Im very proud of that. Shes been more or less a one-woman show since.
In case of agriculture machines such as tractors, electrification presents some unique challenges. Energy consumption The first challenge is that the use case of tractors is incredibly energy-intensive. For the most part, the purpose of a tractor is to drag machinery through a field.
These days, farming is a lot more than just plowing the field and planting seeds. Farming also includes marketing your goods, managing finances and employees, keeping up with technology —and that's just the beginning. But there are still ways for young people to get into farming if they're willing to do their homework first!
Adding a heavy dose of irony to the overall complexity of getting more acres farmed regeneratively is the fact that in some growing regions, this effort is being undermined by yet another critical climate solution: solar power. The challenges to farming, period—let alone transitioning to regenerative—can be high. It sounds easy.
of farm household members had no health insurance, higher than the 9.1% 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. So she quit to help on the farm. And they’re not alone.
Its not overly reductive to say it boils down to a half century of intentional federal farm policy. farms in the upper Midwest underwent an industrial revolution. Diesel-powered tractors replaced horse-powered plows, and synthetic nitrogen fertilizers replaced their manure. Why all the love for just two crops?
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