Spring time on the Farm: we tag our calves but only for our own records. 

Shannon Hayes just wrote a stirring op-ed  in the New York Times about how the proposed National Animal Identification System would devastate small farmers, and especially grass-fed producers. Shannon Hayes has become an eloquent advocate for grass-fed farming and the health benefits of grass-fed beef.  She is the daughter of an agricultural professor and farmer and has moved back with her husband and has started a family on the family farm all the while maintaining a writing career.   I am a great admirer of her work and all that she has to say about grass-fed farming.

In her op-ed she explains why a federally mandated identification system would be devastating for her family’s farm:  “These ID chips are estimated to cost $1.50 to $3 each, depending on the quantity purchased. A rudimentary machine to read the tags may be $100 to $200. It is expected that most reporting would have to be done online (requiring monthly Internet fees), then there would be the fee for the database subscription; together that would cost about $500 to $1,000 (conservatively) per year per premise. I estimate the combined cost for our farm at $10,000 annually — that’s 10 percent of our gross receipts.” 

I think the same would happen for my family’s farm. I shudder to think of all the time and headache the identification system would represent to us. Not only would it hurt small farms but it would benefit factory farms making their product more valuable and to make matters worse, feedlots would be given an exception because they can catalog a thousand animals as one unit. The horrible irony of the whole system is that foreign buyers do not only object to the fact that “downer” cows might be used for exported beef but the manner in which we produce our meat. Foreign buyers are as suspicious of big beef producers as we are. It is not an identification system that we need it is a new system.

I feel very deeply for the family run cow and calf operations that are being hurt by a decrease in exports. It has been devastating but an identification system would only exacerbate their plight because it would give big agribusiness and feedlots the upper hand.  It would make small producers like my family waste money and time when the way we raise our animals---on pasture---in a manner that is safe.   The beef industry has been successful in pitting small ranchers against the sustainable movement. I feel that there needs to be more cooperation between grass-fed producers and traditional family ranchers that are trying to hang on. I think our interests are shared.

 Please Check it out Shannon Hayes Op Ed here.

To voice your objections please visit this site:

http://www.nofamass.org/news/naisalert.php

 More on REAL food safety here! 

When we talk of conservation on the High Plains we are not just talking about using water wisely.  Conservation comes in many forms.  As the Great Dust Bowl wore on, conservation became a necessary means to returning any sort of economic or ecological activity to the High Plains.  The soil had been plowed in such a way that made the grasslands uninhabitable; it caused deaths and even heartbreak over lost land.  

When the miles-high dust storms created a crisis of epic proportions, Hugh Bennett, known as the father of soil conservation, stepped in.  Bennett was responsible for putting a large part of our country literally back together.

For Hugh Bennett, conservation and efficiency were not at odds.  He grew up on a plantation owned by his father in North Carolina where he witnessed what would now be considered conservation practices; on the plantation they were considered efficiency practices.  One of those practices was terracing, which was designed to keep the soil from flying away.

In 1933 Bennett was appointed head of the newly formed Soil Erosion Service, an agency supported by the CCC and the Dept. of the Interior.  Bennett carried out over 40 demonstration projects to help famers learn soil conservation and restoration practices.  The CCC carried out much of the work at the demonstration sites, planting trees, building erosion control structures, and planting cover crops.  In 1935, when the dust storms had become severe and devastating, Bennett convinced Congress to create the Soil Conservation Service.  

Still, after two years, not enough farmers were cooperating to make the conservation projects effective.  So to further enable cooperation on a local level, Bennett initiated the Soil Conservation Districts, which organized farmers and ranchers into local districts.   The CCC arranged meetings between neighboring farmers and ranchers, to teach them how to manage and plant their land in a way that could prevent more wind erosion.  They were meant to consider their land management collectively, not individually.  Bennett knew that if even one farmer or rancher in a district were not applying the conservation methods, then all the efforts would go back dust.

Today, over seventy-five years later, there are still hundreds of good people working together in Conservation Districts. Many ranchers and farmers are working to restore their piece of the Great Plains to make it ecologically healthy, and economically sustainable.  Although ranching is far from profitable for most ranchers, many take on the task of restoration on with a sense of duty to the landscape, working within the bounds of the ecosystem to prevent another Dust Bowl.  

above photos:

CCC workers planting willow sprouts, ca. 1935, Central Plains, courtesy of the National Archives

CCC Enrollees building fences to control grazing at camp SCS-Ida-10, Weiser, Idaho, courtesy of the National Archives