If you’ve ever put together a jigsaw puzzle, you know that once you get started joining a few pieces together and begin to get a glimpse of the total picture, it motivates you to keep working on the project.

If someone gave you $1 million to test new ideas on your farm or ranch, what would you develop with it? That’s the question Dwayne Beck and board members and staff of the Dakota Lakes Research Farm near Pierre, South Dakota, pondered earlier this year when the nonprofit received a $1 million unrestricted grant from the Howard G. Buffet Foundation.

There’s a saying that the only thing constant in life is change – and during the last 10 years in the beef industry, the rate of change has seemed to accelerate. The continuing evolution of change is guaranteed for the future. How are you preparing for it?

“I’ve never seen so many Bentley cars at one stoplight as I have in China.” That observation by Tom Seitz characterizes the burgeoning economic growth currently unfolding in China.

Every four seconds, someone in the world dies of hunger-related causes. It was that statistic from the United Nations that grabbed 17-year-old student Kiera Leddy’s attention. When she did the math, she realized that means more than 21,000 people die on the planet every day from a lack of food.

With this year’s historic drought and skyrocketing hay prices, many livestock producers have expressed interest in grazing cornstalks after harvest.

“It’s a way of solving your problems and managing your workload.” That’s how Belle Fourche, South Dakota, rancher Chance Davis describes his “no excuses” approach to the breeding season – and his culling of cows and heifers that do not fit his reproductive standards.

Seeing a family business successfully transfer from one generation to the next is a goal of many that is, unfortunately, achieved by only a few.

When most people think about cow-calf operations, they visualize wide open spaces, green grass, horse and rider and a beautiful environment.