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Cattlemen throughout the nation are under increasing scrutiny for land use and conservation measures to stabilize soils and preserve water quality. Kentucky cattleman Jon Bednarski, at Sherwood Acres in Oldham County, is ahead of the curve in those efforts.
Conservation practices
The concept of land conservation sounds good; it’s the practice that’s difficult. If you have a waterway running through your cattle pasture, for example, conservation becomes much more than a theoretical, feel-good concept; it requires fencing, tree buffer zones or excavated and reinforced access points. It absolutely requires labor, sweat and time.
The leaky bucket theory, as it relates to dairies, would suggest there are always losses in an operation, so production should forever increase to compensate for the losses (to keep the bucket from running dry).
Non-farming landlords, according to a recently released 2014 survey, own 80 percent of U.S. rented farmland. The report states, “In 2014, all of the landlords combined received $31.2 billion in rental income while incurring $9.2 billion in total expenses.”
A few weeks ago, an Ohio producer commented that this was a year like no other. He lamented that he finally took his first cutting of alfalfa July 4 and his second growth, after 30 days, was only 6 inches high and discolored.
As Ellen Langer points out in her book The Power of Mindful Learning, one plus one does not always equal two; it depends on the context. While one plus one equals two in the base-10 number system, if the context changes, it may not hold true.
Peter Thiel, billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, says if there is one issue that is an absolute must for successful business, it’s to solve a problem that nobody else is solving (Forbes, October 2014).
A popular sports mantra today is “go big or go home.” There aren’t a lot of crossovers between sports and forage harvesting, however, so feel free to throw this macho mantra in the ditch where it belongs.
A wet spring delayed first-cut haying in many areas of the country, and in many areas, farmers report they haven’t been able to catch up, many saying they’re still waiting to get the second cutting put up.
