graze-l January 2006: [SPAM] - Re: [Graze-l] [SPAM] -
Re:Winter Grazing - Found word(s) home based money farm in the Text body -
Email found in subject
Thank you FW for your excellent summary of what is a very sad story.
I started promoting controlled grazing in North America in 1979 when there
were only a handful of dairy farmers in USA doing controlled grazing as it
should be done. I was marketing vice-president for Gallagher high power
fencing and spoke with slides at dozens of seminars aross North America
every year for a decade. FW I think you might have been the very big guy at
my first one in Ohio.
In 1980 I predicted that in 20 years controlled grazing would be popular in
the US areas where it could be done, but that has not happened.
Changing has not been easy. Some had to go 500 miles to buy decent size
water drinking troughs, so we sent stacking plastic ones to US. Some had to
get builders from New Zealand to build herringbone and rotary parlors.
Other things we took for granted here were not available so I encouraged
exports. The Stockman Grass Farmer magazine advertises lots of New Zealand
made gear and some have been copied which is good because shipping, even
from west to east is expensive and more than the cost of getting it from
here to LA.
In the beginning most universities were a hindrance, but some have changed.
When giving a slide show at Cornell University in about 1982 two
�scientists?� walked out say that what we did in New Zealand didn�t apply in
USA. In about 1995 Cornell wrote, �If US farmers did what New Zealand ones
did they�d be a lot better off.�
Subsidies have held back initiative like they have in Europe.
The Amish have done a good job and continue to spread - without subsidies.
Too many US farmers have complained that they should not have to expand like
we do in New Zealand. The average herd size here in 1955 was 60. Now it is
300 - many herds of that size milked by one person with contractors doing
the bigger machinery jobs such as fertiliser spreading, hay and silage
making, etc.
At the same time I�ll bet that US farmers buy from the Walmarts, not from
the corner store - if any are left.
Banks have not favoured pasture farming because their application sheet
figures expected budgets to have large sums for grain, etc.
The statement that �grazing is low input, but when you add in the land cost
it too is highly capital intensive.�
BUT no where near as having the land AND buildings, machinery and silos.
Subsidies increase the price of land which makes it harder for young farmers
to buy a farm. The result is that the average age of farmers in subsidised
countries is getting higher.
Subsidies are sometimes made to keep the small farmer on the land which is a
good idea, but the large ones get thousands of dollars while the small ones
get very little. One UK one gets US$600,000 annually. Over the years he and
some others bought all the neighbouring land they could. Some are now coming
to New Zealand and buying land in the South Island (increasing our land
prices), cutting down all the trees and sowing grain - with no subsidies
here.
RE PRICES
Farmers should control their products until sold to the consumer. More and
more small farmers in US are doing so by selling direct. The demand for
organic and FW�s well decribed �locally� produced food is growing.
GOING BROKE
Two cousins were dairying in US Pacific north west (climate a bit like SOME
of New Zealand�s - our rainfall varies from 12 inches to 100 pa). One went
the grazing way with 70 cows and had me vists his farm twice, while the
other with more cows stuck with confinement and criticised his cousin for
�going backwards�. He had excellent looking buildings, surrounding and
machinery. He went broke and had to sell up. As I suggested the grazing one
is leasing land and milking 500 grazed cows in a rotary and expanding
rapidly.
Change has always been slow. The British medical profession would not accept
Captain Cook�s rediscovery in 1752 that vitamin C in citrus prevented
scurvy, so British Navy sailors were still dying at sea fifty years after
Cook had conquered scurvy. I say �rediscovery� because an English adventurer
James Lancaster discovered it in 1591 and took bottles of lemon juice and
gave each sailor three spoonfuls each morning. It was then lost for 161
years.
Closer to home it took NZ Ruakura Animal Research Centre seven years to
acknowledge that zinc recommended by Waikato farmer Gladys Reid prevented
facial eczema. Her discovery saved untold animal suffering and saves animal
farmers a million dollars a year. Ruakura may not have ever found the zinc
solution because they were looking the scientific way, not the simple way.
They had been looking for about 30 years at tax payers expense with no
practical solution.
Vaughan Jones
Hamilton
New Zealand
