Changing of the farming landscape in this area 2012

[SADIE]

This is what appears to be happening in our area. The Outlook Irrigation area 60 miles south of Saskatoon.

1)What used to be abundant hay production under irrigation---This has all disappeared. All Canola with Cereal rotation.

2)A drive yesterday through Rosetown to Biggar for parts---A good 1.5 hour drive. What used to be mixed farming Cattle operations & Grain now you can count the cattle operations on one hand.

3)Got and have read the Western Producer for years. Under Classified column Hay & Straw sales. Used to be a long list this time of year. Short list.

4)Former quarters that had hay or cultivated (Seeded to grass)--now in cultivation --canola or cereal. One parcel now has LANE REALITY POSTED with a huge price tag.

5)Announcement on radio about a "HAY EAST PROGRAM"--to send surplus hay back to Ontario---a reverse of the 2002 hay West Program. There is 0 hay in this area to accumulate and send.

6)PFRA call yesterday giving me my October 2012 take out date. Already some long standing patrons have notified that their cow-herd is going this fall after take out.

The areas I am speaking of is the towns and countryside 60 miles radius of the city of Saskatoon. The major small towns all have/had long standing veterinary clinics. What used to be clinics set up for rural practices--taking care of the farmer clients first with cow-calf, horse, swine herd health, farm chickens, and lastly the pet side of practice. Today if the clinic is not closed or close to closing it is now 80% pet, 0 chicken, 0 pigs, some diary in one area, occasional horse and very few cow-calf clientelle.

This is the harvest of 2012. The crop prices if you have binned product appear to be super market prices. Disease, wind, hail has took its toll on some crops in this area. With the great harvest weather--crops should all come off with good grade.

What will happen when the prairies have a year of "HIGH FEED GRAIN" production. Early Frost, sprouted grain, frozen grain like history has shown. Without pig barns, feedlots or stock to feed this to.

Just interesting thoughts of what is happening and how I see things in this area.

7)The Sask Veterinary Medical Fall Conference is this week in Saskatoon. I will take in a day of CE hours and mingle with colleagues---just to see and hear what is really happening from their perspective throughout this province.

[DogPatch]

There is a lot of things going on out there that are neither sustainable, nor driven by common sense. There is land out there that is much better off for with cattle in the mix, and there is other parts of Saskatchewan that should and could never be cropped. The powers to be (governments) drove the cattle production out of MB, and SK by their inaction about BSE. Too many producers were forced off because of them.

Their model of Big Pork drove many producers off.......... and now we are going to bail out the Corporate CEO of Big Pork. There will be a day of reckoning soon.

Yes...... what will eat the sprouted feed grains if this keeps going?

[smcgrath76]

Canola and wheat around here. There are a
lot of herds disappearing and the rest
appear to be getting bigger, or planning
an exit.

[ASRG]

Went to Great falls this weekend. Lots of hay trucks going south.
It was pretty dry in Montana and southern Alberta. Lots of combines going all the way with lots of grain piles in the fields. Bins probably all full?
Drove by a few big feedlots near Lethbridge. They seemed fairly empty.
I know in my area of central Alberta there are not very many cow herds left and almost no hog barns.
I think our local vets mainly do horses and pets. There are a lot of horses around....probably more horses than cows!
It looks like about an average harvest east of Red Deer.

[ALLFARMER]

Well with the drought induced selling in the USA
combined with a small herd here......huge calf
prices in a year!

[gaucho]

Just remember that you need a certain number of cattle to keep two big plants in the west going... if one says uncle you can be rest assured that they'll figure out how to widen the basis and discount your cattle compared to the US / Global market

[perfecho]

Although not as drastic, has this not been the cycle for years....grain prices go up, farmers sell off cattle, as cattle prices go up and grain goes down, people get back in.?
However, with capital costs, financing availability, age of producers, it does make you wonder what is in store.
Just as the hog industry seems decimated, could that happen to cattle....it wasn’t that long ago, many farms had a few around for cash flow and to make use of lesser quality feed.
My long term thoughts are as the world economy becomes shakier, perhaps more farms will start with a few cows/hogs/chickens….just for survival…….

[smcgrath76]

gaucho - I have been thinking that there
will be a point in the not too distant
future where that argument will be held
out and leveraged for public funding for
"efficiencies" or plant scalability, or
some such.

I think land prices generally are moving
past the cow/calf side of things unless
people are willing to really improve
their grazing and get a lot more
production from the same land. That is
part of the problem in competing with
grain, as the grain sector will adopt
technologies to improve yield/marketing
and generate more gross $ per acre (note
that I did not say more profit). Cattle
are still generally run on a pretty
extensive systems such as the "Ron
Popeil - set it and forget it" grazing
system. There is opportunity to garner
a lot more $ from the same acres of
grassland and that may have the best
potential for expansion of the cowherd
in Canada.

[gaucho]

I agree to many of the points however once you loose the infrastructure its a long time bringing it back and as most of the experiments of building plants in the past 10 years proved it is an almost impossible strategy. I know what our strategy is - grow the ranch and the brand but we are peanuts in the Big picture. The combinations of sexy technology an April /August / Arizona work year and older producers that want out of cattle and young ones that don't want or can't tells me we have gone past the point of no return and even a downward grain market will not bring them back to cattle. Grazing management systems have been being preached now for 20 years and as Shaun rightly says most are still doing the "discovery grazing system"....discovering the cows when they have nothing left to graze. Ranching can and is profitable if you are open to breaking from tradition but most like being part of the herd.

[kato]

It's much the same here as in Sadie's neighbourhood. Manitoba was supposed to become the pork producing mecca of the world, according to past provincial government promotions, but boy, did that blow up. Now they're shooting them, and barns are shutting down left and right.

Cattle numbers are way down, but unlike cycles of the past, it's not looking like they will come up again. Those who are selling are not planning on replacing them again. We're all getting older, and BSE pretty much cost this country an entire generation of potential cattle producers. The knowledge is being lost, and the skills are being lost. Once gone, they're hard to redevelop.

I'm concerned about that day when we hit the critical mass where one of the two plants starts to make noise about supply. It's bad enough only having two big plants, but life with one will be radically different. I suspect smaller more local options will develop, but there will be a period of adjustment that's going to cost a lot more cattle numbers (and producers) before it restarts.

What my rant of the day is really about though is the anti-livestock bias that seems to be everywhere.

In the spring, we watch our grain growing neighbours tearing up and down the roads with chemicals and fertilizer, like there's no tomorrow. They spray before seeding, after seeding, during growing for fungus and disease, then another shot of roundup so they can combine it. It's like it's impossible to grow a crop without chemicals. Then they take it off with combines and tractors that use as much fuel in a day as we use in a year. And haul it long distances with their own semi's, pounding out the highways at the same time, to get to market.

But God forbid a cow should drop a pie out in the pasture, while she happily grazes land that would qualify as organic under any standards, because CATTLE ARE A DANGER TO THE ENVIRONMENT.

It's just ridiculous.

[gaucho]

Kato... very very well put...especially the last part... same story around her - chemical agriculture

[smcgrath76]

It is not "chemical agriculture" it is
agriculture of dependency and that is
the driving reason behind its' promotion
and apparent success. It is hard to be
independent when you have signed a
property rights agreement with Company X
for seed, and are locked into a system
of inputs from Company Y to get a crop,
all the while serving a contract with
Company Z, which are all owned in part
by Companies A, B and C.
Independence and low input/high return
agriculture is not in the interest of
the folks who don't get dirt under their
nails.

[ALLFARMER]

I dont share the fear of losing a large plant.

If one plant closes and they cut back on what their
paying the herd sell off continues.

Nobody will work for free anymore. Too much
invested to not make money at it.

[Mufferaw]

From my own prespective I am looking at increasing the number of cows to increase my quality of life. Currently I have 90 cows, 500 seeded acreas and work full time through the winter. Subsequently being pulled in 3 directions isn't good for more or my family.

Focusing on one reduces my stress and increases my family time. The way I look at it cattle are no more time in a year than running a grain operation - time is distributed differently.

Typically you kill 3 weeks seeding, 3 weeks at harvest, and couple of weeks spraying etc... 16 hour days = 620 hours/year. I spend roughly 10-12 hours/week with the cattle which is roughly the same number of hours per year. Big difference is how the hours are spread throughout the year. However I still take a week of vacation in the summer and winter - you just need to do a little planning for it.

My daily get moved daily in the summer and 1- weeks in the winter. All my portable fencing for sub-dividing paddocks gets set up on the week and winter feeding gets set up in October (corn, bale grazing). On a average day involves me rolling back some wire and letting the cows walk through.

If there is 90 or 180 cows walking through not much difference. The only time the 180 cows are more work is at processing or vaccinating or chasing them out of your neighbours field.

Fundamental reasons why cattle are a better fit. I don't have prime ag land, fit my schedule better, lower financial risk, and I have experience with them.

How many of you guys run sheep with cattle? Multi-species grazing shows environmental benefits and sheep are one of the few industries where demand out strips supply - therefore profitable. Very few people can be bothered because it's more work. Same arguement holds to why grain producers don't want cattle.

[greybeard]

Same story here in NE Sask. Anything that will grow a crop is going back o grain.
Grain is going through a technology and productivity evolution that we haven't seen since horses pulled plows. One man can seed 5000 acre by himself. Livestock can't compete for those acres.
Livestock go to the cheap feed or areas that are to risky to farm. Neither of those exist here and the livestock infrastructure is collapsing. You can't even buy ear tags within an hours drive.
If the market needs cattle from this type of area it will have to pay a lot more for them and it will take more than a short price spike.
Some say hobby outfits, both big and small supply the bulk of the cattle.