Edmonton farm show pen of 10 sale

[grassfarmer]

Sean, can you say "Triffid flax".
How much has the average rancher lost due to the
ecoli closure of the XL plant anyway? Hasn't got me a
cent as far as I know.

[grassfarmer]

hasn't COST me a cent.

[smcgrath76]

GF - probably a bad example. What I was
basically trying to point out is that
many producers would rather take the
risk they know - weather, grain markets,
etc. rather than the risk they infer
such as BSE and are unsure how to deal
with.
On each such side there are winners and
losers. I know our neighbours who are
in a position to store several thousand
bushels of canola and wait will do very
well in this market. Probably the other
issue with high priced land is that
cattle may not cash flow as well. Even
28 bushel canola at $14 is $62720 of
cash flow on a quarter. Most grazing
management (or lack thereof) hasn't
evolved to that level (even on really
expensive ground).

[grassfarmer]

Once you take the average canola production cost of
$51,360 off the figure you are left with isn't so
different to the potential of grass.

[smcgrath76]

I agree with that 100% GF. In fact I
would likely argue that it is lower in
many years than the potential of well
managed grass, and that grass/cows has
less inherent risk. Another challenge
is that there is quite a bit of skill
required to run larger cow numbers and
many may not feel comfortable doing so.
By the time they add infrastructure to
do it, the margins are pretty low.
Adding a 1/4 section of grain may
require less overall effort in many
business models.

[grassfarmer]

How about managed, unfertilized tame pasture used
for fattening our grass-fed beef? Lets use a very
conservative 60AUDs per acre harvested - leading to
gains of over 2/lb per day. That gives us production
on a carcass basis of 1/lb a day sold at $2.20/lb (our
net price after processing, delivery etc) =$132/acre
or $21,120 per quarter.
At 80 AUDs per acre that jumps to $28,160 per
quarter.
I sure won't be growing canola any time soon.