Corporate bribery?

[cakadu]

Horse there have been several of these types of things over the last few years so I'm not sure which one you are referring to. The actual AG Summit was started in 2000 and was an effort by the Agriculture and Food Council and Alberta Agriculture. There were several months of meetings with various stakeholders across the province i.e. biotechnology, rural development, free market access, sessions for processors etc. This was done between about January and June 2000, thereafter the action teams were put into place, of which there were 13 in total, with a couple of them being merged along the way because it was felt that they had many similarities.

One big conference was held - The Land Supports Us All in January 2002, which was a really good conference and the organizers deserve a lot of credit for an excellent overview of where we needed to go.

At the end of March 2002, the work of the action teams was completed and it was turned over to Agrivantage - an industry, Alberta Agriculture and Agriculture and Food Council group that then took all of the reports and went through them to sort them into categories and come up with suggestions on how to go into the future. Agrivantage wrapped up late 2004 and the Ag and Food Council team is now moving forward with some recommendations from the province. There is a team set up to deal with the future. Where that is at I'm not sure as there is to be something released but I don't know when.

Just after the AG Summit, there was the Growth Summit and the Rural Development Initiative and Research and Development Initiative. From the Growth Summit came the $20/$10 ($20 billion in raw products and $10 billion in value-added) by 2010, which is unlikely to be met now as it called for a 20% increase in beef production. Well, I guess in a way we have that, but there is no where for the beef to go, which was one question some of us kept asking even before there was a BSE crisis.

So the long and the short of it is I guess there were a number of initiatives and plans, many of which had to be put on the shelf because of the border closures.

Hope this helps.

[grassfarmer]

Getting back to the original topic it just frustrates me to see how much many farmers welcome the companies that are making it hard for us to survive into their businesses. We are all aware of the "running to stand still" we do with rising input costs and static or declining outputs yet the middlemen taking our profits are buying their way into everything. You can't pick up a mainstream farm magazine that isn't full of multi-page colour ads by the big wealth extracting corporations plus the articles in the magazines are totally biased to backing their advertisers products.
In the latest Stockman Grassfarmer mag there is an article about some tests run by a woman in the US where she was teaching some of her young cattle to eat selected weed species. By educating them to taste a variety of different feeds she got them to eat Canada Thistle, Leafy spurge and spotted knapweed. Realising that these weeds have a feed value similar to alfalfa this is a great breakthrough. It only takes a few animals in the herd to learn and they will teach the rest - replacement heifers are the obvious choice as you would presumably only have to teach one year and the calves would learn it from their mothers in future. This kind of research never makes it to mainstream beef papers because there is no money to be extracted from producers by using this system. We have got to learn, as an industry, to beware of the way we are being coninually fleeced by people who have no interest in helping our businesses or bottom lines.

[WoolyBear]

yes grassman we did go on a tangent. We put our ewes into a small pen while we were waiting for them to dry up after weaning. Not a whole lot of grass, but lots of nettles. They weren't too fussy about them until they got tired of the straw that we were trying to dry them up on. Some of them looked like they had some minor eye irritations, but after washing those eyes out they cleared up.

ANYWAY........ after a couple of days they decided that the nettles weren't tooo bad and as soon as the pasture was ready, out they went. A good portion of the them on their tour of the fenceline found an old scrubpile with nettles, and the whole group left the green grass, and spent enough time there to annialate the nettles........ Works for me.

We have also noticed that lambs seem to have a preference for dandilions. Not sure if its the color, or what. Too bad I didn't have the nerve to let the whole flock out on the front lawn this spring!

There are lots of ways to kill weeds, and it wouldn't hurt my feelings if I could spend less time and money on those chemicals.

[kpb]

Well grassfarmer if I have to start teaching my cattle how to eat I think I'll get into another line of work. And I must have just one heck of a bunch of stupid cows since about the only thing my cows seem to learn from one another is how to get out over or through a fence. Not to make light of your overall suggestion about getting the chemical companies out of our lives and lowering expenses which I think is a right and noble cause. But I gotta tell you it's going to be a frosty day before I starve my cows to the point that they feel bound to eat thistles to survive.

This cowboy ain't ever gonna do that so I guess I'm one of those guys who's spending too much money on his animals.

kpb

[kpb]

Linda,I agree with a lot of your comments on the Ag Summit process, I was invited by the Policy Secretariat of AAFRD to become involved in the Ag Summit. This happened after I requested the list of the 100 LEADERS in the Ag Industry that were invited to the original 'think tank' which was the precursor to the Ag Summit.
When I looked down the list of names there was not one from West Central AB., so I took pen in hand and sent off a letter inquiring as to how they intended to develop a vision and framework for the agricultural industry into the 21st century when one large area of the province was not represented.
I guess that the feeling was that they may as well ask me to become involved if I was going to spout off anyway.
I was on the LUCAT team and there were some wonderful folks there with a vast amount of knowledge on land use issues.
It was the Lucat Team that did some of the work for the Land Use Conference but the major amount of credit has to go to Harvey Buckley and Bob Anderson, without their efforts and contacts the conference would never have been the success it was.
I would hope that a follow up conference is going to happen, and certainly am willing to be involved in the planning if one is considered.

Land Use issues have become even more complex, and the lack of land use policies with some teeth to them is evident .
Water issues and land issues will have to take priority during the next few years.

Sorry grassfarmer, I guess this is a bit off your original topic.

[cakadu]

WoolyBear - I'll give you a tip on the nettles. Our sheep eat them every single year and if you really want to see them go crazy - let them in on pig weed. As far as the nettles go they seem to leave them to get to a certain height and then by the time they are done with them, there are merely little sticks left. We're not quite sure what the reason for leaving them is - maybe they like them better at the bud stage, I don't know.

They also really like Canada Thistle and did a fine job of taking the buds off before they could go to seed last year.

Sheep tend to like broad leaf species which is why you probably see them fancying the dandelions.

Dandelions do carry a great deal of calcium in them so they are wonderful for nursing mothers i.e. cows and ewes. I have no idea if this has any relevance and it would be kind of interesting to see what the correlation might be -- we have several bottle lambs and they are drinking less milk (and expensive milk replacer) because we are feeding them dandelions - as many of them as they want to eat and they are just gobbling them up. There is also grass in there, but they will pick the dandelions out long before they eat the grass. They get free choice barley as well as the grass/dandelions. This is the first time we have witnessed this, so I'm not sure if there is anything to it or not. On the upside, it's helping me to get out there and get rid of one pile of them.

Sheep make terrific companion grazers with cattle because they each prefer different species.

Intensively grazed animals tend to eat up everything because they are made to clean up in a pasture before being moved on. When animals are allowed access to all the pasture, they tend to selectively graze and eat the things that they like and leave what they don't like. Much like us if given a choice between carrot cake and brussel sprouts - we'll eat the one we like and leave the one we don't.

We all need to have convictions and I say "good on ya" to grassfarmer for walking the talk.

[cowman]

I find it very interesting that someone could train cows to eat spurge and knapweed? Why with a little bit of training we could double the cow herd in BC!
Hopefully we never have the problems BC has with knapweed.
The drought brought us a lot of new problems, in regards to weeds. The hay trucks brought in a lot of garbage. Even within the province?
Knowing where your hay comes from and what is in it, is important. If you get it from up north, that cheap hay might just prove to be very costly? If you brought it in from eastern Sask. or Manitoba it just might prove to be extremely costly! Fusarium gramminearum is here...yes even in central Alberta! It is well established in southern Alberta. The right conditions and BOOM...there goes the malt business! But then, if you don't raise any grain, then why worry? You don't owe the neighbor anything, right?
I will tell you all this: If you come up with knapweed, you won't be deciding how you control it...the government will! You might get some leeway with spurge but in the end you might be forced to use "the evil chemicals"!

[grassfarmer]

C'mon, kbp you get Stockman Grassfarmer - read the damn article! It is very clear that you do not teach them to eat the weeds by starving them. Once you have taught them to try new things they will eat the canada thistles which have the same feed value as alfalfa - where is the negative side to that? A few hours teaching some cattle to eat weeds which could result in a permanent weed eating solution on your farm versus spraying year after year - isn't it a no brainer which one to go for?
Actually it didn't really surprise me as I know the Luing cattle we have tend to eat a wider variety of forbs/ bush/ grass than the other cows do.
Their origin on an island where they have a wide selection of unusual seaside type plants has taught them to eat many different things. On one area of fenced riverbank I have I graze it lightly with a few purebreds because they are perfect riparian managers. They balance consumption of the shorter bluegrass and clover with slough grass, rushes, buckbrush and various others whereas my angus cows would graze out the bluegrass/clover selectively. This is a trait also found in Galloway and highland cattle. I notice quite often that neighbours cows of other breeds won't even eat sloughgrass.

[grassfarmer]

Hey Cowman what happened to the "Personally I always try to keep an open mind and I never miss an opportunity to see how the other guy does it." of yesterday? Seems it doesn't apply to any ideas I have - oh well each to his own.

[kpb]

Grassfarmer, you're right, I hadn't read the article, I'd stockpiled it until I had a bit of time. However I have now, this morning, dug it our and read it and it is interesting. However I do still have a couple of questions.

Firstly, these cattle were apparently trained to eat these weeds by someone going and picking the weeds, then mixing them and feeding them to the cows in dry lot until they got used to them. This does not seem practical to me, maybe because I'm also feeding lots of yearling calves at the same time. So maybe we're back to the old issue that you and I have discussed about getting a decent return from a small number versus a large number of animals.

Also I have found through bunk feeding animals that they will not eat anything that they do not like. That plant will be left at the bottom of the bunk. To make them eat weeds you would have to feed less of something nutritious which gets back to my statement about starving your cows to force them to eat something they would not normally eat. Starving is too harsh a word but certainly you would be depriving them. Any way you cut it, either in dry lot or on the range, if you're making a cow eat something it does not want to, you have to have less of something it does want to eat.

Grassfarmer, you have always come out on the side of nature, letting the cows calve on grass etc. Does it seem like working with nature to make an animal eat something that it would not naturally eat? Later in the article, the author points out that cows don't generally eat weeds because of their high nitrate content and points out that nitrates from thistle can accumulate and cause death. She says that molasses-based supplements can allow the animal to process these weeds without ill effect. Does this seem like a nature-based system? Also, are you really saving any money--molasses is expensive stuff.

My final point is this--I feed lots of animals every year in order to get a 7 to 10% return on the money I have invested in cows, land, machinery, etc. I'm not happy with a 2 or 3% return because I can get that at the bank with no risk. If I have to start fiddling around with 10 or 20 cows to teach them to eat something strange, then manage those cows to teach the rest of the herd, it is just not worth it. If I had 60 or 80 cows it might be but then I wouldn't be happy making just $30,000 or $40,000 a year when there's so much money tied up in the land.

I guess it looks to me like we're nickling and diming to try to make a decent living.

kpb

[farmers_son]

Grassfarmer: If you are successful in not buying into the chemical companies products and still maintain high levels of production then you will be further head.

I have seen biological weed control in action and it can be very impressive for a while but the weeds tend to win out and seed. Weeds may be succulent for part of the season but they appear to have natural protections that seem to discourage being eaten throughout the season.

When these sprays first came out they were really miracles. Now they are the products of the hated chemical companies sucking the life blood out of the struggling farmer. Which is the right view I do not know, guess it depends upon your perspective, but it would be nice to be able to do without chemicals if you are able.

One thought... if the cows will eat non traditional plants like weeds what keeps them from eating poisonous plants too?

[grassfarmer]

kbp, I think you are still slightly missing the most interesting part of the article - that is cows do not avoid eating say canada thistles because they are poor quality and hence something they don't like rather they don't normally eat them because they have never tried them. If we can modify our thinking and encourage them to try other plants we might both be better off.
I know the traditional thinking on thistles in the pasture - the pasture is bare apart from these big old thistles that the cows won't touch even in the fall when there is nothing else to eat. Challenge instead your mind to imagine cows on lush rotational pasture where lush thistles are plants that get sheared off just like any other. My cows actually do it already to an extent. The main benefit would be that the thistles would not get to dominate the pasture as they do in poorly managed pasture situations.
I think the nitrate deal was a worst case scenario - I assume that unlike in grain crop scenarios with heavy N applications the N levels in most pasture situations won't make for problems.
I know you run larger numbers than me butlike a lot of these non traditional ideas I it is a size neutral program. If you trained 20 heifers in your herd and I trained 6 in mine we would both have the same job to do every day - but you would have a 400 cow herd that ate weeds whereas I have a 130 cow herd. In fact there would be more benefit to you than to me.