The EU Farm to Fork Strategy to assimilate us!!!

[AlbertaFarmer5]

While nothing is completely sustainable, I do question our current methods. I’m not against them, I just don’t see it as even close to sustainable. I don’t see organic as sustainable either.

My main worry honestly is the emptying landscape in farm country, because of the cookie cutter idea in agriculture to do it all the same. The system we have in place is not working. If it were, farmers wouldn’t be dropping like flies...

I have read and watched the likes of gabe brown, there are many gabes out there. I was even doing some gabe brown stuff before I knew about him! Lol.

I do believe that livestock are the key, or at least a huge part of the key in true sustainability. But I also believe most farmers are not into livestock for many reasons... I don’t like the idea of forcing things upon us.

One of the reasons to not be into livestock in modern times, is the very real threat of legislation restricting, taxing or even outright banning your business.
Right now in Colorado they are attempting a ballot which it essentially make raising animals for meat impossible.
http://www.steerplanet.com/bb/the-big-show/proposed-colorado-livestock-legislation/ http://www.steerplanet.com/bb/the-big-show/proposed-colorado-livestock-legislation/

Plus:
Methane taxes.
Worker safety regulations. Can you imagine having to meet oilfield level safety requirements on a ranch calving cows?
The occupy type movements are breaking into livestock farms and causing destruction, the law seems to be on their side.
Entire generations of school kids are growing up thinking that animal farming is causing environmental destruction, are they future consumers, or future activists against us?

[jazz]

The pandemic may have given the powers that be their great reset push, but farmers have a chance at one as well in the next couple yrs. Everybody better use these commodity prices to set themselves up for the future. Kill debt, get an alternative income going because our profit margins are about to be squeezed big time.

I think its stupid to try and chase high land values to expand thinking you are going to keep doing business the same in the future. The oil industry tried that a decade ago and got slapped down pretty hard when reality set in.

This article talks a lot about the future of ag under low carbon future;

https://www.newsoptimist.ca/news/energy-transition-leading-to-small-modular-reactors-part-1-1.24291767
https://www.newsoptimist.ca/news/energy-transition-leading-to-small-modular-reactors-part-2-1.24292328

[chuckChuck]

Livestock will be part of our food system well into the future.

But can we allocate resources better to manage crop lands and become more efficient in resource use?

Do we really need to pile 100,000s of animals into feed lots, pump them full of antibiotics, and then wonder what to do with all that manure that ends up in the rivers? Maybe it makes more sense to keep those animals as part of the cropping system as long as possible, where their manure can be put to good use.

Gabe Brown and many other farmers have done this and reduced their input costs and maintained productivity and profitability just with a change in thinking and management. He still uses fertilizers and pesticides when needed.

Do you really think that we can continue to feed a large population for ever while depleting non renewable resources and degrading the environment?

[LEP]

Livestock will be part of our food system well into the future.

But can we allocate resources better to manage crop lands and become more efficient in resource use?

Do we really need to pile 100,000s of animals into feed lots, pump them full of antibiotics, and then wonder what to do with all that manure that ends up in the rivers? Maybe it makes more sense to keep those animals as part of the cropping system as long as possible, where their manure can be put to good use.

Gabe Brown and many other farmers have done this and reduced their input costs and maintained productivity and profitability just with a change in thinking and management. He still uses fertilizers and pesticides when needed.

Do you really think that we can continue to feed a large population for ever while depleting non renewable resources and degrading the environment?

Do you really think that grain farmers will add cattle to their operation in areas like Rosetown or Regina where it would take seeding good farmland to grass to maintain them?

[jazz]

gezus chuck, do you have any idea that farmers used to farm like this gabe brown guy at one time? Couple sections of land, forages, manure, mixed livestock, open range, natural habitat, very few drugs etc

And what did the world do to that model? Well they squeezed it into non profitability so farmers had to put more cows in smaller spaces, feed them growth hormone to get a few extra gains and then crank up the antibiotics to keep it all in check. And now you are telling us the world needs to go back to that? After hundreds of thousands of families were chased off the land. Are you for real.

Anyway locking up cattle and giving them antibiotics sounds much like locking up humans and giving the vaccines.

[chuckChuck]

Gabe Brown's model wont work everywhere and on every farm and he never says it will. And the economics of livestock are not an incentive.

But farmers will have to figure out how to farm with less fossil fuel energy inputs and declining non-renewable resources like phosphorous.

So if you can predict how that will look in 25-50-100-200 years, good luck.

[shtferbrains]

I thought you were a farmer Chuck?
You sound like a bureaucrat that thinks you can add the equivalent of a sin tax on the commodities we produce and still supply export markets that require the lowest bid.

What are you planning on producing and who are you going to sell it to?

[furrowtickler]

Integrated animals are key to his system.

There are ways to achieve close to what he is doing without livestock, but for some it’s regarded as snake oils .
I like what wiseguy stated a while back , it was along the lines of foraging your own path . There are other ways to build soil health . DYODD .
Enjoy Easter Sunday , good weather ahead should give lots of time to get equipment ready . Our outdoor shop will be busy revamping the ole Bourgault for a few more years and hopefully many acres yet .
We have another project on the go , hopefully it works out to get 4 products out to the drill at seeding with one unit .
May end up as a make work project but we have the time to try .

[15444]

In Soviet Russia, crop tests you!

[TASFarms]

Do you really think that grain farmers will add cattle to their operation in areas like Rosetown or Regina where it would take seeding good farmland to grass to maintain them?

Do deer,geese,ravens,sparrows,blackbirds,seagulls,rab bits,antelope,moose,coyotes,mice count as livestock?

[Sheepwheat]

Do deer,geese,ravens,sparrows,blackbirds,seagulls,rab bits,antelope,moose,coyotes,mice count as livestock?

Only if you intensively graze them!