Questions to cattle guys on here....

[helmsdale]

$8 might not be far off for feed. I'm delivering $8.16 contracted in january for m/j/j, and they're damn happy to be getting it as I'm hearing $9+ picked up.

If I had any height whatsoever I might seriously consider wrapping it up, but there's no way a baler is going to be able to pick up stuff that's just past my ankle when it's standing.

Nearly 6" of in season rain here, and a significantly above average snow pack to grow less than 10bu/ac is quite a feat.

[Old Cowzilla]

Theres going to be lots of cleaning at the big elevators to bring up export weights. Wheat barley oats and pea screenings all make good feed call your local NOW TO GET ON A LIST. Cows are not as fussy as humans and are great a converting unedible human food.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

While I respect the impossible situation livestock farmers find themselves in, I'm puzzled by the suggestion that money is the solution.

How does more money chasing the same finite supply of feed help the livestock farmer? If anything it will further elevate the price of feed, and end up in the pockets of the hay or grain producers.

The saying about blood from a stone comes to mind.

If we have accepted that the mixed farm isn't coming back, then maybe the governments long term role in these situations is matching livestock and crop producers. To make the salvaged crops, the by-products, the off grade grain, the fall grazing, the sloughs and hills and coullees and bush available to livestock farmers under equitable terms, perhaps as a condition of crop insurance.

As some posters on this site have noted, as mixed farmers, they aren't in the same bind that a straight cattle farmer would be in, and the straight grain farmer with good crop insurance coverage has no motivation to salvage any value from insured crops, and even less incentive to diversify into livestock when their risks can be insured for far less work.

[bucket]

""""If we have accepted that the mixed farm isn't coming back, then maybe the governments long term role in these situations is matching livestock and crop producers. """"

Let me change that a little bit

If we have accepted Canada only needs one major airline maybe the government should combine westjet and air Canada instead of saying money will help the airline industry.

The money handed to air Canada went to shareholders...wage subsidies so employees could put food on table

Why not at least give cattle producers grocery money...

The cow calf guys are going to take a shitkicking

[Old Cowzilla]

Governments and crop ins. don't like mixed farms. They think we are always trying to get away with something and not just making the most efficient use of our land base.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Governments and crop ins. don't like mixed farms. They think we are always trying to get away with something and not just making the most efficient use of our land base.

But I will bet that if we abolished government support programs and subsidized crop insurance, there would be a resurrgence of mixed farms, and consolidation would slow or even reverse.

[bucket]

But I will bet that if we abolished government support programs and subsidized crop insurance, there would be a resurrgence of mixed farms, and consolidation would slow or even reverse.

Many fence lines and sloughs are gone....and I don't think they are coming back...

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Many fence lines and sloughs are gone....and I don't think they are coming back...

They are not coming back so long as we can socialize the losses and privatize the profits with subsidized crop insurance.

[Sheepwheat]

They are not coming back so long as we can socialize the losses and privatize the profits with subsidized crop insurance.

I don’t think they are coming back for different reasons. Like the fact animals create a full time job. That you can’t get away from them for long. Everyone here used to have cows and lots of them. But when the next generation came up, the younguns said, nope, no animals, bulldozers and sc****rs and winter holidays instead. In some ways I don’t blame them, but it completely changed the dynamic.

I dunno what the answer is to refill the land with young and new farmers. I do know it involves animal agriculture, and different ways of looking at things, like my garlic farmers neighbor who makes a living on ten or twelve acres. There are a lot of young non farmers wishing they could enter the industry, but they struggle to find land. And get tricked into thinking the cookie cutter agriculture we have today, is the absolute ONLY way to farm in western Canada.

It’s a shame.

[jazz]

I am sure the feds are concocting a scheme to provide aid to cattle guys in exchange for herd reduction. They are just chomping at the bit to get real meat out of our diet.

Thats why we should be wary of any aid package. Find a way to muddle through if you can but if we are not careful the cattle biz will become like fisheries and recently oil. A managed industry or hemmed in with regulation.

If aid comes with strings we should reject it. I would rather farm groups reach out to grain producers and see if some feed can be donated, sort of like that hay west thing 20 yrs ago, but kept locally this time with out the easts involvement.