The Beginning Farmer

As I read “Allan’s Observations”, the editorial column by Allan Nation in The Stockman Grassfarmer I was introduced to a term that I had never heard before, “Titan Farmer”. The entire column was actually great and full of tons of little nuggets, but I think I’ll tackle them one at a time over the next few days … for now I just want to discuss this interesting term, “Titan Farmer”.

So, what is a “Titan Farmer”? Well a “Titan Farmer” is a farmer who farms between 20,000 and 40,000 acres of land, and are even planning on getting bigger. Mr. Nation writes, “…thanks to super-sized machinery and resulting low labor costs per acre these farmers can afford to bid cash-lease land away from farmers in the thousand acre category…” And to tell you how serious these guys are there is even mention of a cash-lease on 2,700 acres right here in my home state of Iowa that went for $400 an acre … UP FRONT!

There is the future of farming. One of these “Titan Farmers” even told Top Producer Magazine that he has two full-time marketing people that have the sole purpose of finding land to rent and keeping the land owners happy. They use these two marketers to find full-time farmers that are farming farms in the 1,000 acre range or so and then buy them out and hire them to work for the Ultra-Mega-Super-Duper Farm (maybe I just coined a new farming term).

With all of that in mind I believe one of the most interesting quotes from Mr. Nation’s column, and subsequently from a column by 1,700 acre farmer John W. Phipps, is this:

“Phipps said in his spring column in Top Producer that there has been little discussion about the long-term impact of an ever-increasing productivity in an industry with a fixed land base.”

There is a lot to think about there, and to tell you the truth there is a lot there that causes me to pause… As I said this months column was full of little nuggets, so the story does not stop here.

Steven LeGrand told me about this new online magazine first, and then I saw it was mentioned in the news section of the ATTRA website also. I hadn’t had a chance to check it out until just yesterday, but it looks like it is the beginning of a very good website/online magazine. They have sections for everything from marketing to raising animals and also feature videos. It looks like a good resource for both farmers and consumers and hopefully it will become a great home for sustainable farming discussion and learning.

So, head on over and check out www.SustainableFarmer.com

I’m not sure what happened, but as I was picking up last night I noticed that I had the July issue of “The Stockman Grassfarmer” sitting on my desk and I hadn’t even leafed through it. I guess with the busyness of the house going up and work on the farm it was shuffled to the bottom of the pile. Anyways … once I find it I started leafing through it and reading bits and pieces of the cover article by Greg Judy. At the end of the article it mentioned that Mr. Judy had come out with a new book titled, “Comeback Farms“. Luckily (I believe it is published by them) there is a review of the book in this issue and it looks fairly interesting.

Mr. Judy is also the author of, “No Risk Ranching, Custom Grazing on Leased Land”, (long title) and this book appears to be an extension of that book and examination of what he has learned since writing that book. Probably the most interesting topic included in the book are the sections on High Density Grazing (HDG). Mr. Judy has been a huge promoter of this and stocks his cattle at very high rates with multiple moves per day. But, not a lot has been written in books about HDG so it should be interesting to see what he has to say.

The book also looks at multi-species grazing (always a good thing), land leasing, and specific details about the fencing/water equipment that he likes to use. It sounds like it is full of useful information, but I think I should point out that the book is written (by the articles own admission) for people that are already familiar with Management Intensive Grazing. I’m not sure if/when I would tackle this book, but it does sound like it would be a pretty good read.

**As an aside, I just thought I would mention that this is the 300th post on The Beginning Farmer Blog. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read and comment, you all have been such a great encouragement and help!**

We don’t have a ton to update on the farm progress this week because we had around 5 inches of rain in the last week or so (maybe more, but I don’t have a rain gauge out at the farm). As you can see the picture above the house looks about the same except that it is ready for the concrete slab to be poured. Having the slab down is a huge step because after that our builder can come back in and finish up the windows, doors, siding, and roof. If we can get the concrete done and our other work the basic structure should be done pretty soon. Now we just pray for NO rain (I know I shouldn’t say that) and pray that a couple little snags can take care of themselves (the fact that we are first time general contractors pops up every now and again).

Other than the building we have good news from the garden. Just like other gardeners and farmers in our area we have been fighting water all spring and summer, but a couple weeks ago we were to put in a few things out at the farm … for fun if anything. Now we have beans, corn, and pumpkins taking off. We also planted some tomatoes, peppers, and yams that we had been growing in pots since early spring. Of course the upper 80’s and the high humidity have helped things really pop.

The last thing that I finished up this week was clearing the grass/brush from the areas where I’m going to put the fence. And, I think I finally have it all planned out… Basically we have slightly less than a half mile of high tensile electric to put up along the roads and then I’m going to just run two or three hot wires along the edge of the woods with steel t-posts. The million dollar question right now is what posts I am going to use for my line posts on the high tensile exterior fence.

For some time I have been thinking about using Powerflex posts … and I think I do want to go ahead with them even though the cost is a little more. Now I just need to figure out how to get them in Iowa and pray that freight/shipping doesn’t kill the deal. Has anyone used Powerflex posts?

Yesterdays post on the current/impending crisis in the pork industry and how we got to this place made me want to read a little more about Earl Butz. (As an aside, according to a post on Allan Nation’s blog pork prices could hit $10 cwt.) Since Americans don’t spend a lot of time discussing Agriculture Secretaries in their high school history classes I didn’t know much about Mr. Butz until I watched the “King Corn” documentary. In the movie the two guys went and visited him and talked about some of his policies that helped keep food costs low for the consumers. Even though the movie is about the over abundance of corn in our food, and Mr. Butz helped that along, they seemed to soften up as they talked with him because they could see what his intent was … to a point.

Anyways, since I didn’t know to much about Mr. Butz I did what any self-respecting twenty-something raised on computers would do … I looked him up on Wikipedia! He served as the Secretary of Agriculture from 1971 – 1976 under Presidents Nixon and Ford and according to Wikipedia had a sometimes bumpy ride. It seems like he liked to run his mouth a little bit and that eventually caught up with him (he resigned a week after making some comments).

There are plenty of people out there that believe the ideas of Mr. Butz, “Get big or get out”, “From fencerow to fencerow” farming, and his never ending encouragement for farmers to produce more and more have led to the obesity of America and more. I may not go so far as saying that today … I’m no scientist … but, he did make some radical changes in farm policy that are still with us and effecting us today.

I do agree with people who say that the policies of Mr. Butz did lead to the agri-corporations we have today, but for the sake of fairness and to present both sides of the story I will post this quote from an article by Sara Wyant of the “High Plains/Midwest Ag Journal”:

For a lot of today’s “Baby Boomers,” President John F. Kennedy symbolized the hopes and dreams for those lucky enough to live in America in the early 1960s. A few years later, Earl Butz became a cabinet member and delivered a similar sense of promise and optimism for those wanting to make a living off of the land.

During his five years as agriculture secretary, net farm income more than doubled over the previous 10 years and farm exports tripled. He engineered a massive grain sale to the Soviets in 1972 and the Soviets essentially bought up the U.S. grain reserve.

Do any of you have any thoughts on Mr. Butz or his policies?

I know that this is a topic that I have blogged about before, and the article that I’m taking the information from is from the June, 11th edition of the “Iowa Farm Bureau Spokesman”. Nonetheless I am dumbfounded each time I read about the current crisis in the pork industry. The title of the article that I read yesterday is, “Goal is survival, economist tells Pork Expo crowd”, and it really details a difficult time for the hog farmers across the country. And by difficult I mean they are losing money or on the edge of losing money.

Glenn Grimes, of the University of Missouri, said this, “There will be some rough times ahead, but the hog industry will survive. One of the things you have to think about is how to get from here until the end of 2009, not about how much profit you will be making. Your goal is to survive.” The article goes on to say that the breakeven cost for most of the hog farmers in Iowa is around $60 per hundredweight. Today lean hogs are selling at about $70 per hundredweight. So, there could be a little profit … but, corn, bean, and fuel prices have gone up since July, 11th.

I guess I read an article like this and think about the ramifications for the farmers and I wonder how in the world this could happen. It is not like we are talking about computers or iPods here that are just “wants”. We are talking about food! How have we as a nation gotten to the point where producers lose money in order to provide food for our nation and the world. Okay, I guess I understand the “how” and to a point I understand the “why” (we are addicted to cheap subsidized food), but I really can’t figure out how we can keep going in this direction.

There is one other thing that I think about when I read an article like this … can I make any money with the eight feeder pigs that I will have finished this fall and for sale. Right now it costs about $18 per hundredweight of feed and pigs like to eat (even though they are the best converters of feed to weight). Will those numbers work out for me and will I be able to make ends meet?

Remember … I’ll have wholes and halves of pork for sale this fall … let me know if you would like to be added to the list!

Okay, sorry for such a late post today. Between family, church work, farm chores, trying to sell a house, and the building work things are a little crazy around here lately. Because of that my early morning posts are becoming more difficult to pull off if I don’t write them the night before. I would encourage everyone that enjoys reading the blog regularly (I do feel sorry for you if you keep up with this mumbling) to subscribe on the right through Feedburner to receive the posts in your inbox. It is just an easy way for you to keep up.

Now, for the updates:

• As you can see from the picture above we have the waste lines roughed in and the water line run. It is absolutely wonderful to have water on the farm … now for the electric …
• We went to a wedding this Thursday/Friday … it is always nice to take a break from the work.
• Saturday morning we worked on the plumbing stuff in the morning and then my Father-in-Law and I went out to finish pulling all the old fence posts. I got one pulled when a seal burst on my left hydraulic cylinder on the loader. Let’s just say that fluid was flying and the work was done for the day!
• I spent a small part of Saturday evening dickering with my cousin/uncle over the price of some used cylinders. Now I have two cylinders from an old Hesston baler. They are two-way instead of one-way, so that will be nice. I do need to get more hoses, couplings, and fittings now though before I’m up and running again.
• Yesterday we went to my dads to check on the cows, horses, and chickens. I was dinking around with some stuff while the family looked at the cattle. When I went over I noticed something was different … there was one more calf! There was a little black bull calf born in the last two days to Kenosha. That makes five calves this year (three heifers and two bulls).

Lots of stuff on tap this week… I’ll keep updating and remember to check out the subscription on the right if you would like.

I’m off to the farm bright and early to help rough in the plumbing that will go under the concrete slab. So, here is a picture from the progress on Thursday morning. Hopefully I’ll have another update this afternoon.

On this Fourth Day of July we celebrate the independence of our great country, and I truly do believe it is a great country.  I believe we owe the freedoms that we have today to our founding fathers who built this country out of a desire for freedom and liberty.  In honor of this great day I just want to leave you with some quotes from our “Founding Farmers”.