Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: Essays from a Farmer Philosopher

The Role of Independent Beef Producers in Rural Development

The Role of Independent Beef Producers in Rural Development Suddenly everyone is interested in developing us. The January/February 1997 Kerr Center newsletter announced that it was adding “rural development ” to its program.1 The lead article in the newsletter points us in a rural-development direction, but it cannot possibly lead to any real rural development. It suggests that the beef industry’s problems could be solved through vertical integration, much like the swine and poultry industries. Producers would be paid a salary to raise calves to a specific weight and would receive a bonus for good performance. The article asserts that “raising cattle is a hobby and not a business” when herds are only 100 cows or less, although it is my understanding that 50 percent of the beef cows in the United States are in herds of this size. I would have expected something like this in Beef or the Farm Journal. I was really surprised to find it in a “sustainable agriculture” newsletter. Apparently, the author of the article, a “livestock specialist,” is not aware of several facts. For example, the economic viability and environmental benefits of herds of less than 100 cows that are fully integrated in crop/livestock systems are well-established. Several North Dakota State University studies on integrated crop/livestock systems demonstrated that: •When sixty beef cows were integrated into a cropping system so that the cows could make use of corn stover and other crop residues, the return for labor was $22 per hour. Feed costs were low because cows consumed crop waste, and crop production costs were lowered by ma63 A version of this piece was originally published in the newsletter of the Center for Sustainable Agricultural Systems, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Nebraska, March–April 1997, 1–6. 64 Cultivating an Ecological Conscience nure applied to crops. Any time farmers can turn waste into income and make $22 an hour doing it, they are on the path to economic sustainability. • When eighty-five cows were added to a cropping system, the return to the cropping system increased by $24,000 annually in conventional farming systems and $27,000 annually in conservation tillage systems. • When crop residues were fed to cows, 71 percent of the nitrogen consumed by the cows was returned to the field in the form of manure. Crop/livestock integration is one of the key ways to improve economic and ecological sustainability, and herd size can be well below 100. Furthermore , it is precisely such integrated crop/livestock systems that enable producers to develop ecologically elegant systems, surely one of the hallmarks of sustainability. Contrast this with the model Lathrop proposes: the broiler industry. In a recent article in Time magazine, farmers who had contracted with Tyson to produce chicken had become “serfs on their own land.”2 Because Tyson was the only market, farmers were in no position to bargain or auction for better prices. They had not received an increase for their labor in eleven years, despite the fact that their costs had increased by 50 percent. In the processing plants, workers received minimum wages in extremely harsh working conditions that now make “fowl processing one of the nation’s most hazardous jobs.” Furthermore, the manure overload from the massive concentration of chickens creates an intolerable waste disposal problem with numerous detrimental environmental impacts. Is this the “sustainable ” future that Lathrop sees for beef producers and the rural communities in which beef is produced? Our 3,100-acre grain and livestock farm has 114 beef brood cows. The beef cattle are fully integrated into the cropping system. We feed our cattle no cash grain, only forages and crop residues. We generate, on average, $300,000 gross revenue annually, and we haven’t borrowed any operating funds in twenty years. I assure you this is not a hobby farm. Over the past ten years we have always received top dollar for our back-grounded calves—not because we are part of a vertically integrated, industry-managed quality-control system, but because our calves are healthy, grass-fed, and ready to perform well when they hit the feedlot. 65 The Role of Independent Beef Producers in Rural Development Lathrop does suggest that producers need to cooperate. I agree. But they need to cooperate with one another (not with corporations), develop direct markets where possible, and pool their capital to capture market segments...