Category Archives: Environment

South Dakota storm

Close to twenty years ago, I drove from Miles City, MT to Belle Fourche, SD.  For some reason it struck me as the place I needed to live.  Western South Dakota in my mind is one of the really great ranching areas in the U.S.

I also found at the time it was one of the least expensive places to purchase land.  We bought a place North of Nisland, SD. It was the perfect place for all the things I wanted to do. Things in my life changed and we ended up selling it.  We have been back and forth to South Dakota several times and have owned some real nice places but I think we made a big mistake in selling the place in Nisland.  Another word for mistakes is experience.

Rial, my Son always liked South Dakota and went to work on a ranch near Faith.  He learned a bunch about the harshness and the productiveness of the environment.  We were discussing the recent South Dakota storm and he questioned the running of livestock there.

He always has a way of looking at things that set me to thinking.  We were tearing out some old fence on a place we had in Newell, South Dakota. He wondered what the people that put it up some 30 or 40 years before were discussing. It probably had something to do with the weather.

It was just a few years back that many of the ranchers in that area lost a lot of the livestock due to an late spring storm.  Then 2011 had the huge drought in the south and hay prices were very high.  Most of the excess hay was sold and trucked out of the country.  Then South Dakota had a terrible drought and the hay crop and grazing was real short.  Hay prices doubled if you could find any at all.  2013 was a great crop year and pastures were very good. When I drove through the area in August it was like driving though it in May.

Everything seemed to be great.  Then this storm hit.  It is so incredible how hard Mother Nature can be.  It is also incredible how in this day and age of communication, technology and equipment how we still have no real defense against the power of nature.

Looking back on the last five years of extreme weather in South Dakota, Rial may be justified in his statement.  We may need to ask a few more questions and try to make management decisions based on these questions.

Has the weather always been this extreme or are we in a different weather pattern?

Can we change management practices to deal with extreme conditions?

If we do experience losses should the government be obligated to help financially even though history shows the risks?

What will public opinion be?

We hear all the time how animals should be free range.  Now I hear how people are questioning the ranchers care of the livestock.  They are being criticized for not having them in shelter.

Weather has always been the big influence in profit or loss in agriculture.  It seems it will always be.  South Dakota is extreme climate country.  It can be bitter cold in the winter, and scorching hot in the summer. Flooding, drought, snow, wind – South Dakota has it all.

From what I have seen, it is wise to have a years worth of feed in stockpile.  With the uncertain weather conditions it looks like it is real difficult to have a set stocking rate.  With the extreme climate conditions I think I would want to run all my livestock from about the middle of May to about the first of September.  From what I have seen in the past this is the only way to keep from the extreme harshness of South Dakota weather from getting you.

What I am going to say now is as harsh as the climate in South Dakota.  We must be honest and face reality.  When you are in the livestock business there are chances for loss from extremes in the weather.  If we keep doing things over and over and it is not working that is crazy.  This last storm was a terrible thing.  All these storms are terrible and devastating to ranchers especially if they are impossible to prepare for.

I go back to Rial’s question of “Should we be trying to ranch in Western South Dakota?” I think so, but we better really pay attention and maybe the best thing to do is to shut off all the technology and get to the highest point on the ranch, sit down and look and think things over for a few hours with no distractions.  Ask the important questions and find the best answers.  We must blend today’s technology with yesterday’s traditions.

South Dakota ranchers are tough people.  It is a terrible thing they have gone through.  I really feel for them, but know if they are tough enough they will stay and continue, if not they will go away.  This is called the survival of the fittest, and it’s the way of the land in South Dakota. It always has been and it always will be.

For the rest of us, let this be a lesson.  The power of nature should never be forgotten.  Don’t get careless.  Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

If you want to help you can check out the South Dakota Rancher Relief Fund started by the Black Hills Area Community Foundation.

~ Curt Pate

Monday Morning Photo: Grazing, U.N. reports, and what makes the world go round

This is a video my daughter sent me and it shows exactly what we can do with grazing animals all over the world.  Grazing animals guts are the original recyclers.  It is a good thing to graze properly, our world depends on it.

The Patagonia video along with the recent United Nations report (see U.N. says animal handling key to cutting emissions on the farm, Drovers Cattlenetwork, 9.26.2013) are two contrasting but positive views to livestock production.  I feel the report released is much more positive than the one titled, Livestock’s Long Shadow, and goes right along with the science-based solutions I hear at seminars all the time.  The natural nutrient recycling through grazing is also needed to make this world work.  We need both technology and Mother Nature’s natural system in this world to progress.  Is it not an amazing time we live in?

~ Curt Pate

This is the stuff that makes the world go round, and it might be B.S.

This is the stuff that makes the world go round, and it might be B.S.

Sex, nutrition, and electric fence

This may be a shocking title to some.  Sex is not a bad word or a bad subject, but it sure makes me nervous even mentioning it.

Sex has a purpose.  It is to create life, maintain and increase the species that performed the act, and ensure the species does not become extinct.  If there was not pleasure in this act, it would be kind of like oiling your saddle.  You know you should do it but you just don’t get it done as often as you should.

The good and the bad of it is, sex is pleasure. Anything that creates pleasure or satisfaction can loose sight of the main reason for doing it. So humans exploit it. We focus on the pleasure and forget the real reason for sex, the survival of humans.  If you don’t use self discipline it can create real problems in life.

Nutrition has a purpose.  It is to maintain life and create a healthy environment in the community of cells that make up the human being and hopefully create enough energy to make you desire sex.

As the human being has become more sophisticated, life has gotten pretty easy compared to our ancestors. Food has become more of a focus of pleasure and social status than a means to sustaining life. It may be evolving into the opposite of its purpose and actually killing us rather than helping us to live.

We need to take nutrition seriously and learn to eat the right stuff, in the right amount, at the right time.

There happens to be many different opinions on the right stuff.  If we get down to the basics, we need certain vitamins and minerals in the proper balance and amount, along with energy and protein in the correct amounts.

The things I know are really important in all of this is sunshine and soil nutrients.  Sunshine is the only ingredient in the nutrition puzzle that is free for anyone to absorb.  Everything else has a cost to it.  The soil is easy to take the nutrition out of and when depleted difficult to put the nutrients back in.  If we eat foods that are lacking in minerals and vitamins our body needs, it will create the desire for more, leading to over consumption and obesity.

When nutrients are harvested from the land it is like mining the soil.  If you mine the soil you must put back the stuff you took out or the soil will not be as healthy as before you harvested.

Conventional farming practices have replaced soil nutrition with nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, also know as NPK.  This leads to good growth of a crop, but I wonder about the true nutrition that comes out of the soil.  I wonder if this is why we have so much obesity in our country.  We have plenty to eat but always crave more.

Lets look at haying.  When you harvest a hay crop and sell it, you mined the soil and sold it to someone else.  If you make a hay crop and feed it to animals in a different location on your operation you transferred the nutrients away from the hay field.  If you take you must give back or sacrifice quality.  Putting back nutrition takes energy, energy costs money, and it is difficult to put it back as well as you took it away.  I have read that the Amish farmers always rotate grazing into the farm system.

So lets graze that same field.  When a grazing animals eats forage the body absorbs what it needs after its digestive system has broken the cellulose down and passes the rest through. This seems to me the quickest way to start recycling the nutrients that there is.  A very small amount of the minerals and vitamins were absorbed by the animals, the excess goes through and it goes back on the soil it came from to be recycled the way it has done for thousands of years.

I have been told goat meat is the most nutritious meat of the domesticated animals we eat. This is because of the varietyof grass and brush they eat.  You are what you eat, they say. And goats know how and are athletic enough to get the good stuff.  We need to provide our beef with a highly nutritious diet so they will provide us with a highly nutritious diet.

Farming seems to be difficult to do without depleting the soil of valuable nutrients.
As we go along here it looks like we will have to come up with ways to put proper nutrition back in the soil.

In some parts of the U.S. the wheat is grazed for some time before the cattle are pulled off and the wheat makes a crop.  This looks to be a great way to increase profit and nutrient density.

Thousands of head of cows are grazed on corn stocks in the winter as a cheap source of feed.  It looks to me like this is a great system to add nutrients back into the soil.

This is all done because of electric fence.  Power fence is the technology that has the potential to help us graze animals for better sustainability of resources, graze areas that were impossible to graze without it, increase profit with more effective grazing, and control animals in a safe and effective manner.

The energizers of today are so much more reliable than in the past (30 years ago). Along with this, the components it takes to make an electric fencing system work such as the grounding methods, wire, insulators, posts, and all the other components are better too.

Buy high quality products and they will last longer with less problems.  Learn how to put the fence up correctly. You must also learn how to train animals to power fence.

I keep hearing how we are going to have to increase production to feed the world as the population  increases.  As I drive around the country and other parts of the world I see so much wasted or unused feed that cattle could utilize, then naturally fertilize, then be used for highly nutritious protein to help feed the world.

This looks to me like a great opportunity for young or newcomers to agriculture to get started in the business when they have not much capital.  It also looks like a great way for operations that don’t have the time or the energy to utilize these areas of production to get them used and create more profit, as well as creating a more healthy environment through proper grazing.

To get this to work we need to learn to use the technology of power fence and water systems, plus the skill of animal handling, and use proper grazing methods that ensure sustainability.

It is so exiting and encouraging to look to the future and see the possibilities that beef production has for helping the world solve some of the challenges it faces.

The use of the technology of electric fence will help make this possible.  I encourage you to use it.

Don’t forget nutrition.  We need to eat a good balance of foods that nourish and satisfy our body’s.  I believe beef can play a big part in this.  I also know that by eating it I am helping create balance in nature.

Eating a good steak is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Well almost …

~ Curt Pate