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Luigi_Daniele
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I can verify this. Corn was selling for $275/ton a couple of weeks ago. It was below $100 only a few years back. Ethanol has certainly helped the farmers, but at what cost?
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Ridgerunner
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It isn’t only corn. Soybeans were once a big ingredient in animal feed. It boosted the protein content, because corn isn’t high protein. Now, some 40% of the U.S. soybean crop goes to China and soybeans are too expensive for cattle feed. There is no reason to expect that to decrease. More reason to think it will increase. So, in effect, brewers’ grain (also called distillers’ grain) has replaced soybean meal. Brewers’ grain is largely from corn, but it’s higher in protein because fermentation removes the starches and sugars but not the protein.
So, if the corn ethanol program stopped tomorrow, there would still be the protein problem, which has nothing to do with ethanol. How feed lots would solve that without brewers’ grain is something I don’t know.
But the corn ethanol program is not likely to end, as stupid as it seems to me that it is. This country may ultimately be forced to accommodate to totally grass fed beef, and it could. As I mentioned, feeders spend most of their growing period on grass anyway, and could entirely. So do sheep. What happens to poultry and pork, though, is another question. They really are raised on grain their whole lives, and there are no satisfactory alternatives.
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kmuestwin
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See. You were being tricky.
I hope that your vegan diet brings you much closer to God.
Since I don’t see the harm in eating meat, the only way that it will improve my spiritual life is if I decide to give it up a few times as a penance. I plan on giving up my Friday’s and Saturdays soon so I can get into a prayerful mindset as I prepare to consecrate myself to Mary.
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Lost_Wanderer
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Killing isn’t wrong you know. There’s a fine line between the sin of murder and just killing something.
I don’t hunt but I’m pretty sure I share similar feelings with hunters when it comes to enjoying the exercise of our skills.
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DaveBj
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I don’t hunt, but that’s because I’m lazy, not for any pseudo-ethical considerations. I have no problem with hunting, as long as what gets killed gets eaten, not just left to rot in the forest.
Come to think of it, I would really like to make myself some Bambi stroganoff
Come to think of it, I would really like to make myself some Bambi stroganoff
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Ridgerunner
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Venison is a taste I never acquired. If there were well-fed beef-breed steers out in the woods for the taking, I would be there with my rifle. But for a deer? Some in my family like venison, but the hunters give so much away every year (you have to ask yourself why) there’s no need for me to go freeze in the dark in a tree, then gut an animal and haul it out of the woods.I don’t hunt, but that’s because I’m lazy, not for any pseudo-ethical considerations. I have no problem with hunting, as long as what gets killed gets eaten, not just left to rot in the forest.
Come to think of it, I would really like to make myself some Bambi stroganoff
I might mention that we had a terrible drought this summer, and lots of vehicular accidents with deer because there were too many of them seeking too little food and they were wandering all over the place. Unfortunately, the hunters can’t keep up with the deer numbers in any year. A lot of them surely starved this year. I’m sure in Ok and Tx it was much, much worse.
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Samson01
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True. Acorns are bad this year here and this after a mast last year. Wastings disease is just starting in our county as populations are high. The deer are small too. Something must be done, so I guess I have to go do the deed. :ehh:
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eo_chibears
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It has brought me closer to God. I don’t think I am closer to God than anyone who eats meat though. We all make our own choices, free will is a wonderful gift. If my views challenge people or make them feel uncomfortable I am fine with that. At least I have the courage to stand up for what I believe in. God bless everyone.See. You were being tricky.
I hope that your vegan diet brings you much closer to God.
Since I don’t see the harm in eating meat, the only way that it will improve my spiritual life is if I decide to give it up a few times as a penance. I plan on giving up my Friday’s and Saturdays soon so I can get into a prayerful mindset as I prepare to consecrate myself to Mary.
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Samson01
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The whitetail deer, often thought of as timid in their envorionment, hisses on the grill.
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kmuestwin
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Just remember to be respectful. Especially in the workplace. You dont want to put your job in jeopardy because someone else wants to eat a hamburger. A lot of times people take offense not at what we say, but how we say it.
Continue to pray for people and to look for a deeper faith in your daily life!
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JimR-OCDS
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Ridgerunner
Read the book.
Jim
Actually it’s the norm in the agricultural corporate world. In the book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” the author Michael Polan buys a calf from a farmer, and follows it through to the slaughter house. It, like it’s brothers and sisters, never saw a pasture. In fact, the feed lots in Kansas, there are millions of cattle processed through each year. Much of the meat is purchased by corprations like MacDonalds and various meat suppliers.
This isn’t true for corporate agriculture world where beef is raised for huge meat packing companies.
Read the book.
Jim
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JimR-OCDS
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The produce feed to cows is for getting them fat and large very quickly.
Corn is still the main feed at corporate feed lots, but they do add other grains, which are not natural for cows.
Grass is the natural food for cows, not corn or soy.
Michael Polan in addition to purchasing a calf, he also purchased a bushel of corn and followed that through the agri-corporate process. He wasn’t allowed into the corn processing plants however, for some lame excuse that because it was food, security wouldn’t allow a reporter to see what happens to corn.
However, in his investigation he found that there are only three corporations in the United States who purchase 80% of all the corn on the market. Most of the corn gets processed into corn-syrup, but also into the additives in the foods we heat.
Fact is, even the seed producers have generically created a unique corn seed, which produces less seeds when it comes to flower, than in the past. These manufactures also bribed politicians to put laws into place, making illegal for farmers to collect and use the seeds their corn plants produce. Farms across the USA have had enforcement agents raiding their barns and silos, confiscating and fining farmers for storing seeds.
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Ridgerunner
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If it’s the norm in the agribusiness world, it’s incredibly stupid, since it would raise the costs far beyond what they would otherwise be, and competitors would overwhelm them. Consequently, I feel myself obliged to dispute the author’s apparent belief. (Admittedly, I have not read the book.) I agree there are millions of cattle in the feed lots in Kansas. The beef industry is a large one. I have seen those Ks feed lots myself on a number of occasions. If you do the math, it’s clearly not the economically advantageous thing to do anymore. I’ll grant that it once was thought so when grain was cheap, and might have even been true then. That has not been true for the last several years.
Frankly, all one has to do to realize the author is wrong is to go to the stockyards and see what the different kinds of buyers are buying, and look at the respective prices they’re paying. It may be instructive, as well, to realize that the first or second largest (it’s not clear which) processor is IBP/Tyson. Know how many feed lots they operate?? None. Unlike the poultry industry, and to some degree (but not entirely) the pork industry, the beef industry is nowhere near as integrated as this author seems to represent.
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Ridgerunner
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No, no, no. You don’t feed grain to beef “cows”, or at least it’s stupid to do it. I never do. Those who do are wasting their money. You feed “feeders”, which are young steers and (fewer) heifers. “Cows” (adult female animals kept for breeding) eat grass, and it’s overwhelmingly uneconomical to do anything else with them. So do “feeders”, until they attain significant weight. I’ll admit that some younger “feeders” go to “backgrounding”, usually on wheat fields, but sometimes just on other grass again. There’s no point in feeding them grain at that point because the young wheat (sometimes rye) contains about the same amount of protein as grain feed does. Nowadays, a lot of ranchers in the primary “cow/calf” areas (Tx, Ok & Mo) do their own “backgrounding” on their own grass. That’s particularly true of those who have warm season grasses like Bermuda that go dormant in the fall and on which fields one can simply broadcast wheat or rye for a “double crop”. Granted, this year’s drought has disrupted that in widespread areas.
I don’t dispute what they do with corn in other ways. I do know more corn goes to corn ethanol than into animal feed now. That’s part of the reason why it’s so expensive. And I don’t dispute that perhaps even most corn is processed into human food products.
There are, indeed, “patented” corn varieties designed to be infertile if the seed from them is planted. Only the hybrid seed itself will sprout. But that’s not the only kind of corn there is, either. If, as you seem to be saying, there are patented varieties that will actually sprout if planted (and I have no reason to doubt it) then it would be a legitimate political question whether those manufacturers ought to have the right to patent protection. There is, of course, more to it than just “keeping one’s own seed corn”. Lots of corn now is “Roundup ready”, and whether that trait will pass to the next generation of seed is something I don’t know. I’m not a farmer. But there are lots of new kinds of corn now from what I understand from those who are farmers. Each of them has its own particular purpose and is different in its requirements.
But none of that patenting business has anything to do with beef production, which is turning to more and more grass-fed because of the increasing cost of grain.
I don’t dispute that there may well be some amount of corn, even soybean meal, fed to “feeders” in the feed lots. Possibly some feed lots think that’s the economical thing to do, and transportation costs surely enter into the thought process. But I sure have my doubts that it’s significant, since there are cheaper ways to get the same protein and carbohydrate levels.
Very few ranchers (around here at least. In the “corn belt” it’s probably different) feed their steers and heifers to slaughter weight. Some few do. All you have to do to know they’re not feeding corn and soybean meal is to look at the ingredients of the various feed formulations to know there’s little, if any, of either in what they’re feeding.
As to the “unnaturalness” of feeding “seed” of any kind, one has to realize that pastured cattle, at times, eat a great deal of it. Look at an ungrazed field of Bermuda, crabgrass, bluestem, indiangrass, switchgrass, clover or lespedeza in the proper season. Lots and lots of seed, and cattle like it a lot. They will even eat fescue seed, and there’s a lot of that in its season. They will eat acorns too, which are “seed” when you think about it.
I have been in food-processing plants, and yes, the security is tight. A few years ago, the government mandated that food processors develop security systems after 911 due to a believed terrorist threat to the food supply. Before that, some processors had security systems aimed at prevention of contamination or competitor knowledge of their processes. Imaginably, some don’t want reporters to see the horrors of what they’re doing, but it has to be realized that there are USDA inspectors in all of them, which makes me question whether the processors simply want to keep us all ignorant of their practices.
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Ridgerunner
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Catholic90
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I prefer hunters shooting and killing deer with their rifles or arrows as opposed to deer committing suicide by car. Car/deer accidents kill and injure 1000s of people every year, and the deer that collide with vehicles do not always die a pretty death that way either.
I continue to hunt mice in my home! The only bad part of that is there is not enough meat on those little bones, so I must just throw away the unused carcasses!
Whether one eats meat or not has no bearing on what level of Catholic one is. Or how spiritual one is. Or how good of a person one is.
I continue to hunt mice in my home! The only bad part of that is there is not enough meat on those little bones, so I must just throw away the unused carcasses!
Whether one eats meat or not has no bearing on what level of Catholic one is. Or how spiritual one is. Or how good of a person one is.
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JimR-OCDS
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Ridgerunner
As I said, he bought a calf and a bushel of corn and followed both through the process.
FYI, he also visited a farm in Virginia, Polyface Farm, polyfacefarms.com/.
Polyface farm is run by Joel Salatin. On this farm, the cattle are grass fed in what is called roving pastures. Longs story about the process which I won’t get into.
This farm at the time the author visited, was the most productive farm on the East Coast.
It’s the way farming should be done, but there were some government regulations on the slaughter of the beef that made the meat more expensive than that of beef from feed-lot cattle.
I think you’d enjoy the book. The author, Michael Polan, not only did research on the corn and beef industry, but also on the organic industry. Also, he tried vegetarianism, and hunter gathering where he was taught by an Italian gentleman in northern CA, how to pick mushrooms and was also taken on a wild bore hunt.
Jim
I don’t know the economics behind it, but it is the norm.
It’s not the authors belief, but the data he gained through his research. He visited the corn and cattle farms as well as the feed-lots.
As I said, he bought a calf and a bushel of corn and followed both through the process.
Well, if it wasn’t economical, it wouldn’t still be done.
Like I said, the author visited the feed lots and did research in the beef industry to come up with the numbers.
FYI, he also visited a farm in Virginia, Polyface Farm, polyfacefarms.com/.
Polyface farm is run by Joel Salatin. On this farm, the cattle are grass fed in what is called roving pastures. Longs story about the process which I won’t get into.
This farm at the time the author visited, was the most productive farm on the East Coast.
It’s the way farming should be done, but there were some government regulations on the slaughter of the beef that made the meat more expensive than that of beef from feed-lot cattle.
I think you’d enjoy the book. The author, Michael Polan, not only did research on the corn and beef industry, but also on the organic industry. Also, he tried vegetarianism, and hunter gathering where he was taught by an Italian gentleman in northern CA, how to pick mushrooms and was also taken on a wild bore hunt.
Jim
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Ridgerunner
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About to give this up. I am a rancher myself. I know dozens of ranchers and travel widely through ranch country. I know the economics of beef and I have seen the feedlots and the markets. I am frequently in feed mills, and I see what goes into it. I have been personally present at (at least) IBP purchases. I read the cattle-raising literature. I have seen the numbers and work with them myself. The book of which you speak sounds to me like one of those sensational, but usually inaccurate, books that come out now and then to support a cultish way of looking at things. I would also wonder about the age of the data, because the industry has changed a lot in the last ten years. Their reception resembles that of PETA and USPCA literature in this way: If people believe them, they believe them, and nothing anyone can say will persuade them otherwise. But regardless, I’ll say the following.
Obviously, if this author bought a calf, it went through the process through which he, himself, or someone in his stead, put it. That tells a person nothing about what usually happens.
No need to go through the story about Salatin in greater detail than the website has (not much in it), because I think I already know what he does. I don’t raise pigs or poultry, but I’ll talk about the cattle part of it. Like a lot of ranchers, he rotates his herd through pastures intensively in what are called “paddocks”. That’s a fairly new way of doing it, brought here about fifteen years ago, largely by New Zealanders. Water is delivered to the paddocks in fairly complex systems because they don’t want the cattle to have to walk more than 660 feet to get a drink. Some of them even milk their beef cattle for the “high fat” luxury dairy market. It is, indeed, more efficient than grazing less intensively on open pastures…at least until one is beset by drought, and then it isn’t because it assumes grass growth rates that don’t pan out. And it doesn’t work everywhere, either, for climatic reasons. It only works well in a fairly narrow east-west band. There are reasons for that.
And, yes, since all meat going into the human food chain is required to be inspected by USDA, I’m sure Mr. Salatin is having to deal with that if he’s selling butchered beef off the farm. In some places you can “get away” with evading regulation by “selling” animals on the hoof. Mostly, you can’t. And, of course, if his chickens are eating bugs out of cow manure (they eat manure too, you know, not just the bugs. Hogs will too.) there is an intense hazard of E Coli contamination of the poultry, which would have to be closely monitored, with steps taken to remove the contamination. Contamination is always a hazard in “organic” farming of any kind.
But on the whole, I would say Mr. Salatin is a good marketer of something he successfully represents as somehow unique. There are others like him; some more successful than others.
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Samson01
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Why would the OP,** eo_chibears**, be sending me nasty PM’s so late in this game??? Let’s be friends instead and exchange recipes or something.
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