A Midwest Journal

Doing some number crunching in my head the other day while out for a walk. And at that time I thought that corn might upset my figures on raising cattle.

But I was wrong.

Corn will raise on average about 80/bu. average an acre on the ground we have. Clay hillsides and silted bottom ground. Marginal land. What Missouri (and the rest of the country) grows most of it’s cattle on.

Now, if you take 30 acres and raise corn/soybeans alternating years, you end up making some profit.

Corn: 80 bu./acre @ 3.50/bu. = $8400.

Now, take off the spraying and fertilizer: -$2000

And take off hiring someone to do it (their fuel, repairs, labor, and seed): -$1000

So you might make $5400. Last two years we had crop failure on corn planted anywhere.

Beans: 40bu./acre @$8.00 = $9600.

Same inputs: -$3000

So you might make $5600

Cattle: 2.5 acre per head (conventional grazing in Missouri) = 12 head.

Say you raise half of these to full size. 6 cows and their 6 calves being brought up to full weight at about 1000 lbs. We get about $.80/lb. live weight at the auctions.  = $4800

And take off the cost of hay during the winter (about $200 per finished calf for two winters) and you’re pulling down $3600 for profit.

So it’s a no-brainer to raise row crops, right? Not so fast…

On grass-fed beef cattle, you can further cut inputs and raise value-added premiums.

1. You only grass feed them and start doing ultra-high-density stocking or intensive managed grazing. Means you feed hay about one week a year on average, which is about 2-4 bales. (At $40 each, this cost is then down to $160 – or $320 for two years for the whole herd.)

2. UHD managed grazing will increase herd size, sometimes as much as 4x – to it’s now possible that the original 30 acres will now hold 30 head. Let’s keep 15 momma cows and 15 calves to full weight.

3. Now, you take it to a USDA-inspected locker and start selling the individual pieces of those cattle directly to your clientele instead of taking them to auction. While the possible total sale can be about $3000, you take off processing and marketing costs, which might run $500. $2500 per animal sold.

15 x $2500 – $320 = $37,340 annual profit

Can you do that same leverage by value-adding to corn or soybeans? Much less, you are spending around7-10 hours a week raising this crop, and almost nothing of that is in the tractor seat – most of it is walking around and moving fences.

In a word, No. Not that I’ve been able to find, anyway.

UHD managed grazing (also called Mob Grazing) cuts overhead from $400 per animal to $320 per herd. All while multiplying herd size by at least double and sometimes up to 4X. (Because you have to keep increasing herd size to keep up with the grass and it’s increased yield.)

But even with conventional grazing and a grass-fed product, if you part it out and direct market you can increase the premium to $2100 per animal compared to $600 profit.

Increase herd size by more than double, increase profit per animal by over triple – 6x your after-input income. In the above case, it is nearly 8x.

While you don’t spend the time in the field, you are now direct-marketing your beef, which is a different skillset. Not as dangerous or physically demanding. And if you are a real people-person, it’s probably more rewarding than exhausting.

Now, this is saying that your other on-farm overhead costs are the same for both scenarios.

But you can also see why row-crop farmers have to be big in order to pay for all their equipment and chemicals.

The kicker is, if they went to selling all-natural beef instead – and had their kids grow up to be marketers and stay around the farm – those same thousands of acres would be able to support several families instead of barely one.

Now, your mileage will certainly vary.

But crunch the numbers for yourself and find out that grass fed beef cattle beats row-cropping hands down.

(And we didn’t get into how grass fed beef don’t create but a fraction of “greenhouse gases”, since you only burn fuel to take them to the processing plant, plus ultra-high-density managed grazing actually sequesters more carbon than these cows can emit…)

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Do we do this on our own farm currently? No, we are in the middle of phasing over. Right now, our 20 cows will bring us the most at auction prices by selling only 1/4 of them as finished beef and the rest as stockers (yearlings). But we aren’t switched over to UHD managed grazing (mob grazing) yet.

Getting there, though…

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(For part one, part two – visit those links. Meanwhile, we join our author after he just explained how he figured out how to make more money doing less on his grass fed beef farm…)

Now, this all doesn’t look like much money for having to go out and check our beef cattle twice a day, every day. Certainly wouldn’t pay your expenses if you think you have to make $50K per year to make a living. Practically, the Feds say you are below “poverty level” if you make less than $24K for a family of four (which is something like $16K if you are an individual – but they still take taxes out of almost every paycheck and hold it for you until the end of the year. Such nice folks we have in government.)

Means that most rural families are “poor” according to the government and are so eligible for massive handouts from the rest of the country which are comparatively “rich” and can afford to pay for everything we “need.”

But when you look at a lifestyle where you can raise everything you eat and if you don’t buy the hype that you have to have a color TV and a boat to take to the lake on summer weekends – or a 3,000 square foot house and all the latest gizmo’s which make life easier. When you look at life as a very simple operation (if you leave Madison Avenue and the Government out of the equation), then your actual cost of living is very small.

Once I got my credit card bills paid off and started working as a contracted laborer (freelance web design), I found out that I didn’t have the commuting expense to work and back so many times a week. I quit watching TV and suddenly didn’t feel “compelled” to buy this or that – or even see the latest movies which were coming out.

I started having more time to myself, and felt more at ease and secure and healthier.

No, I don’t “make” anywhere near the $50K slot. But I don’t have to work for someone else except every now and then – and I don’t have to leave home to do it. The quality of my food is completely under my own control. What vegetables and beef and fruit I eat are how industrious and efficient I am with my time and the resources around me.

True, my parents bought and paid for this farm with their own jobs and I am simply reaping this harvest based on their work. But I also keep the farm running and my Mother live a comfortable retired life, not having to fix things or simply rent out the farm because she can’t manage it.

My income is also taken out in non-taxable ways – such as barter and payment in other “currencies” than money. Working for my room and board is one example.

I then spend the bulk of my time on stuff I want to do, and am not taxed for thinking or writing or blogging. I give tons of stuff away that is really useful.

So I don’t really feel I need a lot to live on. My health is excellent and I don’t carry insurance. Don’t really need to. Isn’t insurance something a little counter-productive, since you are hedging a bet against yourself?  The taxes I do pay whenever I buy something or license something – all these go toward supporting the schools and hospitals and roads. Even though I mostly don’t use them.

I don’t need a lot of income, so don’t need to pay tax on it.

The result is that I can say that a farm which makes $16,000 a year from raising beef cattle is sustainable and outrageously profitable. At that rate, I could buy a used tractor every year. Or get a loan for more land and pay it off in a decade or so.  Or simply stockpile some savings instead of giving it away to insurance companies – so if I did have to get medical treatment, I could simply pay the bill that way. (Like I do with my dentist – I was paying more for insurance and the deductible than I was in just paying for the treatment when I needed it.)

That’s the Kool-Aid I make. Look at the incredible prosperity you are already surrounded with. And quit listening to people who say you have to buy this and that. Quit figuring that you need approval from others, or inflated ideas of security, or that you need to be controlled or control others. These three points – approval, control, security – Levenson’s Sedona Method says are the base for all the chronic thinking we have floating around our heads. Get rid of those base considerations and the thought can simply be let go, released. Keep doing that consistently or intensively, and your mind quiets right down. You aren’t habitually thinking so much – and can actually quit having to “think your way” through life.

And you can come up with ideas about how you don’t need to “make a lot of money” to be abundantly prosperous and fulfilled.

There’s also the benefits of going through the pasture, checking your cows, scratching them where they seem to like it – and getting the satisfaction from those simple actions. Raising calves and watching them grow – like any crop, but more mobile.

The point is that all your “pay” for living in this universe isn’t coming to you in a check or through an electronic account somewhere. And it doesn’t need some government approval or license. Take a walk in the early morning or at sunset and see if you are getting paid very amply for the little time you invest.

That’s the meal I cook, the Kool-Aid I drink . Join me.

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

More great Missouri cattle by Julie Brown

Ok, call it ultra-high-density stocking to achieve maximal lignified carbon sequestration fertilization. Yes, that’s very close to Joel Salatin’s work – and I just left out the “herbivorous solar conversion” part.

When you mob stock your grass fed beef cattle, they convert natural grasses, legumes, and forbs (plus everything else they can eat) into fertilizer – some of the best stuff you can put on a field. We call them four-legged self-reproducing combines with on-site storage. They take whatever is out there and turn it into meat, plus produce another of themselves every year. Since they last about 12-14 years, they will produce on average about 10 of themselves, which is a nice profit for a farmer.

Now Greg Judy doesn’t tell you one interesting fact about where he farms: if we didn’t farm this particular area of country and it wouldn’t turn to desert. In fact, our particular part of Missouri would turn into rather thick woods within about 40 – 100 years. And it would over-populate with deer, with cougars making a comeback.

Of course no humans would be around, because there’s no money in it – no real way to make a living. Trees grow too slowly, and our government doesn’t like us hunting and logging for a living. Now, there are some radical activists who would love that concept – but they are basically suicidal, anyway. (I took a college course on Geography a few years ago and discovered that this exact point is being taught in their government-approved textbooks. Humans are basically at fault for everything, particularly the white male minorities – so much for their touted diversity and tolerance campaigns.)

Back to the real world.

Now, most people in my “neck of the woods” are into high-overhead row crops. Those farmers that raise cattle on land they can’t “farm” use conventional grazing, which is leaving cattle on a fenced-in section until they mostly eat everything down. Then you move them over to another section and repeat. In July or August, you sell off what won’t make it through the “slump” where it’s too hot and dry to raise grass. Meanwhile, you save a couple of spots to make hay out of – which keeps that herd through the winter. And you again sell off in the fall (at reduced prices) everything you can’t feed.

The weird part is that cows were meant to graze all year round. Even through snow. And mob stocking will set the land up to produce enough to make that happen. It’s just your management has to change.

Now, I’m no expert, but I have a tendency to write too much, so I’m blogging our efforts so others can use what they can out of them.

1. Get out everyday for some excuse and move some fences. Actually walk out in and around your cattle regardless of the weather. This gets them used to you. And you’ll get more familiar with the individual cattle and how they are doing. You’ll probably go through more pairs of boots, but it’s cheaper than fuel and engine parts.

2. Study up on Managed Grazing. This is the step that both Salatin and Judy did when they eventually moved to Allan Savory’s methods of ultra-high-density stocking.

3. Start laying some temporary electric lines out with battery-powered chargers, subdividing your existing pastures so that cattle just have enough to eat for a couple of days in every small part. You’ll probably want to start with a small herd in a back pasture. We have some heifers and steers we keep back until they’re ready to meet the bull or the processor, so they are a good experiment. Take a nice pasture that already has a water supply available and a good perimeter fence.

(We stumbled onto an interesting idea of creating pie slices and moving the two long sides of it. This is until we can install a nice electric line inside that perimeter fence to power it. Put your charger at the point with some ground rods so you don’t have to move the charger every day. Sounds simple, but I’m writing it down here so you don’t have to figure it out – you’ve already got tons to figure out. This is just to get you started.)

4. Start buying hay with the money you’d spend on fertilizer, fuel, and equipment for hay. It should buy you the same amount or more. Quit growing your own. Import other people’s grass onto your farm and use it to fertilize your own fields.  Now, I’ve been starting to lay out the hay on the bad spots (over-farmed) spots in my fields (even gullies) so the cattle eat and manure right there. In those spots by two years’ time you have a very thick growth coming on where nothing much did before. (Of course, if they don’t eat it down, it’s hard to disk, but we’re really moving back to permanent pastures everywhere, anyway, aren’t we?) But put those hay bales out where they’d do some good – not just in a feed lot where you are having to move it back out to the pastures again. Takes some foresight – but you’ll use your tractor a lot less during the winter as you do.

5. Start moving your cattle through those former hay pastures. Under managed grazing, you’ll get through these about three or four times over eight months. In mob grazing, you’ll get through about twice a year. All that former hay ground can start making beef pounds while it’s fertilized at the same time. Win-win.

6. Study the temporary layouts you are using. Cattle need three things – water, grass, and shelter. They actually like trees better than barns or sheds. So the best layout for a pasture is a savanna, where there are these huge shade trees popping up every 50 feet or so on a grid. You see, grass likes partial shade and cows keep eating in the shade. (One tip I heard was to trim off the lower limbs as high as you can – this keeps the shade moving, so the cows don’t just drop everything under the trees. You still need a lot of trees to pull that concept off – another blog post, another time.) In “Grass-Fed Cattle”, Julius Ruechel says that you can take your whole farm and simply rotate the cattle through it as you go. Our own farm is dotted with ponds, strips of woods, and waterways that are full in the spring, so this is a no-brainer.

7. Study where you are putting fences – if you keep putting them in the same spot, maybe you should put a permanent fence up there. We use steel t-bar posts for corners and just leave them there with the insulators on (so we can find them later) and this tells us where we are coming back to all the time.

8. This brings up another point – use what you got to start with. There’s a lot of great fiberglass poles out there and fancy-dancy geared wind-up reels. We use reels for power cords and our old rebar poles with plastic insulators on them. (If you can’t shove them in with a heavy leather glove on your hand, you can carry a hammer on your belt for frozen or summer-hardened ground.) Invest in better gear when your cows start bringing you more profit from the lower overhead.

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These are just the transitioning steps. Find and read everything you possibly can about the subject. Clip articles and put them in binders so you can re-read them. Buy books and dog-ear the good parts. Keep all this stuff by your easy chair so you can read when you come in to cool off or to warm up. Attend extension meetings and ask for these subjects to be brought up when they only want to talk about machine shops, grain storage, and crop prices.

And talk to your neighbors when you can. Compare notes.

This stuff can be done. And you can make a nice five-figure income which pays all your costs every year, as well as taxes and some nice retirement CD’s. The alternative is going broke and watching the trees take over. Still pretty, but not as exciting as raising cattle and getting all that good exercise plus lots of great beef in your diet.

PS. Just set up an Amazon mini-store so you can find all your books on raising grass fed beef cattle in (mostly) one place. Check it out!

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”