|
Napanee, Ontario | "The whole crops vs. cattle per acre I don't know is a good comparison. Because prime farmland will always be crops. Poor land that is not good for anything else can be utilized by cattle."
But that's just the issue, right? I do get what you are saying and I can recognize the limitations of such a comparison, but prime land hasn't always been just for crops. I think you are underestimating how much crop-able land was used in cattle production, and still is. The coversion of this ground from livestock to crops is the major factor of whats driving the shrinking cattle supply. If there were never any cattle on crop ground, we wouldnt be seeing all the pastures going under the blade, or fence rows getting pulled.
Just look at the posts above. Now I'm obviously not from Iowa, nor know Yogi's ground, but I'm willing to speculate that's he's not running 500 cows on poor / marginal acerage in NE Iowa. And 1234- despite the compArison limitations, he obviously sat down, looked at his acreage, ran some numbers and realized he could making more money per acre growing cash crops instead of hay.
Anyone who has made the decesion to convert their land from livestock to crops around here have all (likely) penciled their way through this comparison. Beef farms in western Ontario have nearly all but disappeared. There's no such thing as marginal ground there, yet the beef operations in Ontario have declined from over 400,000 to close to 250,000 in the last 10 years. The reduction came from guys converting to row crops from cattle. The land isnt sitting idle. What's also overlooked is you still need crop ground to feed the cattle over winter, up here in the north. If you run cattle here, you need to put up winter feed, and that can only (well realistically) be done on crop ground.
The fact is that there are lots of acres of prime-land being used for cattle. But yes, The trend is as you say, towards row crops, and hence why we are seeing the reduction of cattle supply. Heck, i remember all to well how stupid it felt driving the swather over hundreds of acres of hay just so we could watch it all disappear into nickels or red ink with each bale we fed. Meanwhile our neighbor was making more money growing corn on a 10th of the amount of ground... Talk about banging your head against the wall.
Edited by OldMcdonald 5/18/2014 13:47
| |
|
Comparative analysis cattle vs corn
