Doesn't matter how much you and I despise them. The bigger row crop guys here revolve around the subsidies. They're penciled in to every bid they make. Even the text updates on cash bids from the local elevators showed what the government would potentially pay this fall right in their bids for grain. "We're paying $X.xx, .gov of giving you $X.xx, that's over XX.xx! We're open mon - fri."

I was basically made fun of for almost a decade for using cover crops. It was a "waste of time", "all your fertilizer is tied up", "the ground will never dry", "the stand will suffer", "you can't graze in the spring!", yet the subsidy appears and now they all think they're great and line up for the money.

Grazing stubble here is "detrimental" to your ground and only the broke nut jobs do it. The guys in Nebraska only do it because .gov taxes them so much they have to. Just ask any random person at the coffee shop, they'll explain it to you. Guarantee a $X.xx subsidy and it'd become, "healthy" for your ground overnight and their hired hands would be offering to string single wires with you where they tore out fence a year ago.

The Shepherd has the sheep grouped tight here.