Honey, I Shrunk the Cow

  • Today’s cattle are much bigger than they were back in the 1920s. They’ve been bred to big and beefy. But, it turns out, you can actually produce more meat with the smaller cattle. (Photo by Keith Weller, courtesy of the USDA)

Because of feed and energy prices,
some cattle farmers are scaling back.
They’re not reducing the size of their
herd. They’re reducing the size of their
cows. Kinna Ohman reports:

Transcript

Because of feed and energy prices,
some cattle farmers are scaling back.
They’re not reducing the size of their
herd. They’re reducing the size of their
cows. Kinna Ohman reports:

Today’s cattle are much bigger than they were back in the 1920s. They’ve been bred to
big and beefy. But, it turns out, you can actually produce more meat with the smaller
cattle.

Richard Gradwohl has been breeding miniature cattle for more than forty years. He
says with today’s larger beef cattle on five acres, you can produce 2400 pounds of
meat. He can raise as much as 7000 pounds of beef on that same five acres.

“It’s surprising to me how many large cattle breeders call me almost every day
because they’re interested in reducing the size of their animals to achieve more
feed efficiency.”

Gradwohl thinks the emphasis on breeding large cattle might be reversing.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

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Farmland Goes Up in Value

Farm real estate values are at record levels in the region, according to the
U-S-D-A’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

Farm real estate values are at record levels throughout the region, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


The value of farmland and buildings in the Great Lakes region averages close to three thousand dollars an acre. That’s an all-time high in most states. In some places, the value of farmland went up fourteen percent from last year.


The USDA report says low interest rates and competition for land is helping to drive up prices. Dave Lehnert is with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Michigan. He says farmers are facing competition from developers who are buying up valuable agricultural land near cities.


“The closer you get to cities, people are more willing to drive further, people are even driving an hour and a half to work, they just like to be out in the country so they have to compete with people who want to by farmland for housing developments.”


Lehnert says he’s seeing a lot of small and mid-size farmers selling their land to large farming operations, and to developers.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

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