Revitalizing cattle farming: Ever-evolving sustainable food production systems

foryourlifeca

See how farmers are solving environmental challenges through sustainable food production with a focus on grazing systems and cattle management.

Transcript

00:00 I'm actually quite optimistic about where the conversation around sustainable production

00:06 is going.

00:07 Sustainable food production is always evolving.

00:09 We're always learning new things and the system isn't perfect, but it's in farmers and agricultural

00:15 producers' best interest to be sustainable.

00:28 The basis of our operation is using beef cattle and to manage cattle, especially grazing systems,

00:36 we have to try to look at how grasses have evolved under grazing pressure and mimic the

00:41 traditional use, which in this area would have been bison grazing.

00:44 So you're building on that knowledge of a migratory or rotational grazing system and

00:49 then infusing new technologies that come along to help facilitate that and improve your management

00:54 of it.

00:56 From my understanding, there's been 60 million or more bison that lived on the plains and

01:01 now that they're no longer here, cattle have replaced them as ruminants.

01:06 And the carbon produced by cattle would be similar to the carbon produced by the bison

01:11 at that time.

01:12 And those grasslands are out there like a giant solar panel capturing sunlight and capturing

01:17 carbon from the air.

01:21 We live in what's called the prairie pothole region.

01:24 So we're dominated by a lot of small wetlands across the landscape and that creates a variability

01:31 when it comes to moisture conditions.

01:33 We've entered into a partnership with a local watershed organization to protect class 1

01:38 and 2 wetlands.

01:39 The production methods that we're trying to implement are a way to be adaptable to those

01:45 varying conditions and also to conserve and maintain those wetlands for their value and

01:50 their ecosystem and not have to alter the landscape.

01:57 To solve environmental challenges, I rely heavily on livestock production, which facilitates

02:03 using perennials in your cropping rotation as well as perennial grasslands for feed resources.

02:10 They're much more resilient to environmental challenges.

02:14 Using grasslands and grazing lands as well as utilizing perennial forages in crop production

02:21 is important because it provides the environmental goods and services that the landscape evolved

02:26 to provide.

02:27 We also grow feed throughout the year and try to feed extensively to our cattle.

02:33 That also gives us the ability to grow other assortments of feed crops when cropping conditions

02:38 aren't ideal for cash cropping.

02:40 And that allows us to diversify the land use and try to extract as much value from the

02:45 land base as possible in a way that's actually beneficial for the land itself.

02:53 The agricultural producers have the ability to make large impact just to the nature of

02:57 the landscape and the land base that they operate on.

03:00 And I think with that ability probably comes responsibility.

03:04 It's challenging.

03:05 Nothing is easy and it's not perfect, but it's rewarding.

03:08 So we persevere.

03:09 [Music]

03:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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