Steve Kenyon

 

 

"The Economics of Grazing" was the theme for a series of workshops this week organized by Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives.

Alberta cattle producer Steve Kenyon described his extended grazing techniques and other keys to sustainable grazing management.

"I'm just a producer and people were interested in what I was doing, so this has developed into an educational side of my ranch as well," Kenyon explains.

He runs around 1200 head of cattle on his operation, despite not owning any land.

"Land prices have outgrown what agriculture can pay for. The alternative is to have investors or landowners that are not willing to do the management anymore. I come in and provide those services for them," he explains. "I rent the land and take care of it. I do it in a sustainable manner and I talk to them about increasing biodiversity and keeping trees, basically improve it. That's usually quite appealing."

He also operates his ranch without any tractors.

"For 15 years now I've been calving out cattle, upwards of 350 cows in a season, and I still have yet to own a tractor. My tractor right now is a bale truck. That's the only piece of equipment that I own," he says.

Kenyon has also figured out a system for allowing his cattle to graze year-round.

"The key to my operation is still the summertime management. That gets me dormant season grazing, which means I can graze as late as possible. After that, I can either look at residue grazing, which is taking the residue from out of the back of the combine, right on the field. You want to make sure you're not moving it around," he explains. "I have also had farmers plant quarters of oats for me and then swath grazed them. As an alternative, bale grazing is also very economical. If you have to feed some harvested feed, then I purchase hay from other people. Not only does it lower our yardage, labour and equipment costs, it also gives a tremendous amount of fertilizer to my pastures."

Ultimately, Kenyon says all producers should regularly analyze the gross margins.

"A gross margin analysis is one of the most important things in any business. It is understanding the difference between your gross product and your cost of production," he explains. "Most people only look at one side. People will talk about getting heavier weaning weights on calves because they creep feed. Really, that's not telling me if you're making a profit or not. On the other side, people will talk about lowering their cost of production by swath grazing. That's also not telling me if you're making a profit. You have to take the margin between the two."


~ Friday, December 17, 2010 ~