Climate and weather have shaken us this year, as last, with smoke and drought. Our regrowth which we depend on on our pastured ranges and home fields just hasn’t happened. This means feed shortages for our base herds of cattle.
Now just what to do about it is the question we all have to answer. Overgrazing is not an answer as that just deepens the problem.
Some have said that you can’t feed your way out of a drought; in other words it is too costly to the bottom line to purchase feed, certainly above your own cost to produce the same feed.
One strategy is to keep the base herd, which can be fed affordably, and increase numbers when feed is plenty and affordable.
Just what to do to manage our lands to achieve an optimum production for nutritious cattle feed either as standing plants or as preserved feed (forage) is more difficult if traditional weather patterns change.
Where do we turn for advice? Neighbours might be one source of advice, but typically we used to turn to public employees in the Ministry of Agriculture.
Over the past two decades or so, government has reduced the number of staff in advisory positions for farmers and ranchers. So we haven’t been in the habit of seeking to get behind the locked doors to the offices beyond.
We are fortunate, now, that dwindling of advisory capacity has be reversed. New recruitment has increased again the warm bodies in the field and in the offices willing to assist ranchers and farmers.
I had the pleasure to meet two recently-hired employees. One will work in Quesnel and Williams Lake, and the other 100 Mile and the Chilcotin. They have broad educations in agriculture-related fields.
As producers, we need to get to know them and sort out our respective roles, ie. who is doing what with respect to advancing our knowledge and experimentation (we call these trials and demonstrations of different techniques and practices for seeding, for example).
Taking charge of our future in farming is a given, but it will required as we in the agriculture business develop our own capacity to learn and change methods as appropriate. But we can’t do the difficult stuff alone.
We need to collaborate with government and other producers to bear the costs of the work to be done on our farms, which produce broader public and private benefits.
We are expecting a nutrient management specialist and a forage specialist to be on the job soon.
Like the livestock specialist, these are not regional jobs but rather province-wide in their scope, so our access us somewhat diluted.
Progress is being made in the level of service, however, and that is good. Individual and collective efforts to stay on top of our fields. We all need to say we are “outstanding in our fields”, as a bumper sticker once said.
David Zirnhelt is a rancher in the Cariboo and member of the Cariboo Cattlemen’s Association. He is also chair of the Advisory Committee for the Applied Sustainable Ranching Program at Thompson Rivers University Williams Lake Campus.
