Ranching & Farming of the Future

[CattleHand]

What will ranching and farming be like in the future? And more importantly are you ready for it. My grandpa use to castrate his bull calves with a pocket knife and a rope to hold them down. They rode horses to school and pulled their haying equipment with horses. Those days are gone. But my question is when will the tractor be gone, and what will replace it? And what else do you expect on a global scale. Will the midwest still be the bread basket of the world? What can we expect?

 

[bandit80]

I don't know if the tractor will ever be gone, but at one time farmers probably thought they would farm with horses forever to.

Nobody can tell the future, (no matter what the kookoo lady on the corner says) but I believe only the efficient farmers and ranchers will survive. With fuel, fertilizer,feed, and other costs increasing, we as cattle producers must find ways to deliver a quality product to consumers as efficient as we can.

 

[bigbull338]

yes ranching will change with the times.the older ranchers will do things the way they was taught.an the new 1s coming on will do things the new they learn them.an new ways todo things will come along.

 

[ChrisB]

There has already been a lot of progression on drought resistent crops, I would guess the technology will continue to improve which may open up a lot of land that in the past wasn't considered suitable for crop farming. I also think yeilds will continue to increase with technology.

I don't really have any idea of what will happen in the meat sect of agriculture. For cattle, I've always wondered if someday people may actually be breeding for twins and triplets. That may sound crazy now, but as available grazing land decreases and the population keeps increasing we will have to look for ways to make cows more efficient. There are cows now that seem to continually have twins and raise them successfully, maybe in the future that will become a more desirable trait.

Or maybe the libs will have brainwashed future generations into thinking that meat is bad and the raising of livestock will cease to exist.

 

[Dave]

There are still some pretty large parts of this country where horses are used every day in raising cattle. Calves are still roped and drug to a branding fire. And if done right it can be the quickest most efficient way to do it. Cattle are still fed using horses in some areas because the horse will always start when it is -30 whereas the tractor might not. With the price of fuel continuing to rise we may all be looking at going back to using horses more.

 

[CattleHand]

With the price of fuel continuing to rise we may all be looking at going back to using horses more.

I dont think so. I think tractors and such will be eventually obsolete. Alot of threads come up about where the money in farming is. IMO there is alot of money for those that can improve on the current system and develop a more efficient and less costly system. Drought resistant crops and such are a big plus and there will be alot of money in genetically altering everything that is raised.

 

[Brandonm22]

What will ranching and farming be like in the future? And more importantly are you ready for it. My grandpa use to castrate his bull calves with a pocket knife and a rope to hold them down. They rode horses to school and pulled their haying equipment with horses. Those days are gone. But my question is when will the tractor be gone, and what will replace it? And what else do you expect on a global scale. Will the midwest still be the bread basket of the world? What can we expect?

I don't think that the tractor will EVER become obsolete; however the future tractor is probably not going to look that much like a John Deere 4020. I saw a self propelled forage windrower on the Discovery Channel one of the Land Grant Universities was operating. Clearly the goal is to get rid of the operator. I think we will live to see one old guy 70 year old guy sitting at his desk operating a couple of tractors and combines by remote control. Eventually, (and I don't know how long this will take) we will be able to fire the remote operator and the planting and harvesting will be done by true robotic tractors.

Cattlehand is also right. Future genetically modified crops will take a lot less tillage (perennial corn anyone??) and need a lot less inputs with ever increasing yields.

 

[Dave]

I am not saying that there can't be improvements in the current system. Precision farming has done some absolutely amazing things and continues to grow. GPS guided spray rigs that drive themselves so there is no overlap. I know a guy who has one. You don't drive after the first pass, you just sit and watch the gauges. It does everything else. Fertilizer applicators that detect the amount of green on the plant leaves and apply fertilizer accordingly while you are driving over them. Combines that measure yield while you are working and then produce a map that shows the yield so you can fertilize accordingly. They say perennial wheat is almost here. Pen riders in a large feedlot with a palm pilot on the saddle to enter information about sick calves getting pulled from the pen to doctor. There are some things that have and will continue to improve farming. There always has been and there always will be. But that palm pilot packing pen rider is still on a horse. That GPS guided spray rig, combine, tractor is still a tractor. And when you go to gather 350 pairs out of 30,000 acres of brush, timber, rocks, and canyons you still better be able saddle up.

 

[Brandonm22]

I Pen riders in a large feedlot with a palm pilot on the saddle to enter information about sick calves getting pulled from the pen to doctor.

Maybe future lines of cattle (either through scientific linebreeding, cloning, or genetic modifications) will be healthier and require less doctoring. With an increasing amount of corn being diverted to fuel productions, it MAY even be presumptuous to assume that there will still be pens or pen riders in the future. Future cattle may be faster growing, faster finishing (see chickens) and they MAY have to do that on grass and corn stubble.

There are some things that have and will continue to improve farming. There always has been and there always will be. But that palm pilot packing pen rider is still on a horse. That GPS guided spray rig, combine, tractor is still a tractor. And when you go to gather 350 pairs out of 30,000 acres of brush, timber, rocks, and canyons you still better be able saddle up.

The population of the United States is 303,730,000.
It was only 123,202,624 in 1940.
In 2050 it is estimated to be ~$400 million in 2050.
http://www.npg.org/facts/us_pop_projections.htm
It is entirely possible that few if any American 30,000 acre ranches will remain intact if that growth rate continues well into the future. That 30,000 acre ranch MAY be more efficiently used by irrigating it and putting it into corn/ethanol production or turned into 150,000 single family garden homes.

 

[Dave]

That 30,000 acres that I refered to is rangeland. That is all it will ever be. It is straight up and down, rocks, timber, and canyons that are scary to ride a horse into. Lots of it doesn't have much in the way of top soil. And if it were turned that would be lost. It wont be farmed. My point was they have and are making amazing things happen on farm land but there are still places where a horse and a rope is where evolution has stopped. There will still be feedlots. What are they going to do with all that distillers waste. There are a lot of cattle fed on other waste products from producing human food. Will we go back to just finishing in feedlots instead of feeding for longer periods? I think so. Will we go to growing out feeders further on grass because there is a lot of land suitable only to be used as pasture or range? Again I think so because it is a better use of resources. That is what I see for the future, better smarter use of our limited resources. And a part, be it a small part, is still going to be a cow getting into some canyon to eat grass. In doing so she will be converting the sun's energy into a useable product. And someone will still have to get on a horse and chase that cow up out of that canyon.

 

[Hippie Rancher]

And someone will still have to get on a horse and chase that cow up out of that canyon.

Or maybe her RF tag will trigger a solar-powered gate to shut on her when she comes into a trap for salt, water, or some other enticement. ;-)

 

[Caustic Burno]

Everything comes and goes doesn't matter if it is the horse, tractor or you and I.
The earth can only sustain so many people, it is like any other species that over populate there enviroment, they have a die off. Spanish Influenza got millions world wide the plague got 1/3 the worlds population, it is written and it will happen again.
Genetic inhancements is scary to me in some aspects that we get the lid off of Pandora's box and can't get it back on. I see so many things today that have been destroyed by the improvement of an area.
One example is cattlemen on the gulf coast bringing in the Chinese Tallow tree for wind breaks on the coastal parrie. The parrie doesn't exsist any longer and neither does the parrie chicken, as well as other species.
We are only one blink of the eye from an event we go the way of the dinosaur.

 

[grannysoo]

Genetic inhancements is scary to me in some aspects that we get the lid off of Pandora's box and can't get it back on. I see so many things today that have been destroyed by the improvement of an area.

We are only one blink of the eye from an event we go the way of the dinosaur.

I totally agree with this. Times change, things change, but all change is not good. The lid is off Pandora's box and it's never going back on. The people playing with the toys in that box need to be very careful. Minor changes today can grow into huge problems tomorrow.

 

[dun]

Genetic inhancements is scary to me in some aspects that we get the lid off of Pandora's box and can't get it back on. I see so many things today that have been destroyed by the improvement of an area.

We are only one blink of the eye from an event we go the way of the dinosaur.

I totally agree with this. Times change, things change, but all change is not good. The lid is off Pandora's box and it's never going back on. The people playing with the toys in that box need to be very careful. Minor changes today can grow into huge problems tomorrow.

When man thought that he conquered fire it started down the slippery slope. The slope is just more slippery and steeper today.

 

[blkbuckaroo]

Well i live on the edge of the great basin,and around here people are still tied to the old ways of doing things,such as roping to brand cattle,feeding with draft horses and wagon,etc.Not all people and sometimes you just need to get a job done now,so it can be time specific in alot of cases.But if things change drastically,we all know the old ways ,though more time consuming and much more work are things we can draw from and go back to if nessasary.Just my two cents. :cboy:

 

[Brandonm22]

That 30,000 acres that I refered to is rangeland. That is all it will ever be. It is straight up and down, rocks, timber, and canyons that are scary to ride a horse into. Lots of it doesn't have much in the way of top soil. And if it were turned that would be lost. It wont be farmed. My point was they have and are making amazing things happen on farm land but there are still places where a horse and a rope is where evolution has stopped.

Let me divide it into 55 acre hunting parcels and I probably could sell the whole thing in 72 months and generate a fast $50 million (minus the cost of surveying and building roads). In 40 years and another 90 million people who knows what you can do with it. New factories and power plants are having to be built farther and farther out into the country to comply with the Draconian EPA air quality standards. There very very easily could be a whole completely new town on that property in future decades. If it is federal land, they are PROBABLY going to run the cows off of it in the next 30 years (maybe sooner) to appease powerful groups like the Sierra Club. IF it is privately owned land, my property taxes (on raw land....not in town) have gone from 82 cents an acre to $2.80 in just the last 6 years. IF their taxes go to $3 an acre those 360 pairs are going to have to cover $90,000 a year ($250 a cow). Unless the price of beef gets to be much higher I doubt that that will pay in the future. I honestly hope that I am wrong; but an increasingly urban, increasingly class conscious electorate, hungry for govt bennies like universal health care, govt. funded pre-k, low income housing, etc is very likely to repeal policies like ag exemptions, current use taxation levels, etc. I very well could be wrong, but I suspect that those ranches are living breathing dinosaurs. A teenager reading this today is very likely to see the vast majority of those operations disapear during their lifetime.

 

[SCRUBS620]

Everything comes and goes doesn't matter if it is the horse, tractor or you and I.
The earth can only sustain so many people, it is like any other species that over populate there enviroment, they have a die off. Spanish Influenza got millions world wide the plague got 1/3 the worlds population, it is written and it will happen again.
Genetic inhancements is scary to me in some aspects that we get the lid off of Pandora's box and can't get it back on. I see so many things today that have been destroyed by the improvement of an area.
One example is cattlemen on the gulf coast bringing in the Chinese Tallow tree for wind breaks on the coastal parrie. The parrie doesn't exsist any longer and neither does the parrie chicken, as well as other species.
We are only one blink of the eye from an event we go the way of the dinosaur.

Good post!! Alot of the problems that are constantly brought up on this board are directly related to population explosions. The price of fertilizer, the price of fuel, the price of land, goverment reguulations, encroachment, the list goes on. The population has to stop growing. If someone does not step in to enforce this, mother nature will. I think the death toll might even be greater due to todays weakened population. We were a much hardier breed back when these outbreaks took place. Now with the improvement in medicine alot of the people who would not have survived before do and go on to reproduce, multiplying these weakened genes in our population. Dont mean to sound harsh but its true. The deaths we saved before are probalby going to be multiplied at some point. The starving children in Africa is a horrible thing correct? I dont think anyone would argue with that but I heard one time that it was directly linked to everyone there getting vaccinated for smallpox. Without smallpox the population exploded far beyond what the land could tolerate. Now there is an AIDS epidemic. Again we are fighting to save everyone but what is the point if they dont start taking responsibility for their population. If we do succeed and defeat AIDS, that will be more people to reproduce, the population will grow even faster and then eventually something else will kick in to reduce the numbers. As the population density grows so will the speed of the spread of these diseases. It will be an epidemic before anyone realizes it. I am sure that every great civilization thought they were invincible also, now they are just ruins buried in the dirt. Someday they will be digging around our cities wondering how we lived and survived without their technology.

 

[Onthebit]

On one hand we are breeding for deficient genetics: Belgian Blue...on the other we are breeding a nation of idiots: the human race!

 

[Brandonm22]

Man is no different than any other species. As long as he is comfortable and relatively unstressed he will breed to utilize his available food supply. In 10,000 B.C. when we were all hunter gatherers, the global human population was an estimated 4 million people. Around this time some long forgotten super genius figured out how to increase the harvest of important grain seeds by planting them in the earth. More geniuses invented how to herd animals, irrigate crops, build fishing boats, make bread, that heat would make soybeans edible, rice cultivation, corn cultivation, plant breeding, milking mammals like cows, sheep, goats, camels, horses, llamas, and water buffaloe, sail boats, harnessing animal power, fish nets, dig wells, vineyards, wine, etc. By Jesus's day the human population had exploded to 170 million. The so-called 'Dark Ages' were actually quite innovative. Horse collars, stirrups, wind mills, steel plow points, crop rotations came from Europe while in Native America plant breeders were developing squashes, potatoes, corn, peppers, tomatoes, and other staple food crops. Population doubled to ~340 million. The globalization of agricultural technology led to another doubling by ~the American Revolution. Then the industrialization of agriculture hastened the population growth. Reapers, steel plows, threshers, improved crop varieties, the development of breeds of livestock, whalers, improved fishing boats, canning, railroads, etc allowed more people to eat enough to live long enough to breed and raise children. Global world population passed 2 billion in ~the 1920s. Tractors, electricity, improved plant breeding, hybrid corn, Holsteins, fish farming, A.I., combines, chemical fertilizers, margarine, vegetable oils, trucking, pesticides, plastics, refrigeration, embryo transfer, genetically modified crops, etc have all helped raise our production and increase the amount of food that gets to the eating public. We reached 4 billion in the 1970s. Now we have 6,658 million people (and climbing). Our job in agriculture is to do what we have done in the past and improve on the crops and livestock under our care and invent better management practices so that we can continue to produce more food with less land.

http://www.worldhistorysite.com/population.html
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

 

[SCRUBS620]

Man is no different than any other species. As long as he is comfortable and relatively unstressed he will breed to utilize his available food supply. In 10,000 B.C. when we were all hunter gatherers, the global human population was an estimated 4 million people. Around this time some long forgotten super genius figured out how to increase the harvest of important grain seeds by planting them in the earth. More geniuses invented how to herd animals, irrigate crops, build fishing boats, make bread, that heat would make soybeans edible, rice cultivation, corn cultivation, plant breeding, milking mammals like cows, sheep, goats, camels, horses, llamas, and water buffaloe, sail boats, harnessing animal power, fish nets, dig wells, vineyards, wine, etc. By Jesus's day the human population had exploded to 170 million. The so-called 'Dark Ages' were actually quite innovative. Horse collars, stirrups, wind mills, steel plow points, crop rotations came from Europe while in Native America plant breeders were developing squashes, potatoes, corn, peppers, tomatoes, and other staple food crops. Population doubled to ~340 million. The globalization of agricultural technology led to another doubling by ~the American Revolution. Then the industrialization of agriculture hastened the population growth. Reapers, steel plows, threshers, improved crop varieties, the development of breeds of livestock, whalers, improved fishing boats, canning, railroads, etc allowed more people to eat enough to live long enough to breed and raise children. Global world population passed 2 billion in ~the 1920s. Tractors, electricity, improved plant breeding, hybrid corn, Holsteins, fish farming, A.I., combines, chemical fertilizers, margarine, vegetable oils, trucking, pesticides, plastics, refrigeration, embryo transfer, genetically modified crops, etc have all helped raise our production and increase the amount of food that gets to the eating public. We reached 4 billion in the 1970s. Now we have 6,658 million people (and climbing). Our job in agriculture is to do what we have done in the past and improve on the crops and livestock under our care and invent better management practices so that we can continue to produce more food with less land.

http://www.worldhistorysite.com/population.html
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

I am not saying let everyone starve but there is a limit to what this earth can provide. Even if we can get it to the maximum production, the swings between good years and bad at the top would be devastating. Better education and incentives to not have 6 kids would be a good start. People on welfare see kids as an opportunity to get more aid. Welfare will not allow them to work because then they would lose their benefits. More kids in a family in other countries means an extra body to earn money. Also, those in China and India are no longer content to eat meagerly.