Agriculture is stewardship of the resources used to grow the food on your table: Blackshirt feedyard and grazing helps sagebrush ecosystems.
Agriculture and stewardship of the resources used to grow the food on your table
If you're like me, then you didn't grow up in or around agriculture in this state. As such, you may not be aware of how that field, like any other, changes and updates.
After all, agriculture is a business as much as it is a way of life and so those in the business are just as keen to maximize output and minimize inputs as any other would be.
Unfortunately, one of the narratives around agriculture can be that it's harmful, or exploitative, of the natural environment. That has not been what I've found since learning more.
Agriculture is a change to the natural environment. That is, cattle were not roaming the great plains prior to humans coming in. There were ruminants (buffalo), but not cattle. Neither were there fields with corn in rows. What humans have done has modified the environment so that we can produce enough food for the greatly-increased number of people in this world at a price that means that more than just the wealthy can eat well (or eat at all).
The change made to the natural world is inevitable if we are to feed ourselves. Most reasonable people accept this. Doing so needn't (and in almost all cases doesn't) require ruining the environment or harming animals in the process, however.
This is critical to remember about agriculture, particularly as more and more moves are afoot in Colorado to regulate it, said regulation being pushed by rabid advocates and ignorant politicians all while abetted by an ignorant media.
The next two posts today provide a couple examples for you to read up on if needed, or to share with others who might be unaware.
They are examples of how agriculture can not only grow our food but be good stewards of the resources we use to do it.
Blackshirt feeders: the most environmentally friendly feedyard in the world?
I was emailing with Rachel Gabel recently and she told me about a story she was working on. It was about a Nebraskan who left for college, got a couple graduate degrees, worked awhile all over the world, and then came back to open up a feedyard.
Not just any feedyard, however. He opened a feedyard that represented the sum of knowledge he'd gained as a feedyard consultant, which had the newest developments in minimizing the impact of the yard on the environment as well as being economically viable.
That FencePost article is linked first below and delves into the man's personal history as well as the technical aspects of his feedyard. Interesting reading.
In keeping with the theme of the day, I want to highlight how the feedyard manages its waste and runoff because in so doing it will demonstrate how thoughtful design and improvements in technology can allow us to do even better than we currently do on growing food while caring for our world.
I've written before about feedyards and runoff (and the media's lopsided coverage of same -- see the second link below). Knowing what I know and not wanting you to walk away with the wrong impression, I want to be careful to note that feedyards that DON'T have the same technology as Blackshirt are not somehow deficient. They're not.
It would be more accurate to think of Blackshirt as a new car that gets 30 MPG vs. an older one that gets 25 MPG. The 25 MPG is still good, it's just that the newer one is an improvement on that. Any well managed and maintained feedyard is doing well, but Blackshirt has improved the process.
Another example of what I mean about Blackshirt being an improvement on an already efficient and careful system can be found in the "Related" content below.
What is Blackshirt doing with waste and runoff that is new?
It has to do with the lining of the pens and the management of the waste. Per the FencePost article, each of the animal pens is lined with compacted concrete (compacting it minimizes seepage through the concrete) and they all funnel their runoff to a single location.**
That location has an anaerobic digester and this is where the collected waste from the pens goes.
If you are unfamiliar, anaerobic metabolism (as opposed to aerobic, the "an" here being a prefix meaning "without") is a form of metabolism that bacteria use that burns their food without the need for air. An anaerobic digester therefore is a sealed vessel that can take things like waste and process it without being open to the air.
If you are curious for more detail (including the fact that it isn't just cattle waste that you can process in an anaerobic digester), I put a link to a pretty accessible explainer page second below.
One of the outputs of anaerobic digestion is methane (natural gas), so it is expected that Blackshirt will be generating its own natural gas. Enough for its own use (natural gas is used to power boilers which steam grain prior to it being turned into flakes) at first, but eventually they will generate a surplus when the feedyard is full. This surplus will be piped over to join the natural gas pipeline network for sale and use in compressed natural gas vehicles and in heating (or in any of the other thousand uses for natural gas like synthesizing fertilizer).
A waste byproduct, then, becomes something that is put to use. Not just that, a more powerful greenhouse gas (methane) gets captured and changed into the less powerful CO2 by combustion.
Let's back up a little for some reality before wrapping up. Measures like those at Blackshirt represent the newest and greatest. That almost surely means "most expensive", at least in the short term.
This is not feasible for every single operator to do, whether they are building new, remodeling, or retrofitting. My purpose in putting this in front of you is not, therefore, to show you what every single feedlot can (or will) do. As I say above, there is nothing missing or deficient in what feedlots do now.
My purpose was to show you an example of current technology that can do an even better job at managing the environmental impacts, and one whose output is not only less harmful, but a useful and valuable quantity. The methane can be sold and put to use.
This makes it environmentally friendlier, and makes for an even more efficient way to grow our food. The fact that it could be viewed as an investment, as distinguished from a government-mandated upgrade, means (I think) a greater likelihood of quick and voluntary adoption. It makes any adoption less of a burden on everyone.
**If the thought of the animals standing on concrete all the time made your knees hurt like it did mine, the animals are not on that concrete all day. The pens are to be lined with straw or similar. I.e. the concrete is there for drainage and a softer material is laid down for the animals.
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2024/06/03/gaines-colorado-sun-left-out-lopsided-feedlot-story/
https://www.epa.gov/agstar/how-does-anaerobic-digestion-work
Related:
The Sun article below had an interesting niblet in it. Quoting:
"Keeping a few inches of plant stubble on the ground after harvesting a crop is one method. The program also encourages farmers to minimize soil disturbance, increase the diversity of plants grown on the field, keep live plant roots in the soil and integrate livestock into farming practices."
Going by the tone of the article, you might think that this was a revolutionary new idea that CO's farming experts were bringing to the masses.
I'm not an expert, but I go by feedyards all the time. To my untrained eyes, it sure seems like I've seen this happening for every single year I've lived out on the Plains. The feedyards are surrounded by corn fields. Whether for grain or silage, the corn stubble is always left in the field and animals are turned out into the field to munch on leftovers.
Said animals then leaving their waste to help fertilize the field (in addition to the scraped off waste from the feedyard being spread on the field.
Good to note Sun, but hardly new.
https://coloradosun.com/2024/09/17/colorado-farmers-ranchers-soil-health/
Cattle grazing, done right, can help sagebrush communities.
I recently saw a USDA study on cattle grazing and sagebrush communities (sagebrush community is synonymous with sagebrush steppe and both mean the kind of ecosystem of flat land populated with grasses and sagebrush).
I wanted to share because it ...
--fits with today's theme well
--jibes with what my host told me when I was down in the Lower Arkansas River Valley about grazing (though in that case it was shortgrass prairie)
--is a good example of how we can grow food, provide economic benefits, make use of land that might not have other use, and STILL be good stewards of the environment we all share.
When I was down looking at irrigation in SE Colorado, my host told me about how grazing can actually be a benefit to the health of shortgrass prairie--when it's done right. Cropping the grass, done at the right time of year and with enough time for recovery**, is helpful in driving growth to the roots of the grass. It makes the field more resilient with healthier soil and plants.
The USDA study linked first below says essentially the same thing as my host did, though for a different type of ecosystem. Quoting the press release (with links intact in case you want to find the paper itself):
"As recently published in the scientific journal Ecosphere, the collaborative research effort among Agricultural Research Service (ARS) rangeland scientists at Burns, Oregon, and Fort Collins, Colorado, challenged the outdated dogma that livestock grazing in the sagebrush steppe always negatively impacts these ecosystems and, in fact, can convey desirable outcomes, particularly in regard to limiting both wildfire risk and invasive annual grasses."
"In addressing these ecological challenges, ARS scientists discovered that strategically applying livestock grazing prior to the occurrence of climate-induced wildfires can modify sagebrush steppe characteristics in ways that decrease fire probability and severity in the communities, promote biodiversity while reducing postfire annual grass invasion, fire-induced loss of native bunchgrasses, and fire damage to soil biocrusts, the collection of bacteria, fungi and mosses on the soil surface."
The bits about fire mitigation were intriguing and timely for me. I have been reading an annotated version of Laura Ingalls Wilder's autobiography recently. In it she mentions several instances of prairie fires and narrow escapes from damage/death. Clearly, fire on flatlands is not a new problem!
Wildfire mitigation is also a timely topic in this state. It's been the subject of lawsuits and state level policy. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to grow food, provide income, and reduce the severity/damage of wildfires? According to this study, this seems to be the case with thoughtful management.
Do take note of the other benefits, however, especially if you are not involved in agriculture and/or run in circles with those that are not. That second quoted paragraph (and the study itself) is full of the kinds of terms I usually hear bandied about by environmentalists. Bandied about by those who are apt to hold to the view that, per the quotes above, "... livestock grazing in the sagebrush steppe always negatively impacts these ecosystems".
Remember the conclusions of this study in their broad strokes if not in their details. Remember this when we debate leasing public land for grazing. Remember this when we talk climate change.
Growing the food we eat need not be at odds with being good stewards of the land we will pass on to our progeny.
**Important context here: my host made a couple points in regards to what I term recovery here. You have to have pasture enough to rotate your cows around. Cattle, like all of us, have their favorites and will eat those grasses to death before moving on to the ones they don't like (think about you eating up all your fries before turning to your broccoli). Being able to move cattle around from field to field allows the grazed field to rest and build up some above-ground foliage before the next round of grazing.
Unfortunately, some outfits do not have the resources to move their cattle. They don't have the land and they don't have the money to lease pasture. This often results in their fields being exhausted. I do not blame the folks that are in this position, but this is an example of how grazing can be bad for pastureland.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2024/ars-scientists-discover-strategically-applied-livestock-grazing-can-benefit-sagebrush-communities/