How to Inflation Proof Your Farm By Greg Judy

CLARK, Missouri: 

With the price of everything skyrocketing higher there are some things that we can do around our farm to lessen the effects of inflation.

Let’s dig in and discuss our opportunities that we have as regenerative graziers. The beautiful thing about a well-managed grazing farm is that our overheads are minimal to start with.

With a good grazing program, we don’t need commercial fertilizer to graze livestock on our farms. We need to stay focused on the fact that we are in the solar energy collection business. We need to learn to manage our daily grazing techniques to maximize leaf growth from sunlight without commercial fertilizer.

I am getting emails and phone calls from folks all over the country who are scared to death of where fertilizer prices are going. Cheap commercial fertilizers are history for 2022 and beyond. If you’re dependent on commercial fertilizer to grow grass, then you need to change what you are doing right now. The reply I get when I tell people to stop using commercial fertilizer is that they will go broke.

I explain to them that just having 20-30% clover in your pastures is a great place to start. Legumes have the unique ability to fix nitrogen from the air into the root nodules of the clover plants. Companion grass plants use this nitrogen for their growth. Maximum nitrogen fixation is obtained when you inoculate the seed before broadcasting or drill- ing. 50-100 lbs of nitrogen is the normal rate that legumes can provide. That is a huge savings if you calculate the cost of buying nitrogen fertilizer.

Stop right now and let’s discuss the alternative choices you must make to earn a good living on your farm. With ruminant animals we have these wonderful free fertilizer machines working for us every day.

These amazing ruminants can eat the forage grown by sunlight, gain weight, reproduce themselves every year and provide a valuable healthy protein that we can sell to consumers. Folks, it takes grazing management to make this happen without commercial fertilizer. First and foremost, we need to get control of the livestock herd and start some type of rotational graz- ing program.

Most producers are just scared to change what they are doing, which is continuous grazing.
They feel like they might fail, or folks will start talking about them behind their backs. The one complaint I hear when I start talking about moving livestock is that they don’t have time to do it. That is a terrible excuse if you plan on staying in the livestock business today.

If you want to be profitable every single year, you have no choice but to change what you’re doing right now. Don’t waste another minute, educate yourself by going to a grazing school or reading something from someone who is doing it successfully. There is no need to reinvent the wheel on this, just learn it and get start-ed immediately.

The biggest problem that I see as I drive across the country is that very few livestock owners are managing their pastures at all. Huge pastures after huge pastures are eaten off to where they look like a concrete parking lot. No cross fencing, no rotation to be seen, cows scattered across the whole bare pasture eating it into the dirt, ponds destroyed by let ting the cows swim in them along with pooping and peeing in them. Producers will go broke with this type of management.

With the new technology in electric fencing and durable pasture watering systems, the sky is the limit on what we can do on our farms today. Group your ani- mals together by training them to electric fence and start rotating your animals. By increasing the stocking density of your herd, the amount of manure and urine is much better distributed throughout the pasture.

In the future with this type of management you will grow more grass and be able to graze more livestock than you do today. Oh, and by the way, no commercial fertilizer bill anymore, your live- stock herd is your new fertilizer machine.

Did you know that with continuous grazing it takes 27 years to cover every square foot of your farm with a manure pile? With managed rotational grazing, it takes three years to cover every square foot with a manure pile.

If you’re tired of giving your calf crop away every year to the fertilizer companies then you have the power to make the decision to just stop today. I bet you can do it, take control of your farm future today and go for it! Your land, your livestock, your family, and your pocketbook will all be much healthier I promise you.

Greg and Jan Judy graze South Poll beef cattle, parasite-resistant hair sheep, pastured hogs, and layers on 1620 acres. Contact Greg at [email protected] or visit greenpasturesfarm.net. His books are available from the SGF Bookshelf page