Do you know the new rules for profit in today's land and livestock game?

Ranching is presented as an incredibly complex "whole" made up of a lot of separate businesses that you must be good at to make a profit...the land, the livestock and the lifestyle.

Using successful grass farmers as examples, Allan explains how leasing land can add up to profits with lower risk than ownership, and can be a means for young people to get into grassland agriculture today.

He emphasizes, "First start a business. Then you can choose to invest your after-tax surplus in deeded farm and ranch real estate."

"The key point is to remember that lifestyle is a result of having gotten the (land and livestock) elements right."

For more insight and analysis into land-based financial issues such as protecting yourself from falling real estate prices without selling your ranch, order Land, Livestock and Life, A grazier's guide to finance. 

Softcover. 224 pages.

Our #1 Bestseller has been EXPANDED and UPDATED for the millennium. A "must" read!

This revised edition has even more information on how to IMPROVE PROFITABILITY with less financial risk.

Completely new chapters cover:

•  Animal health
•  Cash flow versus inventory valuation
•  Running cows and stockers together
•  How to determine the correct stocking rate
•  Finishing cattle on pasture
•  How to use the commodity market without being used by commodity market
•  Running heifers, bulls, dairy beef calves and dairy replacements
• And more.

Allan Nation illustrates his economic theories on stocker cattle by profiling Gordon Hazard. Famous in national beef cattle circles for his penny-pinching ways, Hazard has never lost a dime on stocker cattle in nearly 50 years of graziering. This revised edition shows how Hazard has accumulated and stocked an 1800-head ranch solely from retained stocker profits.

While this book is sure to create controversy in the traditional beef community, Nation backs his views with dollars and sense budgets, including one showing investors how to double their money in a year by investing in stockers.

"Truly outstanding, something no cattleman should be without-at least if he depends on grass for his sustenance." Livestock Weekly

 "Filled with good information on running a stocker cattle business, the book provides information that can be applied to improve business management techniques for other businesses as well." Small Farm Today

 "A neighbor loaned your book to me last week. After 30 minutes skimming through it, I knew I had to have my own copy. Getting started without a big debt load is exactly what my wife and I have been trying to figure out." Mike Wahler, McVeytown, Pennsylvania

224 pages. Softcover. Shipping Weight 1 lb.

Always thought provoking, often controversial, Allan Nation's "Al's Obs" column in The Stockman Grass Farmer Magazine draws readers in with his out-of-the box thinking.

A voracious reader, Nation has the gift of applying whatever he reads to the business and production of pasture-based livestock. By reader request, 20 of his popular columns have been collected here in the form of questions with their answers. Topics range from the practical to the philosophical and cover the following:

            * How do grazing cultural biases hold you back from success?

            * Why does it pay to follow Nature’s model?

            * What are the problems and opportunities of grassland?

            * What’s the proper sequence for profitable grass farming?

            * How can you be proactive in a drought?

            * How can trees save your livestock and your land?

            * How can you excel with lower per animal production?

            * What can history tell us about the future of grass-finished businesses?

            And more.

Each chapter was selected not only for what it can teach grass farmers on how to become better and more profitable with their own operations, but also for their timeless nature. These chapters are as relevant today as they were the day they were first written.

 Nation has been the driving force behind The Stockman Grass Farmer since 1977. The New York Times called the magazine “the bible for people raising animals on pasture.” Nation’s previous books include Knowledge Rich Ranching, Quality Pasture, and Grassfed to Finish.  Al’s Obs, 20 Questions & Their Answers marks his tenth book on grassland farming and artisan meats and milk products.

In Today's Market, Knowledge Separates the Rich from the Rest

At no other time in history is the commodity-priced cattle industry more full of peril and risk for the unwary, or more ripe with profit potential for the aware and the forward thinker. Today, it is knowledge that separates the rich from the rest. Herein is the knowledge Allan Nation has gathered over the last 25 years about how real ranchers financially succeed in the ranching business today.

•  Packed with guidelines on how to read and profit from the cattle cycle
•  Reveals the secrets of high profit grass farms and ranches
•  Explains family and business structure for today's and future generations
•  This is the first book to cover the business management principles of grass farming and ranching.

Who will benefit from this book?

• Ranch owners or investors
•  Anyone investigating grass farming as a first or retirement career
•  Farm or ranch managers
•  Anyone who has profit as their goal
   

Softcover, 336 pages. Shipping Weight 1.5 lbs.

Allan Nation wrote Quality Pasture in 1995.  At that time he relied heavily on the best agricultural grassfed practices he discovered during travels from Argentina to Europe.  The nascent grassfed movement in North America was on the cutting edge, yet limited in the number of practitioners.

Significant changes have occurred in the pasture-based livestock industry since the 1st edition was published.  Many of the ideas Allan described have gone by the wayside, others have grown and flourished as he predicted.

This 2nd edition revised by Jim Gerrish includes some of Allan's original chapters almost intact.  Others have beed edited, updated or newly written by Jim to cover current knowledge and thinking in the pasture-based community.

This updated 2nd edition provides a comprehensive guide to creation and utilization of intensively managed quality pastures for profitable and regenerative grass farming.  New chapters cover what constitutes quality pasture and how to create it; forage testing - why it's important and how to take samples; pasture irrigation; grass-based dairying; and more.

Softcover, 300 pages
$35.60 (includes shipping and handling)

CHANGING VIEWS, CHANGING MINDS.....ON GRASSLAND FARMING

At its heart, Management-intensive Grazing is a thinking person's form of farming.  It requires very little physical work but a lot of thought and planning.  In Paddock Shift, Changing Views on Grassland Farming, Allan Nation provides a wealth of thought provoking ideas to shape your plans for a profitable grass farm - whether it's for beef, dairy, sheep, poultry, pigs or goats.

Nation's  intention is to stay on the edge of change, to show examples of how people with minimal capital can become wealthy while respecting nature.  Drawing on his background as a rancher's son, Nation's viewpoint blends lessons from the business world, history, philosophy, and innovative farming techniques.  Each chapter in Paddock Shift will challenge your own thinking with practical, common sense goals to enhance your grass farming operation.  They are as relevant today as when they were first written.

"Entrepreneurs are rebels who are willing to live at the margin of what exists and what is yet to exist," writes Nation.  "They will draw their strength and comfort solely from the clarity of the vision of the future they will create for themselves.  This means they have to take half-proven ideas and strategies, try them and modify them to make them work.  Read the biographies of successful people, and you'll learn every one of them spent years doing it wrong before they finally got it right.  Many people see this living at the margin as risky.  But the real risk in life is not living at the margin."

So, put your prejudices aside, forget about how Daddy and Grandaddy did it, quit that boring job in town, put your labor where your love is and climb out here on the edge of change with Nation in Paddock Shift.  It's guaranteed to change your view of grassland farming.

Are you missing out on America's hottest farm product? Grass-finished beef is hot. So hot demand out paces supply. Educated consumers have learned about the health benefits - fighting heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity - and are clamoring for it. Producers are rushing to answer their cry, and in the process are harvesting beeves too early, using the wrong genetics, and grazing less than desirable pasture systems. The result is a mishmash of product that is all too frequently tough and flavorless, causing consumers to rethink their choices and give up on grassfed.

Is grass-finished beef really best? Grassfed to Finish answers with a resounding YES! It shows producers who are willing to take the time and care required how to create a consistently tender, flavorful, gourmet grassfed product all year long. And grass-finished beef can be produced virtually everywhere in North America if adequate moisture is available. In the process gourmet grass-finished beef can earn between $600 and $1000 a head, or more while satisfying customers who will continue to choose gourmet grass-finished beef for life.

In Grassfed to Finish you will learn the following:
✔️ Why grain is totally unnecessary for a gourmet "killer" product and actually lowers quality.
✔️ How heavy stockers differ from finishing-weight cattle and how to produce them.
✔️ What it takes to have tender, flavorful meats, every time.
✔️ How genetics can create a high value carcass yield.
✔️ What researchers have learned about the health benefits of grassfed products.
✔️ How to incorporate low-stress tactics for healthy, happy animals.
✔️ How to turn cull cows into gourmet products.
✔️ What educated, health-conscious consumers want and how to serve them.

Grassfed to Finish details proven prototypes from Argentina, Ireland and New Zealand that will allow you to choose elements from all three to fit your area and business plan. It details a Forage Chain of grasses and legumes for year-around grazing. And it explains how grazing green-leaf corn plants create the highest consistent gains for finishing.

The grass program explained here can be used equally well for replacement heifer development or mainstream stocker steers. However, the production and marketing foundation outlined in Grassfed to Finish will serve you well if you decide to expand production and make grassfed beef your primary enterprise.

Those producers who invest the time and educational know-how to produce a gourmet-quality product will reap the highest profits in the grass-finished boom. Only knowledge will separate the exceptional from the "good enough."

Come, believe, learn, practice and prosper.

Softcover. 304 pages. Shipping Weight 1.5 lbs.

I think I've read 90 percent of what Allan Nation ever wrote, and this book, Creating a Family Business, From Contemplation to Maturity seems to contain most of his business wisdom.  Having done so many conference talks with Allan, I relished all the famous quips that would leave the audience in stitches.

If you've ever wanted classic Allan all in one place, this is it.  The stories of buying a bankrupt magazine, going into horrendous debt, the climb out of it, restructuring the staff, changing the theme are there in all their glory.  Allan was a master storyteller, and this book preserves the best ones in a way that only he could tell them.

Cobbled together posthumously by his widow, Carolyn, and business partner, Glinda Davenport, the book preserves Allan's voice for all of us who ever heard him speak.  It's like sitting down with Allan and enjoying his wit and wisdom all over again.  He referred to Glinda as his "corporate wife", which anyone who runs a small business can appreciate.

Allan traveled the world over, capturing the essence of successful family businesses.  Of course, no vocation has such a high percentage of "family" in its business nomenclature than farming.  Even in our industrial agricultural age, most farms are still family owned and operated.  With this vast experience, and using The Stockman Grass Farmer as his foundation, Allan has you laughing one moment and sobered-up-dead-convicted the next.

He talks about the hard stuff; cycles of life like youth and aging; maintaining margins with low capital overheads; diversifying the market portfolio for financial stability; experiments that failed miserably.

And everywhere, the "slog".  I've never used that term much, but since reading this book, I've begun to use it a lot, especially to millennials.  At our farm, we spend a lot of time with millennials, and if I could boil their weakness down to one word it would be "impatience."  Of course, if I could boil their strengths down to one word, it would be "honesty".

Allan looks at what he calls "the slog" from losts of different angles and it's incredibly helpful for old geezers like me to appreciate how long and difficult success actually took.  I've often told people that I'm not really that smart; I just would not quit, which enabled me to outlast others.  We all suffer from short memories and short attention spans, and Allan refused to give into that weakness.

Young people and business newbies must remember that success will not come until you're on the other side of the slog.  The sun will rise, but not after the night.  This is especially hard to appreciate for young people today whose impatience is unprecedented.  Next-day delivery, Google search engines, Facebook likes - it's a frentic lifestyle and expectation.  Allan hammers the slog principle home; that alone makes the book worth reading.

If you're in the slog, remember it won't last forever.  Like Allan, you can retire into the business, not out of the business.  I've heard true freedom defined this way: getting up in the morning and knowing that you don't have to do anything you don't want to do.  Allan achieved that, giving over the magazine's day-to-day operations to commission-based women.  He often joked that the way to success was to start the business and then turn it over to women.

Throughout the book, I found myself laughing one minute and tears rolling down my cheeks the next.  To realize that this level of insight, this mentorship, was gone from my life left me feeling acutely orphaned.  That Carolyn and Glinda have resurrected Allan, from his notes and essays, to offer such a great represention of himself is truly a gift for all ages.

I hope this book, which I think is by far Allan's best work, reaches far beyond the SGF family.  Of course, it can never be as meaningful to folks who have not walked, for years, through SGF pages with Allan,  But it stands on its own merits as a legacy book for family businesses, a true friend and compass from the written word. -REVIEW BY JOEL SALATIN
280 pages; softcover.

If you have six cows or 6000, you can utilize High Density Grazing to create fertile soils, lush pastures, and healthy livestock. Greg Judy, the master of custom grazing, shows how to earn profits with little risk while using other people's livestock on leased land. With grain and fuel prices rising, Judy details how to work with nature without costly inputs, and let the animals be your labor force.

Comeback Farms takes up where Judy's previous book, No Risk Ranching ended. Here, he shows how to add sheep, goats and pigs to existing cattle operations. He details fencing and water systems that build on existing infrastructure set up for Management-intensive Grazing. Sharing his first-hand experience (the mistakes as well as successes), Judy takes graziers to the next level. He shows how High Density Grazing (HDG) on his own farm and those he leases can revitalize hayed out, scruffy, weedy pastures, and turn them into highly productive grazing landscapes that grow both green grass and greenbacks.

Comeback Farms contains the following:
* Multi-species grazing
* Developing parasite-resistant hair sheep flocks
* Developing grass-genetic cattle
* Selecting, training, and caring for livestock guardian dogs
* Calving with High Stock Density Grazing
* High Density Grazing fencing techniques
* Judy's proven favorite fencing equipment
* Diagrams for HDG fencing and paddock moves
* Benefits of High Density Grazing
* And more

By following Judy's examples, you'll keep your fields green and your livestock grazing year-round. In the process you'll be pocketing your profits.

Based on his personal experience, Greg Judy shows how to make a living from the land without owning it. He describes his successes as well as his mistakes to help others on the road to profit. By leasing land and cattle he went from 40 stockers to over 1100 head and was able to pay off his farm and home loan within three years. Today he has twelve farms totaling more than 1560 acres.

Easy to follow chapters explain how to:

• Find idle pastureland to lease
•  Calculate the cost of a lease and write a contract
•  Develop good water on leased land
•  Figure costs for fencing
•  Lower risk through custom grazing
•  Promote wildlife and develop timber stands
•  And cut costs as well as keep accurate records

Who will benefit from this book?

• Experienced graziers wanting to expand their operations with little to no additional capital

Softcover, Shipping Weight 1 pound

Drought.  The word alone is dreaded by producers who at one time or another have found themselves facing Nature's whims.  Many think the only solution is to sell out or go broke.

Dr. Anibal Pordomingo, Senior Researcher at the National Institute of Agriculture Research of Argentina and a frequent contributor to The Stockman Grass Farmer, offers hope in his new book Drought! Managing For It, Surviving  & Profiting From It.  

In addition to his research on animal nutrition, Dr. Pordimingo has a personal family farm with 500 beef cows in La Pampa, Argentina.  In this book he tells how he survived a seven year drought, and shares methods to help your farm or ranch successfully and profitably overcome the effects of drought.

He covers strategies on how to select grasses with deep roots capable of surviving droughty conditions.  Alfalfa is the preferred grass, yet fear of bloat causes many producers to shy away from this queen of forages.  Dr. Pordomingo presents grazing tips for introducing animals to alfalfa with little or no bloat, and explains what to do if bloat does occur.

Dr. Pordomingo explains how pasture and cropping rotations can provide long term viability.  Soybeans and grazing corn alternatives can keep animals gaining during periods of low or no rainfall.  And selling excess hay when others are in dire need adds pure gold to your profitability during these distressing times.

While forage quantity declines in a drought, forage quality can actually improve.

Dry spells occur nearly every year.  Drought is normal.  Only the severity of it changes.  As the book explains, you can manage ahead of time to limit the severity of drought.  Strategic decisions aid in survival.  And you can profit from it while others sell out.

Price including shipping and handling is $21.00.  Softcover. 74 pages.

Long before planting the first fence post , the year-round grazier should be at work, planning exactly where those fence posts should go, and penciing out grazing and economic scenarios that will result in profitablity.

Steve Kenyon walks graziers through a full year of practical, thoughtful planning making The Calendar of the Year-Round Grazier a handbook with economic decision making and grazing plans.  Other lessons focus on how to figure Gross Margin Ratios, Rent Ratios, Gross Margin Analysis and the importance of Cash Flow.

He challenges readers to define their strengths to maximize personal skills and talents for their operations.  When the grass season begins, he shares grazing strategies to help producers learn from mistakes he has made and how to avoid them.

Kenyon runs a custom grazing operation in Alberta, Canada.  Despite a short grazing season, his cattle work year-round.  In the summer he manages 3,000 acres for 1,200 yearlings.  In winter a reduced number of cattle nose through the snow to feast on forage cut and laid out in swaths earlier in the year.  His methods allow him to feed 300 heard of cattle in winter witth a our of work a week.  He details how to set up and manage swath and bale grazing for producers living in snow country.The book covers four principles of grazing management:

• water management
• sunlight harvesting
• nutrient recycling
• biological life

He explains how to read your pastures and leave more residue.  He encourages producers to use sustainable grazing practices that improve the land, and add biodiversity with forage to create an economically sustainable business for generations.

The Calendar of the Year-Round Grazier will give new graziers a sound foundation for a successful operation.  In addition, long-time graziers will enjoy a fresh look at the finance and economic sections.

Kenyon's book is softcover and 74 pages.