Oak Point Agronomics

The amount of new technical information doubles every two years, and there’s no shortage of new technology in agriculture. But the existance of new information is only half the battle; the other half is getting that information to the people that need it– “technology transfer”.

I’m a lucky guy. I’ve had the chance to travel to many countries and work with farmers in each of these places. One thing I learned is that the U.S. has by far the most effective system of agricultural technology transfer from universities and other publicly funded research facilities to farmers. That system is Cooperative Extension.

But this system is in jeapardy, with most of the problems starting after 9-11 but things are really looking horrible of late with our current economic crisis. When a state university gets its budget cut by 5 or 10% ,often on top of previous cuts, it’s staffing that usually bears the brunt of it. Woe be the college department with a vacant position (through retirement or resignation), since it’s less stressful for department heads to not fill a position rather than terminate existing faculty or staff. The University of Vermont is a good example: In the past ten years or so, UVM’s Extension Entomologist, Plant Pathologist, and Weed Scientist all retired. None of these positions were refilled. In effect, the university completely eliminated it’s pest management expertise. The soil fertility faculty member didn’t retire; his position was terminated. Cooperative Extension field staff are trying to fill the gaps and are doing admirably, but the holes that were left are huge. On a national scale, 2009 looks just terrible for public funding at the Land Grant Colleges and for county and regional Cooperative Extension programs.

The result of all this: Fewer professionals at the college level to do agricultural research and fewer field staff to transfer this technology to farmers. There’s no villain here, simply fewer dollars to go around. But let’s hope that the people making decisions at the federal, state and local level realize how critical it is for our farmers to have access to the latest information.

You gotta love those crazy Europeans. While genetically modified crops (GMO) have been somewhat controversial here in the U.S., science is trumping emotion and most corn and soybeans are now genetically modified (Roundup Ready corn and soybeans, Bt corn).

But such is not the case in the European Union (E.U.), which is vehemently opposed to GMOs. In spite of European research proving them to be safe for animal consumption (including humans), any elected official there who’s publicly pro-GMO is one election away from becoming an ex-official. The opposition includes not only grain produced within the Europe, but imported grain as well. 

The problem is that it’s getting increasingly difficult for European farmers to get enough domestic grain to feed their livestock. Use of GMO crops has been steadily increasing in the U.S. and South America, both major grain exporters. Europe used to import a million tons of distiller’s grains from the U.S. each year, but not any more because we won’t guarantee that the grain is non-GMO (and it’s almost certainly not GMO-free). Current concerns are mostly about soybeans, with some are predicting an impending collapse of the European livestock industry. Officials there are starting to worry they’ll have to start importing a lot more meat. 

What’s crazy about this?  Simply that meat imported from the U.S. or South American will have almost certainly been from livestock fed GMO grains! Sooo, European consumers won’t let their own farmers feed GMOs to animals, but they’ll wind up buying imported meat from animals fed GMO corn and soybeans. Go figure.

Caution: Rant to follow! 

When will U.S. politicians realize that the ban on slaughtering horses for meat is foolish, and in many cases inhumane. Though many choose to ignore the fact, thousands of U.S. horses are still slaughtered for meat, but now they have to be trucked hundreds of miles, sometimes under less than ideal conditions, to Canadian slaughter houses.  Some would say that our politicians are simply putting their heads where their hearts are; others think their heads must be in a much different location. 

Horses can still be killed by euthanasia, (AKA lethal injection), though thousands are being saved and put out to pasture, to live out their lives in relative comfort. That’s the fate of the lucky horses saved by organized groups and individuals including some of the Rich and Famous. However, the price of old, “used but not abused” horses at auction is so low that some owners are sticking them out on the back forty to fend for themselves, sometimes with terrible results. The number of U.S. horses slaughtered for meat has plummeted at the same time as the number of neglected, malnourished horses is (almost certainly) increasing. Not surprisingly, it’s kind of hard to get a USDA statistic on starving horses. 

OK, so it’s illegal to sell horse meat for human consumption in the U.S. But the French and Belgians love horse meat; why couldn’t we slaughter horses in USDA-inspected facilities and export the meat to the Belgians and French (backbones included in all French shipments)?  Don’t want to eat a burro? Send the meat to China, where they love donkey meat.  When I was in China a couple of years ago I ordered donkey dumplings in a restaurant near the Mongolian border but they were all out. (I passed on the special of the house…dog.)

Sooner or later, even the best-cared for horse will die of old age. What then? Leave them out for wildlife to eat? (We already have our quota of coyotes, thank you.) Bury them? (Dairy farmers are being told they shouldn’t bury cows–why is it OK to bury horses?)  Our legislators, many (most?) of whom have never ridden a horse and whose personal knowledge of things equine is limited a tout sheet at the race track, have been sold a bill of goods by well-meaning but short sighted “horse lovers”.

Finally: I’m not anti-equine: My first “real” job was on a horse ranch, 40 hours a week when school was in session, 60 hours a week when it wasn’t. I spent countless hours on horseback, some of it in competition.  I loved horses then, still do now; that’s why I’d rather see them humanely slaughtered to provide food for a hungry world rather than have them suffer and die, and then become someone’s disposal problem.