10- Lancaster Farming, Saturda 21 Monforl on Beef | Continued from Pane II inductry. Cuttle were slaughtered when they came off the rangeland. They came off in batches and the slaughter for a few months was very high. The rancher got paid very little since for a few months was very high. The rancher got paid very little since he was marketing at the same time as all his neighbors Packing plants worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Consumers had lots of beef. and then it quit The cattle were all marketed and everyone waited until the next year, the next harvest time. I-ots of farmers, my dad tremendous infusion of “tax included, saw this as an shelter money”, with ex opportunity. He had hay and pandmg affluence of the barley to sell, others had consumers and their obvious corn, the Great Western preference for this fed beef. Sugar Company had beet we kept buying younger and pulp, and so some farmers younger feeder cattle, bought some of those surplus putting more and more of the cattle, fed them some feed weight on in the feedlots, and marketed them three or becoming more and more four months later. As the dependent on and wasteful practice grew, the rancher of our feed grains ... and *♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦* ♦ YOUR NO. 1 STOP FOR { ♦ LIQUID MANURE t | EQUIPMENT t ♦ THIS IS THE BEST PUMP FOR PROBLEM PITS t \ ' ♦ ■ ■—■■■■ ■ ♦ Husky X Trailer Mounted Pumps I X 8-10-12 Ft. j 13 point Hitch Mounted* T Pumps j T Tanks - 1250 gal. w 1 1875 gal. Tandem D . , ~ 4 ♦ 2500 gal. Tandem Plow Down ▼ Plow Down Attachments Attachments Available ♦ Available ▲ ▲ ▼ i -ir MANURE SPREADER with Plow Down Attachment SHENK’S FARM SERVICE U.KERS Jan. 18. 1975 didn't have to sell his cattle quite so cheap, the packing plants and their employees could produce and work year around, the consumers had u year around supply of beef and dad and other farmers had a market for their feed stuffs. Almost by accident we found that the consumers really preferred our fed cattle to what they had been eating and so we created a demand for “choice" beef. But. now we know that we went too far. With the ever increasing supplies of feed grains at economical prices, with a HUSKY C 72 LIQUID MANURE PUMP i\ i\ "BETTERBILT" Vacuum Spreaders Model 800 gal.; 1100 gal.; 1500 gal.; 2100 gal.; 3100 gal c-. - LIQUID RD4 Lititz, PA Phone 626-4355 the bubble burst last year. It was bound to happen. It had to happen because we were using too much feed, because we were getting more costs in our cattle than the consumer could or would pay and because we were building up too big a national cow herd and producing too many calves. Back to my answer. Cattle are bad converters of gram, but awfully good converters of grass and roughage into protein. To maximize our food resources we will produce large amounts of beef. To use up available feedstuffs and spread marketings and provide quality beef, we will have feedlots . . cattle on feed. But, we might as well get used to'maximizing our production on grass and roughage and finishing the yearlings and 2-yr old cattle in the feedlots. If we combine the weight from grass and roughage with a minimum feeding time, we are con verting about 3 pounds of gram ... gram not normally consumed by humans, into one pound of edible beef. That is good and efficient conversion and it is a practice that will prove energy and nutritionally efficient under careful analysis for years to come. Question No. 2. Do we have too many cattle in the U.S. and too little gram? What will be done about it? Non-expert answer No. 2. We have too many cattle, primarily too many beef cows. We are producing more calves than we can market profitably and don’t have the roughage to keep those calves on forage longer. Therefore, we must reduce our cow numbers by about 20 percent. We will do that by converting them into hamburger and eating 125 to 128 pounds of beef per capita each year for the next 3 to 4 years. Too little gram, yes' But, enough feed gram for the type of cattle feeding I have suggested. Price of feed Milijm+lfny FLAMELESS CATALYTIC HEATERS TEHRAN YCIN & AUtEOM YCIN A/D FORTIFIED CRUMBLES (DISCOUNT PRICES) AARON S. GROFF t SON FARM & DAIRY STORE R D 3, Ephrala, Pa 17522 IHmhletown) Phone 354 0744 Store Hours 7AM to 9 P M Closed Tuesdays & Saturdays at 5 00 P M I ♦ 0 grain plus the luck of liquidity in the cattle feeding, hog raising and poultry business is rationing our grain supply enough to cover the 2 billion bushel "shortfall’’ in our corn crop lust year. This has been an amazing adjustment, an adjustment that I was worried we could make, but one that we have. Daily it becomes more apparent that we are not overusing our feed grams even with the very short crop. Question No. 3. But, shouldn't the U.S. use all of their grams to help feed the world 9 Shouldn’t we quit over consuming while others are starving 7 Non-expert answer No. 3. World population can and is expanding faster than any potential increase in agricultural production. The number one question here is not how we divide up our foodstuffs, or even who pays for what, but. . how do you stop population growth that exceeds our ability to feed that* population Other nations must provide those answers. We do little long term good by exporting food that keeps others alive if those who are kept alive simply reproduce and need ever larger amounts of food Thomas Malthus told us this fact m 1798 in what is now called the Malthusian theory. I happen to believe that our food responsibilities lie ia this order: 1. Take care of our own people .. we have many poor and many out of work people here in the U.S. 2. Sell to customers who have and will be dependent upon the U.S for food sup plies but who are acting responsibly population-wise and demand-wise 3 Provide humanitarian assistance to those suffering from drouth, poor crops and the like. Not listed here is the need to deprive our own American people of a better than average food supply to take on worldwide commitments that we can never keep. Perhaps some sociologists and archbishops want to live on the same kinds and r l I [V. [h Ui amounts of food as do the hungry In Bangladesh . . . but, if they spent 8 or D hours on a combine or on the Ironing table in our packing plant, they would neither want to nor think they should. Question No. 4. What can the government and the USDA do to help what is a very sick industry, the cattle industry 7 Non-exptTt answer No. 4. First, they can get realistic about some things. They had better realize that weather is apt to be not as good for the next 20 years as it has for the past 20 years and adjust their estimates of production of grains, particularly feed grams. While they are at.it. they might just as well realize what all of us Knew all along, that the acreage coming back into production from the soil bank was the worst acreage we had and that they better not figure it for 100 bushel per acre corn production. „ LANCASTER SILO CO., INC. 2008 Horseshoe Road - 2436 Creek Hill Road LANCASTER, PA 17601 "We Manufacture and Erect our Silos’ VIBRATED “LOCK-RIB” CORRUGAe CONCRETE STAVE SILOS - THC mT dollar value. CALL NOW FOR EARLY ORDER DISCOUNT THRU JANUARY ON SILOS FOR NEXT SEASON. COMPLETE DAIRY AND BEEF FEEDLOT SYSTEMS STARLINE EQUIPMENT SALES 8 SERVICE STARLINE ROLLER MILLS FOR SHELL CORN 8 SMALL GRAIN RITCHIE CATTLE & HOG WATERERS (ELECTRIC OR GAS) HEAVY DUTY BARN FANS BELT DRIVE OR DIRECT DRIVE rrr^p- /' * I r# FOR PLANS AND QUOTES ON SILOS AND EQUIPMENT CONTACT: LANCASTER SILO CO. URRY HIESTAND, SALES REP. UNCASTER 392-9062 LEBANON 273-7394 They have some other goofy figures, too. I sec that they arc projecting food price increases of 15 percent for the year. They do this by computer, computers that don't realize that the con sumers aren’t going to pay that much. I would guess that this Is triple what food prices will increase ... we might even have some decrease. There is a demand side to the supply-demand equation. The USDA can help a great deal by talking facts to the American people. These facts can include the fact that we are entering a period of tunc when gram supplies will be tight, that we need to conserve them as much as possible and therefore we are going to change the grading standards of beef. This would make a far better speech for Dr. Butz than the one he gives where he talks grandly of growing 200 bushels tomorrow where | Continued on Page 24| '3^sr r '"l ) k
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