Tag Archives: drought

My highlight of 2012: CNN Eatocracy


eatocracyThe comment that started it all:

I’m from a family farm with cattle, horses, and on occasion a few pigs, chickens for our own freezer. I’ve also worked in large cattle feedlots in different parts of the country. Farmers (both large and small) I’ve worked with all care about providing a quality life for their animals. There’s no other way around it. If someone doesn’t, we have a problem to work out. It’s our responsibility, and do the best we can with tools, technology, and respond to customer demands. Gestation crates were one of those tools for pig farmers.

Ryan Goodman AgricultureBack in June, I made a decision that would take my advocacy efforts to a new level. It was on this post from CNN Eatocracy covering the crate-debate. Many folks were discussing the use of gestation crates in pork production and I wanted to add my 2-cents just like I have on hundreds of other online news articles. This one was in the right place at the right time.

I am so thankful for CNN Editor Kat Kinsman in 2012. For whatever reasons when she read my comment, it sparked enough interest for a follow up and eventually open doors for myself and few other farmers to share our thoughts with the CNN Eatocracy audience.

That event turned into my first CNN Eatocracy post and several others.

cnn eatocracy july 2012I really don’t know how to say thank you enough other than to say it made my year to receive that opportunity to share a bit of the farming world and links to my many fellow ag bloggers with that audience. I am so thankful for the support of the many friends who have read my posts, left encouraging comments, and guided me in how to be a better advocate for my beliefs.

An even larger bit of gratitude goes out to those have increased their efforts to reach out and share their message of food production with our customers.

I hope 2013 brings better understanding and many more great opportunities for the agriculture community to reach out to customers and answer their questions about our food supply.

Be sure to catch up on the Top Posts and other highlights on my blog from 2012 on this previous post.

Cow giving birth to twins [Video]


Calving is my favorite event to occur in ranch life. No doubt about it. I’ve written about the good and bad during calving season. There’s nothing that compares for me. That probably has something to do with how I ended up going to college studying Reproduction Physiology.

I found this video of a cow giving birth to twins in some old files and I figured it was as good a time as any to share.

Across the country there are two distinct seasons in which the majority of calves will be born. We signify them as Fall and Spring – even though cattle will be born any day of the year. For many farmers across the country, the Fall calving season is beginning and we’ll be seeing many new calves hit the ground in the next few months.

It’s important to keep an eye out for weak cows giving birth. After this year’s drought, cows on the thin side might need supplemental energy or have a mineral imbalance that could cause exhaustion while giving birth. Also watch for calves born with a lack of vigor. There is also concern of shortened gestation periods during or after a drought period according to Mizzou Extension.

Most of the cattle here in Tennessee are born in the Spring months, but there are a few Fall calving herds spread around – like this young calf born earlier this week.

What time of year are most of the calves born in your region? What other livestock are giving birth this time of year?

Family and Farming will persist through the Arkansas drought


A special Thank You to @Urban Magazine from Fort Smith, Arkansas for featuring my story and insight on this year’s drought and its impact on the farming community. Be sure to check out the original story and leave a comment on the @Urban Magazine website.

Ryan Goodman is tracking the extreme drought from his home in Tennessee. He watches closely, the statistics that show eighty percent of the Arkansas’ pastureland scorched beneath the brutal sun, hay prices spiking, and estimates that the fallout of historic drought could be as high as billions of dollars.

His interest is two-fold. As a twenty-three-year-old grad student studying animal science, he’s studying the effects of the worst drought Arkansas has seen in fifty years. And as the son of a Searcy rancher and cattle auctioneer, he has a personal interest in what’s unfolding here.

Ryan is stoic about the current condition. Ice storms, floods, drought. The rancher’s life is hinged with weather. But this summer has been extraordinary. No rain, sweltering heat, no rain, the cycle like a song set on repeat. And then NOAA released word that in July the U.S. broke a heat record that hadn’t been surpassed the Dust Bowl summer of 1936.

The weather is driving many of the ranchers who come to his father’s  Arkansas Cattle Auction in Searcy to sell their stock. Two to three times as many cows have gone to market as in a typical summer, and when they sell mature cows this year, they’ll have fewer calves next year. The dilemma drew the attention of CBS News. They came to see the weathered ranchers pulling up in big trucks, their trailers filled with cattle they wouldn’t otherwise be selling. The stories stung. A rancher whose wife was too brokenhearted to attend, another rancher from Oklahoma who was buying this year because his own herd was hit by the crippling drought last year, a cattleman worried because his stock pond is all but gone. It’s hard for Ryan’s father, who is friends with many in the crowd. He knows this year will mark the last for some of them, and many of those dropping out will be the older cattlemen. In a state where there are 49,300 farms and 1.7 million head of cattle, it’s bound to have an impact.

When Ryan talks about his father, he grows nostalgic. He learned at his father’s feet, trailing him in the pastures early after school, driving a tractor to check cows when he was ten. His father is a self-made man; he doesn’t come from a long line of cattle owners, but when he landed a job managing a 3,500 acre ranch in Searcy, raising Angus cattle, he knew he was where he was supposed to be.

“I love the lifestyle, working with the land,” Ryan says. “The animals depend on us for everything. Growing up, my holidays were spent taking care of cattle. I was the oldest of five, and on Christmas, we’d either get up early and open gifts or we’d be up at the break of dawn feeding cattle, so we could get to the grandparents’ house to eat dinner.

“I learned life lessons like leadership and responsibility. I realized, going through college, that there are people out there who don’t have the appreciation for work and responsibility that I had the blessing to learn, growing up on a farm. Less than two percent of the country is directly involved with farming or ranching. I think we’ve become spoiled. We can go up to Walmart and buy our food, and we don’t really know where it comes from. I think we’ve lost our connection with the farmers and ranchers, and we don’t understand the hard work that it takes to get that food to your table. If I could do one thing, it would be to encourage people to go out and meet their farmers, to talk to them when you go out to fall festivals or farmers markets. Get to know what they do, ask for a tour of a farm. Start making that connection.”

Ryan has spent his whole life making the connection. While attending Oklahoma State University, he spent summers at places like the Texas feed yards, where he helped bring food to 60,000 head of cattle. It took a million pounds of feed to get the job done each day, which came from the feed mill on site.

He also worked at a ranch in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, a place he still loves. While he was there, he started to blog, sharing his experiences with friends and family and city folks who were fascinated to follow a young cowboy on his great adventure.

When he’s finished with his graduate degree at the University of Tennessee, Ryan plans to work in several parts of the country, learning different farming techniques. But he’ll probably end up back home in Arkansas one day. His roots run deep. And he likes working with his father. He calls his life blessed.

Watching the effects of the drought has been hard. He knows the weather is forcing many good people out. “More of our land is being sold to those wanting to build houses, so land competition is high. Ranchers, particularly the smaller farmers with fewer resources, facing this drought may give up and sell everything for urban development. That could take a big toll on the numbers of cows we have.”

Even so, Ryan isn’t pessimistic. “We’ll continue to have cattle,” he says. “It’s too big a part of our economy not to.”

So he looks ahead. “If the spring rains come,” he says, “and the grass grows green, things will pick up.” And then he turns the story back to his father, a man he says devotes his life to helping the cattlemen around him. “My dad will work really hard to help the ranchers buy back cattle to rebuild their stock. He is always giving back, offering ranchers advice on feed, just supporting those around him.”

It’s all you can do at times like these. Hope for the best. Next year could be better. The rains could fall and the fields overflow with hay. It’s a rancher’s right to imagine it. Let’s just hope he’s right.

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Isaac brings rain, worries and relief for Arkansas drought


Photo Credit: NOAA

Hurricane Isaac’s approach to Arkansas and the Midwestern states couldn’t be more of a blessing. These areas are in great need of significant rainfall. My thoughts go out to those affected by the significant flooding and wind damage on the coasts of Mississippi and Louisiana.

Even though some forecasts are calling for up to 8 inches of rain for parts of Arkansas and flooding conditions will be likely, I have a feeling many will welcome the relief to this year’s Exceptional drought. It won’t be the slow, soaking rain we’ve been praying for, but it will bring relief in the way of filling water reservoirs and streams.

Hurricane Isaac and Arkansas Farming

Arkansas farmers have been scurrying to bring in mature crops that are ready to harvest. This includes a large number of grains, including the largest rice crop in the country. When the storm moves in, strong winds can blow down plants and cause seed heads to sprout and become moldy. To complicate things even more, barge traffic on the Mississippi (a major shipment route for Arkansas crops) has been halted due to low water levels, and now is closed because of hurricane conditions down-stream. Janice Person explains more about the impact of Isaac and crop harvest.

Cattle continue to move to markets in large numbers and the markets continue to hold high, mostly do to out-of-state buyers. Replacement quality cows continue to be a hot commodity. Dry, mature cows brought up to $137 per cwt (or $1.37 per pound), which figures more than $1600 per head. The market report from my family’s cattle auction shows slaughter cattle and calf markets holding strong. Buyers were hesitant this week; likely due to threat of flooding rain from Isaac.

Arkansas drought continues to burn up pastures

Despite all this talk of rain and flooding that looms, a drought still persists over much of the country, as is reflected in today’s update of the Drought Monitor. A few weeks ago I was able to make a trip home, traveling through Northwest Tennessee, the Missouri Bootheel, and much of Northeast Arkansas. The trip and scenes of the drought stricken fields was absolutely devastating and depressing. Only irrigated fields and crops remained green, even these were stressed by the intense heat.

My family’s best pastures are nothing but dirt and dead stems of what was once pasture forage. My dad has been feeding hay since late June. We mostly stocker cattle (feed them for a short amount of time rather than raise a permanent herd for a calf-crop) so we can manage the increase in cost of feed. But most farmers cannot afford the expensive feed.

Mr. Bill Pruitt, who was featured in our recent story on CBS News, brought a load of cows to the auction barn while I was in town. He’s selling his cows, 10 at a time, until something changes or he sells them all. I’ll admit, that was a hard moment to swallow.

A very awakening moment for me was feeding alfalfa hay on our best hay pasture. Dad is flaking it out in different areas of the pasture, hoping to avoid compaction of the soil and trying to spread out the cattle so manure will not pile up in one area. We’d love to fence the cattle off of more pasture to prevent root damage (from over grazing and pulling the dead grass), but due to the little amount of water left, we have to utilize all pasture land.

Another moment that stopped me in my tracks was seeing the number of trees that have already shed most of their leaves. There are numerous ponds that are dried up, or nearing that point. Large spans of dried pond bank are littered with skeletons of fish that died when the water level became too low. Wildlife came and stripped the edible potions, leaving only the skeleton and head.

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The moisture received in portions of the country affected by drought conditions will be welcomed relief. Not the kind we were looking for, but relief none the less. Here’s hoping for few tornadoes, decreasing winds, and limited flooding.

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