Most any farmer today can name fifty improvements in the ways farming is done today compared to only a generation or two ago. The crops now are three or four times . . .
more abundant today with the use of soil and crop tissue testing, careful application and timing of manure and fertilizer applications. Chemical sprays have been developed that, with proper use, can reduce the use of tillage, soil compaction, and fossil fuels. Larger more efficient machinery, much of which is now GPS guided to reduce overlap and make working after dark just as accurate as working in daylight. Hay is now planted to be more nutritious and productive to meet the requirements of the animals that will consume them. Hay is now cut before it goes to flower and loses feed value. The hay is “conditioned” or the stems squeezed or scuffed to speed up the drying process by a day or two to allow more hay to be chopped or baled and stored before it gets rained on by those impromptu summer rains. All this is completed with ninety percent less manual labour and much of it in the comfort of air conditioned cabs while sitting on an ergonomically designed seat and listening to a stereo that their mother couldn’t even afford in the house. All the crops grown are lab tested for available nutritive value and if fed to animals, the ration can be balanced ten times better than the diets of our athletes. More fields are tile drained each year which allows them to be worked days, weeks, or even months earlier in the season so that they are much more productive.
Animals are selectively bred to be more efficient and productive. Milk production has quadrupled in only a couple of farm generations. Animals raised for meat or egg production have also genetically improved and their diets computer calculated to improve egg and meat production with the use of less feed. Each bite of their food is balanced and blended so that it supplies all minerals, energy, protein, and essential amino acids to meet the requirements of the bird or animal in that exact stage of life or production. This has drastically reduced greenhouse gas production from animals. Animal housing has been improved to reduce stress on the animals and the people who care for them. Now one person can mix and deliver feed for hundreds or thousands of animals in a shift. Our grandparents and several employees worked hard all day to feed and clean and bed a few dozen animals.
Today with the use of milking parlours or robotic milking stalls, one farm with a couple employees or family members can produce the milk that a couple dozen dairy farms with families and employees did a few generations ago. If you spend a little time talking to one of todays farmers, they can name dozens of other improvements in efficiency on farms during their life on the farm.
Not all changes in farming have left the landscape looking the same as when grampa was farming. Grampa farmed with horses and always started cutting a field of hay by cutting the second round around a hay field first. This meant that the team of horses pulling the five foot hay mower would walk next to the fence and the horses and the mower would tramp the outside five feet with mower cutting the next five. Grampa continued to cut many more rounds of hay, probably enough for a day or two and left that outside round not cut for a couple days. During those couple days, the hay that was cut, dried and was harvested off the field and that outside uncut round that the horses walked through, began to stand back up. Then he went the other way with the horse drawn mower and cut the “back swath” after it stood up some. Any hay that he missed near the fence and in the corners where the little horse-pulled mower couldn’t cut, was cut by hand with a scythe powered by grampa swinging it by hand. There was not a stem of hay in the field not cut. Today some mowers are thirty feet wide and do not get as close to the fence or into the corners. The new thirty foot mowers are GPS guided but the first round around a field sets the perimeters of the field and the driving has to be controlled by the driver on the seat. If the driver hits an obstacle near the outside of the field while cutting the first round with that thirty foot mower, damages to the machine could cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. Although it may look like the operator left some hay not cut; maybe the deer and other wildlife could survive the winter better because of it.
Some of the food we expect to find every day at the grocery store is not as nutritious today as it was a couple generations ago because some are genetically selected for yield and pretty looks, while nutritive value is often forgotten. Some foods we buy still have some chemical residue remaining which ties up some nutrients that people need.
Recently, animals have been getting a “bad rap”. Some say that man can survive without animal milk or meat. When we shop, we are confronted with choices of several white beverages that have never been near a cow. There are several products that have “buttery” in their name that have no butter at all. There are more butter replacements than choices of butter. Now we have options of meat replacements that still use the word meat in their name. All of these meat replacements from burgers to bacon are manufactured in factories from grains and vegetables and a few other secret ingredients.
It is seldom mentioned that most beef starts life in fields that can only be used by pasturing animals. Cattle, sheep, and goats can efficiently use mountainous, rocky, small, irregular shaped or wet fields that could never be used for crop production. These ruminants can happily forage on grass and legumes that humans cannot digest. These pasture fields sequester millions of tons of carbon that our cars produce annually. Many species of birds, bees, other insects, and wildlife depend on pasture land to survive in this world. Anything that the animal eats that is not needed for growth, reproduction, and milk production is recycled by the animals and spread back on the soil. Thousands of insects, worms, and other soil organisms thrive in pasture land but would quickly deplete in numbers in cropland. The most efficient crops are grown in the first year of a rotation after a pasture or hayfield is plowed down.
A variety of foods, all taken in moderation kept our ancestors healthy for generations. Ask your doctor what he thinks. Yes, many changes on the farm have been good, but?
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family
for generations. gladcrest@gmail.com
