Dairyman sees Wagyu as ideal beef cross

Posted on June 20, 2022 by Agmoos

No high energy diet, the key with this breed is to take your time,’ says Adam light (left). He and his cousin Ben (right) are partners in Lightning Cattle Company, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. They raise Wagyu x Holstein crossbred cattle for direct beef sales. They say the full-blooded Wagyu and dairy crossbreds are quite docile. They leave the heifer barn at Adam’s dairy weighing around 500 pounds, come here to Ben’s father’s farm on grass and supplemental forage until 900 pounds, then finish back at Adam’s dairy to final liveweight 1450 to 1500 pounds. This is Part 2 of a Beef on Dairy series. To read the May 13 edition’s PART ONE, CLICK HERE. Photos and story by Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, May 20, 2022.

MYERSTOWN, Pa. — No, they don’t get massages, and they aren’t fed beer as the stories go about the intimate care of the Wagyu in Japan.

However, at Spotlight Holsteins in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, Wagyu is the beef-on-dairy crossbreeding fit, and the cattle are given the time they need to produce the outstanding beef characteristics the Wagyu are known for — doing so on a lower energy diet.

The whole thing started before 2020, the year Adam Light sold his 100-cow registered Holstein tiestall dairy herd in Jonestown and purchased the 240-cow robotic dairy farm and herd from Ralph Moyer in nearby Myerstown (above).

Today, Adam and his cousin Ben Light, a landscaper, are partners in Lightning Cattle Company.

They started with three Wagyu, two bulls and a heifer, purchased from the September 2018 dispersal through Hosking of the late Donald ‘Doc’ Sherwood’s Empire State herd he had bred over 17 years from imported genetics near Binghamton, New York. Doc Sherwood retired that year, and he and his herd were profiled in Farmshine (here)

Adam and Ben brought their investment home and had Zimmerman Custom Freezing collect the bulls. They also flushed the heifer for embryos.

Not only did they begin using those straws of Wagyu on some of Adam’s dairy cows, they also began making some available to other dairy farmers in return for first-dibs to buy the offspring, and they began leasing bulls to farms with beef cow-calf herds.

Today, they have two full-blooded Wagyu bulls, two full-blooded females, plus 34 crossbred animals in various stages of beef production, and they have sold almost a dozen finished beef.

“The key with this breed is to take your time. They need protein to grow, but on the energy side, they don’t need a whole lot. There’s no high energy diet in this. It’s really quite simple. Whatever the dairy heifers get is what the Wagyu crossbreds get, which is a kind of lower energy feed,” Adam explains.

The calves start in the nursery barn at his dairy, grouped with replacement heifers on automated Urban CalfMom feeders, where milk intakes can be customized. They also receive the same calf starter, calf grower and hay.

When they reach 400 to 500 pounds, the crossbreds are moved to Ben’s father’s crop and poultry farm near Jonestown, which is also home-base for Ben’s landscaping company.

There they become Ben’s responsibility until they reach 900 pounds on pasture with some supplemental forage as needed.

At around 900 pounds, the cattle come back to Adam’s dairy, where they are housed and fed the same mostly forage diet on the same steady growth plane of nutrition as the breeding age and bred heifers.

They finish at 1450 to 1500 pounds at about 26 months of age and are sold as beef quarters, halves and wholes from pre-orders, with the buyers paying the custom butcher for processing.

Like the Wagyu breed, Holsteins are slower to finish out. The difference is a straight Holstein needs a push with a high-energy diet to reach a higher quality grade, whereas the Wagyu crossbreds do it on lower energy feed.

“You really want to raise them 26 months, that’s longer than for other crossbreds. For us, it’s not a problem because we have the facilities, and we can feed them economically — right with our dairy animals — and have a more valuable beef animal at the end,” Adam explains.

After those initial years of lead time, Lightning Cattle Co. sold nine animals for beef in 2021. They expect to sell 10 in 2022, which should put them even on their original investment and the cost to make embryos to keep their Wagyu seed stock rolling forward, and they project to double the number sold in 2023 based on calves started in 2021.

What they sell is known as American Wagyu beef — mostly F1 Wagyu x Holstein with a few Wagyu x Angus and Wagyu x Jersey.

Having access to the crossbred calves from the dairy and beef herds that are using their Wagyu genetics helps ensure they can expand beef sales as demand grows, without tying up Adam’s dairy herd to make more crossbreds.

On his own cows, Adam turns to Wagyu after giving a cow two or three chances with Holstein. He’ll modify that decision based on visual appraisal and milk production, with an eye for the number and type of cows he needs and wants dairy replacements out of.

“They settle fast with Wagyu. The difference is evident under a microscope,” Adam reports.

Why Wagyu? Adam recalls his grandfather had some back in the early 2000’s. Half a dozen Wagyu cows and a bull were payment on a debt, which he added to the beef herd on his crop and livestock farm.

“No one really knew what they were back then,” Adam recalls, noting they aren’t beef show animals on-the-hoof. The outstanding meat characteristics are only seen on-the-rail as the flecks of fat are distributed evenly throughout the lean.

Almost 20 years later, Adam did the research. He learned about the breed from Japan, where there are different grades, names and regional identifiers for specific lines, and their tenderness transmissibility.

“The dairy industry was pretty ugly, and we were getting a bill instead of a check for our bull calves. Heifers weren’t worth much either, so we wanted to make a valuable animal to offset when other parts of the dairy industry are ugly,” Adam reflects back to 2018.

Wagyu won’t ring bells for average daily gain or fast finishing. While there are feedlots on the West Coast specifically dedicated to finishing F1 Wagyu dairy crosses, it’s different in the East and Midwest where they are mostly marketed into niche direct sales to consumers and restaurants.

Adam sees the Wagyu as a good fit for his dairy because he can optimize the assets he already has and feed them right with his heifers, instead of raising more heifers than his dairy needs.

“We’ve had different repeat customers tell us the big thing they noticed is the roasts are so much better, with no dry spots,” Adam relates. “I didn’t think there could be that much difference, but there really is, and it seems the Wagyu x Holstein is a great cross for that.”

Even in Japan, the dairy cross is sought as an economical option of their preferred beef — owing to this compatibility. Holsteins deposit marbling in a manner similar to Wagyu — but the Wagyu genetics put the quality into overdrive.

Selling by halves and quarters is less work than selling by beef cuts. Buyers are getting a range of items with some options to customize how they get their portion processed. They can do a simple cut-and-grind or ask for special order items such as bologna.

Lightning Cattle Co. has been approached by restaurants in the area, but to serve them, Adam and Ben would need to use a USDA-inspected plant, not a state-inspected custom butcher. USDA plants are few and far between and booked well into the future.

“We’ve had no issue selling the meat, and we’ve not done any advertising,” Ben notes. “We figured if we advertised too much, we might not be able to meet the demand. We’re taking it step by step.”

To price the quarters and halves, Adam believes in being fair and reasonable.

“We go off what the steers are selling for at the New Holland auction,” he says.

They look at the Choice and Prime steer price (not the dairy beef) and add a little to that for the Wagyu influence. The customer pays the liveweight price and the butcher’s fee.

Adam and Ben help buyers understand what they are getting and their cost per pound of cut-and-wrapped beef by converting it on a dressed basis for an informational estimate.

“It’s tough to create a market that doesn’t exist, but that’s what we’ve had to do,” Ben adds.

This is another reason the Lights have taken it step by step, giving themselves some growing room by spreading seed stock to other dairy farms for access to more calves.

Last fall (2021), they started their biggest group of crossbred calves that will finish out in 2023, double the number for 2022.

They have begun thinking about setting up a facebook page and had Lightning Cattle Co. T-shirts made, but they are still a bit cautious about advertising to be sure demand doesn’t get too far ahead of cattle coming up through.

The cousins like working with cattle, and they take pride in selling a finished product to others in their community. This also gives them opportunities for conversations with consumers about beef, dairy, and farming in general.

“Some people have heard of Wagyu beef from Japan. Some have heard you could pay $200 for a fancy 12-ounce steak, and some people don’t know much about it at all,” says Ben about the learning curve and the way crossbreeding makes this beef more economically accessible.

“What people really like is the idea of buying beef from farms, and that gets them interested in trying it,” he adds.

That’s the window of opportunity for the quality of the beef to sell itself into the future.

“It has been fun,” Adam admits. “It’s something different, and we don’t know where it will take us.”

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Producers seek checkoff vote and transparency as fake food transformation ramps up

Posted on May 27, 2021 by Agmoos

Mike Eby introduces Karina Jones who spoke to attendees live and virtually about the beef checkoff referendum petition. Jones was part of a panel of speakers on various topics during the daylong “Empowering Dairy Farmers” barn meeting at Eby’s farm in Lancaster County, PA on April 23.

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, May 14, 2021

GORDONVILLE, Pa. – “Beef it’s what’s for dinner.” Remember that line?

For school kids, it could soon be Impossible Meat for lunch. USDA just approved a nutrition label for K-12 schools to substitute beef with the billionaire-invested Impossible Meat. Never mind that a May 2020 Newsweek article reported Beyond Meat, Impossible Meat and their competitors source most of their concentrated pea- and soy-protein from extrusion factories in China, even if the crops were grown in North America.

School foodservice directors report a barrage of supply-chain influencers touting fake meat meal options to reduce carbon emissions on the heels of the USDA nutrition label approval.

A local restaurant discovered last month that their wholesale food vendor added textured vegetable protein (concentrated soy and other additives) to the wholesale ‘Classic Beef Burger’ without warning. It is apparently part of a ‘cutting edge’ menu remake at the wholesale level – not the restaurant’s choice. (This particular restaurant switched promptly to Certified Angus burgers guaranteed to remain 100% beef).

Children came home from school this week with Junior Scholastics declaring “This meat could help save the planet!” accompanied by a photo of fake-beef in grocery packaging.

Junior Scholastic Weekly Reader came out with this story urging kids to eat less beef, just a week before USDA’s announcement this month (May 2021) of approval for the ‘Impossible Meat’ school lunch nutrition label, ushering in the barrage of global foodservice companies hounding school foodservice directors about reducing climate change with this stuff (cha-ching, cha-ching). Companies like Cargill and Tyson that are among the big 4 in BEEF processing — with strong ties to the lobbying side of the separate NCBA / CBB — are also going big into FAKE beef. The beef and dairy checkoff programs also have strong ties to World Wildlife Fund and collect checkoff money on imported beef and dairy so this clouds their ability to use the funds they mandatorily collect from U.S. farmers to promote U.S.-produced REAL beef and dairy.

These are just a few examples in the past three weeks of how rapidly the wheels set in motion a decade ago are hitting the pavement.

How did we get here? For 12 to 13 years, the World Economic Forum (WEF), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Big Food, Big Tech and Big Ag have been coalescing around this idea of supply-chain “sustainability” leverage to steer global food transformation with cattle clearly in the crosshairs – especially for developed nations in Europe as well as the United States.

By partnering officially and unofficially with national dairy and beef checkoff boards on “precompetitive sustainability and innovation”, for example, WWF has — in effect — been channeling government-mandated producer checkoff dollars toward implementing WWF’s supply-chain strategy for impacting commodities WWF believes need intervention to improve biodiversity, water and climate. The global corporations behind ‘food transformation’ are laughing all the way to the bank while grassroots producers essentially fund their own demise.

By partnering with dairy and beef checkoff national boards in a ‘pre-competitive’ arrangement, WWF implements its “supply-chain” leverage strategy, WWF has essentially used producer funds to implement their message and priorities both to consumers through supply chain decisions and to producers through checkoff-funded programs validating farm practices. The World Wildlife Fund in its 2012 Report “Better Production for a Living Planet” identifies this strategy to accomplish its priorities for 15 identified commodities, including dairy and beef, related to biodiversity, water and climate. Instead of trying to change the habits of 7 billion consumers or working directly with 1.5 billion producers, worldwide, WWF states that this “practical solution” is to leverage about 300 to 500 companies that control 70% of food choices. Image from 2012 WWF Report

In the 44-page 2012 paper “Better Production for a Living Planet,” the WWF Market Transformation Initiative identified dairy and beef as two of the prime commodities they target through supply-chain companies controlling 70% of food choices.

The checkoff-funded sustainability materials coming out of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Board and Dairy Management Inc (DMI) show firsthand this relationship with WWF, by the use of the WWF logo, and in the case of dairy, the acknowledgment that a decade-long memorandum of understanding existed.

Add to this the government policies emerging that align directly with this global food, agriculture and land transformation, and the use of the vehicle of checkoff-funded “government speech,” becomes a bit clearer. It’s a clever way to leverage the supply chain and promote a message to consumers while pushing producers to align.

The WWF 2012 paper explains that in 2010, “WWF convened some of the biggest players in the beef industry to form the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB). They included the world’s biggest beef buyer, McDonald’s; the biggest beef retailer, Walmart; and two of the largest beef traders, JBS and Cargill.”

While dairy and beef checkoff programs use government-mandated funds collected from producers for valuable local and state promotion programs linking producers to consumers, it is the direction of national checkoff programs – engaged with WWF and the largest processors and retailers in this way — that has producers like Karina Jones, a fifth generation Nebraska cattlewoman concerned.

Jones heads up the petition drive for a producer referendum on the $1/head beef checkoff. The effort began in South Dakota and is spreading nationwide via R-CALF and other national and state organizations.

During the farmer empowerment barn meeting hosted by Mike Eby of National Dairy Producers Organization (NDPO) and Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) at his farm in Gordonville, Pennsylvania recently, two of the day’s speakers talked about the need for transparency and accountability in mandatory checkoff programs.

Marty Irby of Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) talked about bipartisan legislation seeking more transparency and accountability for all mandatory producer checkoff programs during the Empowering Dairy Farmers meeting last month.

Marty Irby of OCM talked about the OFF Act, which is bipartisan legislation seeking to amend the checkoff laws to reaffirm that these programs may not contract with organizations that engage in policy advocacy, conflicts of interest, or anticompetitive activities. It would require publication of all budgets and disbursement of funds for the purpose of public inspection and submit to periodic audits by the USDA Inspector General.

“It’s not about taking those promotion dollars away, but to have a just system of checks and balances,” said Irby about the proposed legislation.

But others are taking a grassroots vote approach — concerned about government oversight of what is already determined to be ‘government speech’ funded by producer checkoff.

Jones talked at the barn meeting about the massive effort to gather over 100,000 signatures by July 2021 asking USDA to conduct a nationwide Beef Checkoff Referendum. A vote on the beef checkoff has not been conducted in 35 years. (See checkoffvote.com and the paper insert in the May 14, 2021 edition of Farmshine)

“It’s time to re-check the checkoff,” said Jones about the beef petition. “We want to signal to USDA that as cattle producers we are ready to vote again.”

She explained that in order for the Secretary of Agriculture to consider a referendum request, 10% of producers must sign the petition. This includes anyone who sold a beef animal and paid the $1/head checkoff, in the 12 months from July 2020 through July 2021, including beef cow-calf producers, seedstock producers, backgrounders, cattle feeders, dairy producers, and youth showing and selling livestock.

According to the 2017 Census, 10% of the beef producers would mean 89,000 signatures needed.

“But we don’t know the vetting process the Secretary will use to approve or deny the petition request, so we want to reach over 100,000 signatures by July 2021,” said Jones.

“The cattle landscape today is much different from 35 years ago,” she said. “Our checkoff does not support promotion of American-born-and-raised beef. We want to equalize the power for the grassroots U.S. cattle producer… the power and the dollars are falling into the hands of the few.”

According to Jones, the checkoff referendum petition seeks a return to balance as well as increased transparency and accountability, through the voting process. Proponents of the right to vote believe producers should be able to fund education and promotion that takes a stand for real, USA-produced beef, something the trends and supply chain partnerships emerging today – along with “government speech” rules — make difficult.

She talked about “mavericks” who were elected to the beef board in the past and tried to change the power structure of the lobbying groups and processing industry involvement. Jones said the current structure has gone on so long — uninterrupted — that a referendum petition is the only avenue many beef producers see today as a way to bring accountability back.

“This is a call to action. Many producers are still not aware of this beef checkoff referendum petition,” said Jones as she urged producers to be bold and harness the opportunities to set a direction that changes the balance of power.

To be continued

Dairy milk: The rest of the story on milk fat and fraud

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Agmoos

Dairy milk consumption has two faces: nutrition and sustainability. Aside from a small percentage of healthy fat and more protein than the knock-offs, dairy milk is fresher than soy, almond, coconut, oat and other counterfeit ‘milks.’ In fact, it is so locally produced and bottled that it is also much better for the health of local economies and environment. Have you seen any almond, coconut or cashew trees on the East Coast and Midwest of the U.S.? As for oat beverage, most of the oats are harvested in Canada and processed in Asia. Here in the Northeast U.S., there are millions of acres of grasslands and croplands that provide habitat for wildlife, filter rainwater, hold soil in place, maintain open spaces, photosynthesize carbon from the air, keep something growing on the land year-round as cover crop and forage, and create jobs and economic stimulus that all begin with land being managed by dairy farmers. A dairy cow can eat grass, hay, whole corn plant silage, and other roughage grown on marginal lands. These forage crops are 50 to 70 percent of the dairy cow’s diet, and she will turn them into nutrients we can use in the form of nutrient-dense milk and dairy products we love. How cool is that?

By Sherry Bunting

We read about and see the growing number of choices in the dairy aisle that make a simple trip to the store for milk, one that can be quite confusing. There’s the thing about fat (all those different percentages) and the thing about fraud (all those plant, nut, and bean drink products calling themselves ‘milk.’)

First, the different “percentage milks” we know as skim, 1 percent, 2 percent and whole milk. The latter is confusing, is it 100 percent milk? Do some people think it is 100% fat?

Well, all dairy milk is 100 percent milk, no mater what the fat percentage… But, No: Whole milk is not 100 percent fat. It is not even 10 percent fat. It is standardized to 3.25 percent fat, and if you drank it straight from the cow it would be anywhere from 3 to 5 percent fat depending on breed of cow, time of year, and type of roughage fed.

And then there is protein. Did you know dairy milk provides a little over 8 grams of protein per 8 oz. serving? It packs quite a bit more protein-punch than almond ‘milk’ at a little over 1 gram of protein per 8 oz. serving.

Made like coffee, the crushed almonds are filtered with water. In fact, an 8 oz. serving of almond milk may be more like eating an almond and drinking a glass of water with sugar and thickeners added and a handful of other ingredients.

A common almondmilk brand label lists these ingredients the first being almondmilk defined as almond-filtered water: Almondmilk (Filtered Water, Almonds), Cane Sugar, Sea Salt, Natural Flavor, Locust Bean Gum, Sunflower Lecithin, Gellan Gum, Calcium Carbonate, Vitamine E Acetate, Zinc Gloconate, Vitamin A Palmitate, Riboflavin (B2), Vitamin B12, Vitamin D2.

A typical dairy milk label lists these ingredients: Milk, Vitamin D3. Pretty simple to see that the calcium and vitamins on the milk label are already in the milk and that zero sugar is added and zero thickeners.

The freshness of REAL dairy milk can’t be beat going from farm to table in 24 to 48 hours. It comes naturally from the cow providing the natural proteins and calcium and small amounts of healthy fat that our bodies readily absorb and utilize.

In fact, the carb-to-protein ratio of chocolate milk is now shown to be one of the best sports-recovery drinks on the market today. Yes, plain ‘ole chocolate milk. Maybe if farmers call it by another name, consumers will take notice to what has been in front of them all along.

Still, for many consumers, the perception persists that whole milk is a high-fat beverage, when in reality it is practically 97 percent fat free!

At the bottling plant, milk is pasteurized and standardized. Cream is skimmed to package whole milk at 3.25 precent fat. The skimmed cream—along with additional cream skimmed to bottle the 1% and 2% and non-fat milks—is then used to make other products like butter, ice cream, yogurt, cream cheese, sour cream and dips.

The “standard of identity” for yogurt states it also contain a minimum of 3.25% fat—just like whole milk.

Even ice cream is not 100 percent fat. The FDA standard of identity is that it contain a minimum of 10 percent fat. Some of the richer, higher-end ice creams contain up to 14 percent fat. But along with that fat, comes some nutritional benefits. These are not empty calories.

Butter is high in fat because it is, after all, a fat. Even it ranges 82 to 84 percent fat. A tablespoon of butter in the pan or on your veggies is a smaller quantity serving than an 8 oz. glass of milk; so even though the fat content is much more concentrated at a higher percentage, no one sits down and eats a cup of butter (2 sticks)!

Furthermore, we have learned that the saturated fat in milk and meat are not bad for us and that when part of a healthy integrated diet may actually provide heart healthy ‘good’ cholesterol.

The fears ingrained over 50 years of low-fat dogma are being abandoned as a nutritional experiment that has failed miserably, even though the federal government continues to hang on to the failed lowfat experiment in the recent 202-25 Dietary Guidelines.

What a growing number of scientists have found is that we need not have blamed whole milk, butter—or beef for that matter—all of these years. In fact, the recent rise in obesity and diabetes is linked more to overconsumption of carbohydrates that have filled the energy-void after we collectively sucked healthy fat out of our diets.

Saturated fats are not the enemy, the “new” science shows. However, the science is really not new. Long-time observers, investigative reporters, and scientists note that the very science supporting the health benefits of saturated fats found in milk and meat has been around for decades, but was ignored — even buried.

Meanwhile, U.S. consumer demand for butter has been expanding, and worldwide demand for U.S.-produced ice cream and yogurt has grown as well. Dairy foods and snacks that offer an energy boost with a healthy protein-to-energy ratio—such as yogurt, whole milk, and even ice cream—will be particularly in demand in nations where busy, on-the-go consumers look for reviving options.

Healthy, natural fat and protein from milk and meat keep food cravings at bay to prevent binge-eating on empty-carb snacks. Enjoyed as part of a healthy integrated diet, dairy products—even ice cream—are satisfying, nutrient-dense, carb-moderating foods that can even be the dieter’s best friend.

Go real, go natural. There’s no reason to fear real milk, dairy and beef products from cattle. Contrary to what the activists say and contrary to government ‘guidelines’ that refused again to consider all the science, nutrient-dense full-fat dairy foods and meat are good for us, and yes, good for the planet.

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Market Moos: COVID-19 impacts how consumers are supplied with food

Posted on March 30, 2020 by Agmoos

By Sherry Bunting, excerpt updated from Market Moos in Farmshine, March 27, 2020

Ten days into the 15-day COVID-19 “flatten the curve” mitigation strategy, supermarkets are still scrambling to remain supplied with in-demand food items — including milk, especially whole milk, dairy products, especially butter, eggs and beef.

Nielson data show nationwide fluid milk sales were up 32% last week, dairy products like butter (up 85%), cheese and yogurt up over 50%, egg sales up 44%, and beef sales, including ground beef, up 77%!

Walmart and other supermarkets have started setting limits on how many gallons of milk or cartons of eggs or packages of butter can be purchased per customer, meaning shoppers will be making more frequent trips to feed their families and supply their older loved ones.

In Pennsylvania, for example, Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding sent a message out on various television news programs Wednesday evening, asking the state’s consumers to “stop hoarding food” and to “think of others who may need the food.”

Unlike toilet paper (and there’s more to that story too in terms of paper product imports), what we are seeing with food essentials is not “hoarding.”

What may not be clear to state and national ag and government leaders is that consumers are not hoarding food, they are buying what they need for a week at a time (to avoid multiple trips exposing them to multiple people). Their grocery lists are more full because for most of them, their whole families are home all day and evening with schools closed and all non-essential businesses shut down.

In addition, many shoppers are buying provisions for elderly parents or neighbors to leave on their porches for them.

This is not “food hoarding”, this is providing for one’s family now that families are not being institutionally-fed according to the government’s rules restricting calories derived from animal products at least one or two meals at least five days a week.

This is a major shift in where the supply chain needs to focus its distribution of the abundant milk and beef that farmers are producing, but is meeting a severe tamp-down in terms of base pricing, production penalties being deducted from milk checks, and over this past weekend even the dumping of milk due to what industry leaders say is “processing disruption” or “loss of foodservice and hospitality trade” despite huge increases in retail purchasing indicating supply chain shifts. (See more on that here.)

A dilemma for some farms that have transitioned into direct sales to get closer to end-users, is that their businesses often rely on people assembling through agro-tourism, farmer’s markets, events, and casual dining restaurants that are more geared to dining-in than taking-out.

Some of these diversified and direct-to-consumer dairy, beef and farmsteading operations have large and fairly recent processing equipment and marketing investments and now must limit access to the consumers their businesses served.

A provision in the $2 Trillion COVID-19 federal aid package is $9.5 billion for livestock, dairy, and specialty crop producers that are part of “local food systems” where their marketing is impacted by COVID-19.

Farms that have developed consumer-facing businesses may also qualify for “bridge” loans to small businesses that are also part of the package.

Meanwhile, dairy, beef and ag organizations are beginning to also raise a concern to USDA to be alert to price manipulation as sales and value to processors is rising rapidly with the surge in demand for dairy and beef, while the prices paid to dairy and beef producers is falling rapidly in the other direction as both milk futures and live cattle futures plunged.

American Farm Bureau Federation even raised this concern, along with transportation and labor as three points of vulnerability on farmers’ minds.

A spokesperson for National Cattlemen’s Beef Association expressed NCBA’s concerns in a CNBC business news interview indicating that farmers and ranchers selling cattle once a year as their income for the whole year, felt the huge drop in live cattle on the futures market for fats and feeders. This can break an operation selling cattle at this juncture, after the tough year last year.

Meanwhile, boxed beef prices are rising rapidly, to where processor margins are $600 profit per head, whereas farm losses are more than $100 per head. This also happened a year ago when the relationship between farm pricing and wholesale to retail pricing was equally inverse, showing massive profit-taking at the processing level and big losses for cattle producers for many months after a fire at one beef processing plant in Kansas.

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The horrors of hormones? Truth is, we can’t live (or eat) without them.

Posted on May 14, 2019 by Agmoos

These Jersey cows are healthy high producing cows. They lie on deep bedded sand and congregate with their own social herd pecking order. Of all the cattle breeds, Jerseys seem to be the most curious. Photo by Sherry Bunting

By Sherry Bunting

A while back, I tackled the subject of food labeling in a consumer column. We covered the rigorous testing by which ALL milk is actually antibiotic free. But people still had questions. They kept hearing about hormones in milk and meat, and they see labels stating “hormone free” and wonder what to make of it all.

So we’ll turn our attention to the hormone question and the labels we see.

The biology news flash of the day is that there are hormones in pretty much everything we eat — that is, if it was derived from a living organism.

And yes, that goes for the plant-derived foods we consume also!

In fact, endocrinologists and reproductive physiologists explain hormones as small chemicals that are produced naturally by and circulate throughout all living things! These hormones instruct cells and tissues on how to adjust, grow, reproduce and thrive.

Without hormones, life could not exist. All foods come from living things — both plant and animal. Technically, all life requires hormones. Thus, all living things, plants and animals, contain hormones.

So, if someone tries to sell you ‘hormone-free’ products, and you know it did not come from a rock, well, technically, it can’t be ‘hormone-free’.

In the hormone conversation, the most important thing that is missing these days is perspective and context!

Jude Capper, a livestock sustainability consultant and former university professor, explains it this way:

“The amount of estrogen in the steak from the implanted animal is miniscule: 5.1 nanograms. One nanogram (one-billionth of a gram or one-25-billionth of an ounce) is roughly equivalent to one blade of grass on a football field. By contrast, one birth-control pill, taken daily by over 100 million women worldwide, contains 35,000 nanograms of estrogen. That’s the equivalent of eating 3,431 pounds of beef from a hormone-implanted animal every single day. To put it another way, it’s the annual beef consumption of 59 adults. Doesn’t that put it into perspective?”

To repeat: One birth control pill contains the hormone equivalent to the amount of beef eaten by 59 adults in one year. So one month of birth control is equivalent to the amount of beef 59 adults would eat in 30 years.

Perspective.

Here’s another comparison from Dr. Troy Ott, a professor of reproductive physiology at Penn State:

“If you set the amount of estrogenic activity in a 3 oz steak equal to one M&M candy, then 3 oz of tofu (made from soy plants) would contain a tractor-trailer full of M&M – that’s 19 million times more. Big difference! But fear not, eat your tofu because your liver is there to deal with any substances that enter your body from the food you eat.”

Whew! Whether you are a vegetarian, carnivore or omnivore, it’s good to know the hormone food topic is not so scary after all.

Hormones are the beneficial agents of life on the planet Earth. They regulate every process of life. When we consume plant and animal foods, we are consuming hormones that our bodies recognize as nutrients!

Perhaps the confusion about hormones stems from all of the talk in sports these days about steroid use. That’s a much different conversation. The hormones in plants and animals – that we consume – are first of all digested and secondly recognized by our human bodies as nutrients, not steroids.

Trent Loos, a seventh generation rancher, explains it this way: “Misinformation and misunderstanding of the value of hormones to our everyday life have perpetuated the concern over hormones. Some of that has certainly been the result of activists and those attempting to remove technology and efficiency from the food production system. However, some also has been the result of misleading messages…” in the area of marketing.”

He cites researchers from Lafayette College, who have shown how hormones regularly improve our lives. Many common foods naturally contain estrogen (or in the case of plants, phytoestrogen) at levels hundreds or thousands of times higher than the levels in any dairy or meat product to come from animals — even those animals that may have been given additional hormone to more efficiently produce food at a more affordable price for a growing world.

In fact, if you tested milk from rbST-treated cows versus cows that did not receive rbST (recombinant bovine somatotropin) you would find no difference in the milk. Likewise for beef that comes from a steer (neutered male) that received hormone replacement at a specific time in its growth and the appropriate withdrawal time observed before harvest. The beef from that hormone-implanted steer would test pretty close to the natural hormone levels in the beef from an untreated, non-pregnant female beef animal.

As we read labels and marketing materials about the food we feed our families, here is a checklist to consider:

— Context is everything, so keep a perspective about this topic and the various label claims when determining how to spend your food dollar.

— The hormones being debated (either at naturally-occurring or at enhanced levels for production efficiency) are protein hormones, not steroid hormones.

— Our bodies do not recognize these protein hormones as hormones, but rather as nutrients! It’s pretty cool to think about how wonderfully we are made.

— Hormones are found in every living thing – be it plant or animal! In other words – food!

— There is no difference in the hormone content of milk whether or not the cows received hormone treatments for enhanced productivity at any point in their life. But that said, most dairy farms have given up this practice for many years because of consumer confusion. Most milk in stores is produced from cows not treated with rBST or rbGH and is labeled this way as well.

— In the long run, animal productivity benefits consumers by helping to keep food costs more affordable than they would otherwise be. Food prices are rising but the farmer’s portion of the consumer dollar is at an all-time low of 14 cents today.

While some want to debate hormone-free meat and milk and create fear in the minds of consumers, the truth is that we encounter far higher levels in plant foods, which we readily consume without question.

Here is a short-list showing just some of the eye-opening example comparisons compiled by the researchers at Lafayette College. (ng = nanogram)

4 ounces of beef from untreated steer: 1.2 ng of estrogen
4 ounces of beef from non-pregnant heifer: 1.5 ng of estrogen
4 ounces of beef from steer given hormones: 1.6 ng of estrogen
3 ounces of milk from cow given recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST): 11 ng of estrogen
3 ounces of milk from non-rbST-treated cow: 11 ng of estrogen
4 ounces of raw peas: 454 ng of estrogen
4 ounces of raw cabbage: 2,700 ng of estrogen
Average soy latte (one cup of soy milk): 30,000 ng of estrogen
3.5 ounces of soy protein concentrate: 102,000 ng of estrogen
3 ounces of soybean oil: 168,000 ng of estrogen
Average level in a woman of childbearing age: 480,000 ng of estrogen per day
Average level in a pre-pubertal girl: 54,000 ng of estrogen per day

A former newspaper editor, Sherry Bunting has been writing about dairy, livestock and crop production for over 35 years. Before that, she milked cows. She can be reached at agrite2011@gmail.com

‘There’s no magic in animal handling.’ Calm behavior taught, learned.

Posted on December 31, 2018 by Agmoos

Dr. Hoglund’s low-energy cattle-handling workshops school cattle and handlers

Dr. Hoglund talks about raising hands from below eye level to above the eye level of the cattle to add a little energy to create movement, while emphasizing the importance of using only the amount of energy needed.

By Sherry Bunting, first published in Farmshine, Nov. 7, 2018

MARION, Pa. — When Josh and Brandi Martin attended their first low-energy cattle handling and stockmanship clinic with Dr. Don Hoglund, Josh wondered what he could learn. After all, he works cattle every day at the family’s farm where they milk 1000 cows and raise dairy replacements as well as beef cattle in Franklin County, Pennsylvania.

Josh and Brandi Martin attended a previous clinic and learned so much they organized one as a refresher at their farm for themselves and their neighbors.

“I learned a lot, and it surprised me,” he told a dozen fellow dairy producers, employees and industry representatives at a two-day workshop organized at Martin Farms Oct. 15-16.

“There’s no magic in animal handling,” said Dr. Hoglund, who stated there’s also no definition for “emotion” because emotion is cognitive and requires language.

Fear, therefore, can’t be quantified.

He focused on the observable behavior of animals and how humans and animals learn from their interactions.

The learning for clinic attendees began in a classroom setting before heading out to the heifers and cows with the realization that just like no one in the room could know what anyone else was thinking or feeling, we also don’t know what animals are thinking or feeling.

Dr. Don Hoglund

“But we can observe and measure their behavior and responses,” said Dr. Hoglund, whose educational, vocational and life experiences span decades as a veterinarian, animal behaviorist, animal trainer (including for Walt Disney Company), researcher, educator, evaluator and text book author on the subject.

A scientist with decades of experience, Hoglund stressed the importance of observing behavior, not emotion and of using specific words in conversations with consumers to convey behavior that can be observed instead of emotion, which is a guess.

As we soon found out, Hoglund’s clinics are not your run-of-the-mill stockmanship workshops. He teaches science-based and practical approaches to human and animal interaction – challenging the conventional wisdom.

“I’m not here to tell you how to handle your cattle, but rather to show you how animals learn, and how you learn affects how your animals learn,” he said.

Part of the two-day cattle course at the Martin farm involved having producers do techniques in training and handling to the point where they can teach someone else and accomplish important aspects of various farm owner and employee certifications.

Additionally, Hoglund’s techniques equipped attendees with a few ideas for “teaching” dairy animals calm parlor behavior via low-energy training as heifers.

The fascinating aspect of the clinic was evident in how both the people and the cattle demonstrated observable behaviors that showed they were both learning.

“We are seeing a revolution in the neurosciences,” said Dr. Hoglund, explaining that we really don’t know why animals run.

A dozen dairy producers, employees and industry people attended Dr. Don Hoglund’s low-energy cattle handling clinic at Martin Farms near Marion, Franklin County, Pennsylvania recently. Photos by Sherry Bunting

“They run because they can,” he said. “There’s more than one reason why animals run, so instead of why, we should be looking at ‘when’ they run. Look at when a behavior occurs, not guessing why. You know what the cattle are doing and when they are doing it.”

He demonstrated a primary example on dairy farms.

“A dairy cow faces you all of her life. That’s how we feed and interact with her growing up. But for milking, she faces away from you and has to turn her head to see you,” Hoglund explains. “We can teach animals to calmly face away so they are ready for the parlor.”

He explained his techniques as “low-energy handling” — using just the amount of energy it takes. Preferring to speak in terms of “energy” versus “stress,” Hoglund said a key is for cattle handlers to learn to manage their own energy levels relative to the cattle.

Dr. Hoglund instructs pairs of participants in the heifer pens at Martin Farms as the teach heifers to calmly “face away.”

“When we start doing things in the blind zone, early, we are training the cattle to handle this calmly,” he said. “Everyone is told to stay out of the cow’s blind zone, but that’s where all the milking work is done.

“How about we train her to accept that?”

In the heifer pens, attendees, working in pairs, put the principles into practice according to Hoglund’s instructions getting the heifers to learn “facing away” behavior and “see human go to food.”

It was interesting to see how quickly they settled-in to be orderly as they learned “facing away,” and how their handlers learned to step away once they got the animals where they wanted them to go.

“Your energy drops and the animal learns. That’s what we’re after, the learning,” said Hoglund. “Cattle are in the business of learning to stay alive. They will go the efficient way and that helps you get more of the milk you are investing in.

“When we work with cattle in low-energy, then we have them in the parlor in low-energy,” he explained, adding that calm behavior is observable where the term “relaxed” is a feeling term, and therefore unknown.

“We want to talk and think about these things as behavior and not emotion. Behavior is anything you can observe,” he explained. “We are teaching others to teach animals to go calmly and to face away from us.”

The biggest thing for clinic attendees was to come away doing enough to be able to teach others at their own farms. After working in a heifer pen, participants had the opportunity to ‘train’ another clinic participant.

Throughout the handling, Hoglund said that trotting is okay, but that if the animals begin to lope, that’s not what you want.

The exercises in teaching cattle to accept “facing away” are something producers or employees can do 15 minutes a day for three days in a row and get results and then periodically refresh, according to Hoglund.

“It’s not really animal handling or stockmanship, it’s animal learning,” he observed. “The animals are learning to accept compression, and the people learn to slow down, be safe, and manage themselves to use only the energy required to accomplish the task. As we lower the energy, we reinforce the learning.”

He acknowledged that it’s tough for handlers to learn when to step back. “That’s one of the hardest things to learn, but also the most important.”

Low-energy handling starts with hands at sides. For safety reasons, he advised participants not to put them down in their pockets but to thumb their pockets and keep the hands out in case they need them.

“We add energy to move them by moving our hands from below the eye level of the cattle to above the eye level to raise the energy,” Hoglund explained.

Bred heifers calmly eat at the bunks watching some of their pen-mates ‘learn’ calm parlor entry through a makeshift chute.

When it comes to training animals and human handlers for low-energy handling, Hoglund said avoid training animals where they sleep: “You don’t want to chase animals out of their beds to train them.”

While working in the heifer pens at the Martin farm, Hoglund explained that, “Heifers learn through all five senses. To know where an animal is looking, look at her ear, not her eye. She can see two things at once, so the ear tells you more.”

This is important information for producers and employees to avoid raising the energy level in a pen.

Hoglund made the case that these techniques are also important from an economic standpoint. Citing work he has been involved with in Minnesota, he said it takes 20 minutes for a cow to get rid of that adrenaline rush from a high-energy handling.

“That 20 minutes can hold back two and a half to three pounds of milk in the next milking,” he said, adding that cattle remember “where” things happen and don’t regain the milk lost.

“These techniques will help you get the milk you’ve already invested in,” said Hoglund, explaining that “animals repeat what they learn, and for the people working with the animals, seeing gives information but doing is learning.”

This was just one aspect of the two-day clinic and the tip of the iceberg in terms of Dr. Hoglund’s work and the services and education he provides to universities, organizations, companies and especially hands-on to groups of producers and employees on farms.

Look for more tips from this clinic in the future, and to learn more about Dr. Hoglund and his work, visit https://www.dairystockmanship.com/

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How will fake milk, fake meat be labeled and regulated?

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Agmoos

Say, what? New twist on standards of identity: How will fake milk and fake meat be labeled and regulated?

In a time when many people have lost their connection to the values and sustainability of the circle of life, cattle have been getting an undeserved bad rap on everything from diet to environment to compassion. On all three counts, the anti-animal agenda lies behind the false narrative that is leading us down a dishonest path to more fake concoctions of ill-fated science fueling profits at the expense of our physical and emotional health and the health of the planet. Fake meat and fake milk are funded by billionaires, genetically engineered by USDA, initiated as the brain children of Silicon Valley techies, with partnership from the biggest names in corporate agriculture. Noble goals of ending hunger are the defense, but it’s difficult to believe that when we have surplus dairy and meat protein produced naturally with the real problem of hunger coming down to distribution and waste. This so-called solution has the potential to quietly dictate food choices, markets and livelihoods.

By Sherry Bunting, updated since first published in Farmshine, November 21, 2018

WASHINGTON, D.C. – “Dairy reinvented: Sustainable. Kind. Delicious,” is the tagline of Perfect Day’s website.

“Better meat, better world” are the words that jump from the Memphis Meats website.

To be more specific, Perfect Day’s mission is to “create a better way to make dairy protein, the same nutritious protein found in cow’s milk…without the help of a single cow.”

Meanwhile, at Memphis Meats, their mission is “To bring delicious and healthy meat to your table by harvesting it from cells instead of animals… feel good about how it’s made because we strive to make it better for you… and the world.”

On the fake meat side, Memphis Meats received Series A funding from four sources in August 2017: venture capitalist DFJ, billionaire investors Bill Gates and Richard Branson, and Cargill. In January of 2018, Tyson came on board as an investor.

On the fake dairy side, Perfect Day received its Series A funding from Singapore and Hong Kong venture capital and investment companies that have relationships with some of the largest food and beverage companies and brands in the world, according to a company news release. In addition, Continental Grain was part of the early investment, and in November 2018, Perfect Day announced a partnership with Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).

The big question, at present, is how will these proteins be regulated and labeled?

The discussion is converging with FDA’s nutrition innovation strategy and modernization of standards of identity (especially dairy standards of identity), along with parallel hearings and comment periods on how to regulate and label the ‘meat’ version of lab-created cellular proteins.

Make no mistake about it folks: Both of these processes involve genetic engineering start-to-finish.

Perfect Day (fake milk protein), for example, sources yeast from USDA research labs that has been “genetically-altered” to include bovine protein stimulators and synthesizers.

Memphis Meats (fake meat) uses animal cells, mainly bovine and poultry, from cell banks that have been edited to grow only desired muscle cells — separate from their whole-animal source.

The fake dairy protein would be the end-product of the fermentation of the genetically-altered yeast, while the fake meat protein would be the protein blobs that grow from the genetically-edited cells, using neonatal bovine serum — or a plant chemical substitute that is under development — as a growth “on” button.

Both systems would require energy feed sources, using a sugar and/or starch substrate to feed the growth.

Both processes would produce waste streams.

The dairy version are grown in fermentation vats. The meat version in bioreactor towers.

While opinions vary on how quickly these technologies can scale, it is clear that the technologies are well-funded, and that agriculture’s top-tier food supply-chain processors and distributors are partnering.

We must continue to let FDA and USDA know what farmers and consumers — the two ends of the supply chain that need to be talking to each other — feel about the potential of these technologies to create captive-supply market control using interchangeable proteins in common manufactured dairy products or as protein enhancements for plant-based beverages, as well as to stretch boneless beef and poultry products with fake counterparts, namely as ground beef, hamburger, meatballs and chicken tenders and nuggets.

In a press release Friday, November 16, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that they will “jointly oversee the production of cell-cultured food products derived from livestock and poultry.”

There has been no similar FDA PMO-regultory process established for the fake milk proteins.

USDA and FDA had a public meeting in July and October to discuss the use of bovine and poultry “cell lines” to develop these cell-cultured, lab-created foods.

In fact, meat industry stakeholders shared their perspectives on the regulation that is needed to “foster these innovative food products and maintain the highest standards of public health,” said FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb in an official FDA statement in November.

USDA and FDA announced their “agreement on a joint regulatory framework wherein FDA oversees cell collection, cell banks and cell growth and differentiation. A transition from FDA to USDA oversight will occur during the cell harvest stage. USDA will then oversee the production and labeling of food products derived from the cells of livestock and poultry.”

As FDA and USDA are “actively refining the technical details of the framework,” some of the aspects of the framework are said to include robust collaboration and information-sharing between the two agencies to allow each to carry out our respective roles.

The well-funded startups and their lobbying organization Good Food Institute (a misnomer in this author’s opinion) had pushed for FDA to control labeling and inspection knowing that if USDA were in charge, their efforts to scale production would be slowed.

In view of this joint approach between FDA and USDA, the original public comment period about cell-cultured ‘meat’ had been extended to December 26, 2018. Comments can be seen at the FDA docket at https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=FSIS-2018-0036-0001 and there are thoughts that this comment period could be extended again as has the dairy standards of identity comment period.

Meanwhile, on the lab-created ‘dairy’ protein front, Perfect Day, a Silicon-Valley startup, announced in a press release in November that it has formed a partnership with ADM, an agricultural processor and food ingredient provider with a mission of plant-to-plate collaboration throughout the food industry.

In fact, ADM will provide facilities for scaling this technology as part of the deal.

This partnership is billed as “teaming up” to begin supplying “the world’s first animal-free dairy proteins to the food industry in 2019,” according to Perfect Day.

“Animal-free dairy proteins will not only offer consumers the option to have a lactose-free, animal-free alternative to conventional animal-based dairy, but also provide a portfolio of nutritious and functional, high-purity proteins with similar taste and nutrition profile of dairy proteins for a wide range of food and beverage applications,” Perfect Day said in their press release.

Meanwhile, the FDA has extended — yet again — its invitation for information specifically on “the use of names of dairy foods in the labeling of plant-based products.” So far, 10,043 comments (as of December 28, 2018) have been received on this docket. To comment by the new deadline of January 28, 2019, go to the docket online at https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=FDA-2018-N-3522.

Dairy checkoff-funded DMI completed a survey of consumers recently showing that 73% are confused about the differences in nutrition between real dairy milk and plant-based alternatives calling themselves ‘milk.’

Other surveys show that more than half of U.S. consumers want healthy foods with ‘clean’ labels having few ingredients and limited or no processing.

It would seem that these findings, among others, would indicate clearly to FDA and USDA that consumers want no more monkey-business when it comes to their food, that they want to see clarity in the enforcement of milk and dairy standards of identity, and that they want to be informed about look-alike ingredients made in laboratories instead of in the time-honored land-and-animal care-taking profession of dairy and livestock farmers and ranchers.

One thing to keep in mind when commenting is to highlight the fact that over half of U.S. consumers want food that does not have a long list of additives and that is minimally processed.

That, on top of nutritional differences and new unproven processes, are enough reason to aggressively label any food containing either the fake dairy or fake meat protein because standards of identity are in place not just for health and safety but also to prevent fraudulent misleading of consumers.

Consumers should know what they are buying and be able to choose food based on their beliefs about what is a better world, not someone else defining what is kind and good and sustainable for them and not using the government’s currently flawed dietary guidelines to decide for consumers what is deemed “healthy.”

Let FDA and USDA know that we as consumers and farmers want clear labeling if these technologies are going to scale into our food system. We want the fake versions to have all of the inspection rigor that real dairy and meat proteins are subjected to.

Above all, we do not want the government quietly removing — via its one-size-fits-all nutrition innovation strategy — our ability to choose foods and production methods with which we want to nourish our bodies and on which we wish to spend our hard-earned money.

This may come down to a battle between fake animal protein ingredients funded by billionaires aligned with Silicon Valley startups and partnered by the biggest names in corporate agriculture vs. a collaboration between individual farmers and ranchers who are the backbone of our nation, the stewards of land and livestock, along with the public at-large, the consumers who are confused by the lines that are blurring.

Now, more than ever, both ends of the supply chain — farmers / ranchers and consumers — need to engage with each other directly — and not through the industry-scripted mouthpieces.

Stay tuned.

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NY’s ESF Wagyu dispersal Sept. 22: Japan’s ‘national treasure’ brings top-shelf flavor to beef

Posted on September 20, 2018 by Agmoos

Niche cross-breeding opportunity seen for dairy

By Sherry Bunting, originally published in Farmshine, Sept. 14, 2018

NEW BERLIN, N.Y. — Their frame and appearance could be deemed more dairy than beef. Their meat is prized above all for flavor and tenderness. At hotels and resorts, Wagyu beef is top-of-the-line. If you’ve eaten the real thing, you know it.

In Japan, the Wagyu are a longstanding national treasure.

In the U.S., they have been the pride and joy of breeders like Donald ‘Doc’ Sherwood, DVM. He has been breeding full-blood Wagyu beef cattle for 17 years at his Empire State Farm near Binghamton, New York.

On Saturday, September 22nd, 100 lots of elite Wagyu cattle and genetics will sell in the Empire State Farm (ESF) ‘Final Chapter’ herd dispersal at the Hosking Sales facility in New Berlin.

The sale will feature young and mature cows, bred and open heifers, herd sire prospects, embryo recipient cows, cow/calf pairs, embryos and semen.

Cow Buyer will be in the house for online bidding as well.

The retired veterinarian once bred some top purebred Holstein dairy cattle under the ESF prefix in a joint venture several decades ago, with one of his sons, who previously had a dairy farm. They sold some ESF dairy cattle to Japan.

Years later, in 2001, Dr. Sherwood began importing the Japanese Wagyu beef cattle and developed full-blood genetics — taking his love of bovines in a different direction toward the elite melt-in-your-mouth beef of the Wagyu.

“I was interested in the disposition of these animals and the quality of their meat,” Sherwood recalls in a phone interview with Farmshine this week. “I researched them, and I realized they were a fit for me. There were not too many breeders at the time, and their disposition made it possible for me to work with them on my own.”

Full-blood herds, like ESF, are highly prized as sources of imported and developed 100% Wagyu genetics. Sherwood explains that purebred herds are defined as a minimum 93% Wagyu and that the industry today includes many other ‘percentage-Wagyu’ herds.

In fact, the American Wagyu Association (AWA) is the fastest growing beef breed association in recent years.

Sherwood chose to stay 100% Wagyu, breeding only full-bloods according to the Japanese tradition. Over the years, he’s sold mainly breeding stock, but also surplus males for others to finish for specialty top-shelf beef markets.

During his veterinary years before retirement in 2003, Sherwood and his wife Mary, worked as partners, but as he got into the Wagyu after retirement, she was unable for health reasons to help. He has developed a real affinity for this breed because of the way they acclimate readily to people making his work easier in these later years.

“To look at them, you would never know what a superior beef animal they are. They aren’t muscular or thick like other beef breeds, and in some ways their body structure is more dairy,” says Dr. Donald Sherwood of Empire State Farm as he notes the outstanding meat the Wagyu produce and the pleasure this Japanese breed has been for him to work with virtually on his own for 17 years.

“These cattle are a pleasure to work with. It’s neat to have an animal you can work with by yourself as long as you let them know you’re around,” Sherwood observes.

He says many people are getting started into this breed and building on it, in part because they are easy to work with as long as they are not left to run wild.

“It’s not hard to work with the Wagyu. They adjust to people very well and become docile and friendly with interaction, where other beef breeds don’t get that disposition where they enjoy being around people,” Sherwood explains.

“The Japanese bred these cattle originally, and I’ve based a lot of my program on the proven sires from Japan. Most of my sires have come from Japan, where these cattle are a national treasure – they think that much of them,” he adds.

We hear the stories, that the Japanese feed the Wagyu beer and massage them and take individual care of them as smallholder operations. As Sherwood notes, Japan doesn’t have the land resources for cattle like in the U.S., so they are protective of their Wagyu in smaller and more intimate settings.

He is quick to point out, “It’s really the meat that makes the Wagyu stand out. These aren’t show cattle. Their claim to fame is how they look on the rail,” Sherwood explains. “With meat so outstanding, the Wagyu are more noted for the quality of their meat than being judged for their appearance in a show ring. They aren’t that muscular, but have that good-tasting beef with a healthy and flavorful fat.”

In the U.S., Wagyu (or as it is often described on menus as “Kobe”) often comes from percentage-herds or crossbreeding. But for those who’ve had the real-deal, it’s an eating experience not soon forgotten.

Information from the American Wagyu Association (AWA) suggests the type of marbling is different. Imagine thin ribbons of intramuscular fat evenly dispersed. And AWA notes this is a healthy fat that is high in Omega 3’s.

“To look at them, you would never know what a superior beef animal they are,” Sherwood says with a chuckle. “They aren’t muscular or thick like other beef breeds, and in some ways their body structure is more dairy.”

In fact, in Japan and Australia, Holsteins are often crossed with the Wagyu to reduce birthweight for first-calf dairy animals and to produce an F1 cross that offers a “commercial” version of this very distinctive high-quality beef.

In Australia, for example, the Wagyu herd is quite large, and they’ve developed the F1 Holstein x Wagyu as a secondary income stream for a dairy industry under siege of many years of poor milk prices.

Breeding Holstein females to Wagyu bulls is already commonplace in both Japan and Australia with Wagyu x Holstein deemed the ultimate cross in Japan because Holsteins are the next highest marbling cattle breed behind Wagyus, producing meat superior in quality to the meat of Wagyu crossed with any other breed, according to information available from the AWA.

Their highly-marbled beef typically grades Prime or above, even in crossbreeding programs. In fact, Japan has eight quality standards above the U.S. Prime quality grade that the Wagyu meet, according to the AWA.

In the U.S., less than 2% of all U.S. beef currently grades Prime. This, along with a return of consumers to fat and flavor after revelations about the pitfalls of lowfat diets, helps position the Wagyu as a breed that can make a significant impact on beef quality – particularly in dairy-cross programs where the value of bull calves is increased and sexed semen heifers are produced with matings to dairy bulls.

The AWA reports that numerous U.S. buyers are willing to pay $0.20-0.30 per lb premiums above local market beef prices for Wagyu F1 calves (Wagyu x Holstein).

However, this value is only realized when working with a marketing system that recognizes the superior eating quality of the Wagyu.

Still, Sherwood notes that nothing else — no cross — equals the flavor of full-blooded 100% Wagyu beef. And that is why full-bloods command such high prices.

As an example, one ESF animal selling on Sept. 22 had a sister sell for $16,000 at a sale in Limerick, Pennsylvania in April of this year. It was the Synergy Wagyu Genetic Opportunity Sale.

Synergy had several Empire State Farm (ESF) females in their herd and sold their ESF-pedigree offspring for amounts up to $46,000, according to information available in the sale catalog

In his letter to buyers, Dr. Sherwood says he does not claim to be an expert on Japanese Wagyu, but that he studied the breed extensively and incorporated the Japanese philosophy into his management to develop lines with the outstanding meat Wagyu are known for and crossing them with Wagyu lines that bring size, milking ability, small calves for calving ease as well as disposition and temperament.

“This sale is it for me,” says Sherwood, 86, about his beloved cattle project. “We had an auction five years ago, and then started up again, but age and health have me slowing-down so this is a complete dispersal this time. I’ve had 40 years as a veterinarian and a great wonderful time working with cattle and enjoying it. Now I’ll spend more time with my family with thanks to our sons Don and Steve, and especially my wife Mary. We have worked together all of our life.”

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FDA admits almonds don’t lactate, but here’s the rest of the story…

Posted on July 27, 2018 by Agmoos

They’re even taking her ‘moo!’ Investor-heavy high-tech startup companies are (with USDA’s help) taking her DNA to give food-grade yeast her protein-producing ability in a fermentation process to make “animal-free milk and dairy.” They’re editing her cells to grow muscle blobs in bioreactors for “animal-free boneless beef” and using her unborn bovine fetal serum as the culture media for the so-called ‘clean’ ‘animal-free’ cell-cultured meat growth. And they are taking her “moo” with website invitations to “join the ‘Moo’-vement or to get ‘moo-ving’ for all the dairy you love with none of the cows.” Meanwhile, FDA is poised — in a multi-year nutrition innovation strategy — to expand standards of identity for milk/dairy and meat/beef to accomplish nutrition innovation goals that, themselves, are being questioned and in the end may give these companies the license to steal. Photo by Sherry Bunting

FDA nutrition innovation strategy poised to ‘modernize’ how milk, beef defined as high-tech labs make cow-less versions of both

By Sherry Bunting for Farmshine, July 27, 2018

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As President Ronald Reagan famously said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

Last week’s news that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will “help” the situation of imitation milk labels was followed by specifics from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.

He revealed in a live interview with Politico: “An almond doesn’t lactate, I will confess.”

Now there’s the sound bite everyone wants to hear, and the media and social media worlds went wild. But what does it really mean? Here’s the rest of the story and how to get involved.

Gottlieb said publicly that FDA plans to start gathering public comments before taking next steps in “redefining the rules for milk products”.

What he didn’t say in the Politico Pro Summit on July 17 is that FDA has already published a hearing and comment notice in the June 27, 2018 Federal Register for a July 26 hearing that covers three topics related to “modernizing” standards of identity, and the comment period ending August 27, 2018.

Will the government’s offer to ‘help’, in this case, result in more dishonesty and skulduggery, tricking consumers into eating what they may not otherwise choose and allowing investor-heavy startup companies to steal from farmers and ranchers, not only the identity of the products they produce, but also the very commodity-promoting checkoff dollars the government mandates they pay?

FDA already has a standard of identity for milk, and almost 100 dairy products, that it has chosen to ignore for more than a decade on any product except actual dairy milk.

Here’s the rub… If real dairy milk does not have added Vitamin D (when fat is removed Vit D is added to bring it back to full-fat levels of Vit. D), it can be deemed “mislabeled” by FDA and unable to call itself MILK.

But, if there are almonds and soybeans in your milking parlor — by all means, have at it, label it milk — with or without Vit. D — not to mention without real milk’s levels of protein, quality amino acid profile and 9 essential nutrients.

You see, the standard of identity for milk is enforced when it comes from a cow, but not when it comes from a plant. And yet, because there is a standard of identity for milk — a nutritional and functional expectation — the plant-based knock-offs get to hijack that profile without being held to it and can selectively market from it with ‘more xxx’ or ‘free of xxx’ statements without stipulating what they are deficient in. (Example: Almond milk labels should say “88% less protein” if they are going to differentiate from the standard of identity they are hijacking).

By its own admission, FDA has maintained a non-enforcement posture on plant-based imitation beverages. Described as “enforcement discretion,” FDA has looked the other way and the dairy foods industry was either asleep at the wheel or developing imitations on the side, while these imposters were flooding the dairy case.

Meanwhile the companies investing in the imitations were free to do their market development and consumer confusion while securing space in the dairy case.

The timing of Gottlieb’s comments last week is even worse, given FDA’s launch of a multi-year nutrition innovation review as part of the agency’s nutrition innovation strategy revealed in March that seeks to expand standards of identity for products like milk and meat.

FDA meetings are happening quickly and quietly in various areas of imitation animal protein labeling and regulation. Yes, they are public meetings, but no one really knows about them.

Milk and dairy products have already been on the receiving end of identity-theft for more than a decade, and now that griddle is heating up to pancake both dairy farmers and ranchers (cattle are the target) with new plant-based mixtures, but even more horrifying are the genetically-edited cellular protein blobs or white-substance-exuding yeast grown in bioreactors yearning to be beef and milk.

There are new identity-thieves lurking about and guess what? USDA — the government — is the source of the bovine gene-edited cells and bovine gene-sequenced yeast in the heavily-investor-funded tech food startup companies that are the real focus of FDA’s recent moves.

With patents in hand — and funding from their big investors to scale up manufacturing — they seeking regulatory and labeling authority under FDA to be meat/beef and milk/dairy — without the cows.

FDA had a hearing on cell-cultured proteins July 12, and comments on regulation and labeling for this are due September 25.

A hearing on standards of identity was held by FDA on July 26 (after Farmshine press time), and comments are due August 27. (Look for more on this in next week’s Farmshine).

Dairy and beef producers need to become actively engaged in these moves by FDA because the main organizations that represent them — National Milk Producers Federation and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association — are on record stating these cell-cultured products should be subject to regulation under USDA like real meat and dairy. They are mainly seeking a level playing field in the marketplace, not opposing their classification as meat, milk, dairy.

(NMPF is vigorously defending milk’s standard of identity against plant-based imitations on nutritional grounds, but seeking a level playing field on the cell-cultured proteins).

Trust me, food and dairy manufacturing companies and investors have already hired the best and the brightest and are already involved in this FDA process — cheering for the other team.

Here’s an example: Perfect Day ‘animal-free milk’ is on the market after receiving its patent in February and raising $24.7 million in first-round startup funding from investors to scale-up manufacturing.

This company has a business-to-business (B2B) model, according to an interview with Reuters, and is already working with some of the world’s largest dairy food and beverage manufacturers. Its website states that the product is just like milk in terms of proteins, but without the cholesterol, saturated fats, lactose, and environmental impact of cattle. Just think what this portends for the dumping of even more fat-free real milk from the market.

In fact, a primary foreign investor indicated support for the Perfect Day (fake milk) startup because it aligns with United Nations Sustainability Goals for 2030. (There’s that S-word again. I hope we are paying attention to how the S-word and cattle are getting along these days). Continental Grain is a big investor in both the Memphis Meats (fake meat) and Perfect Day (fake milk) startups, while Cargill and Tyson are investors in the Memphis Meats startup.

These high-tech food sciences are attracting big high-tech investors at a rapid rate because they are viewed as “disruptor technologies,” and their websites and promotional materials hold nothing back. Milk, meat, beef, dairy – no words are off limits in their branding and marketing.

In effect, while the government forces dairy and beef producers to pay a checkoff tax for promotion of their commodities, beef and dairy — and the names of products associated with those commodities — the government is looking the other way or now potentially encouraging more identity-theft as techies enter the food space to market proteins using the dairy and beef profiles and images, without paying one dime.

As for Perfect Day, this fake-milk is made by genetically altering food-grade yeast, taking DNA from a cow and sharing its protein-producing qualities with the yeast. (Sourced from the USDA, the genetically-altered yeast are cultivated to produce ‘dairy’ protein).

This process results in a microbe that is combined with a sugar substrate (food for the microbe) to feed, grow and exude in a fermentation process the company says is like “craft-beer-style-brewing,” producing protein “building blocks” for making dairy milk, yogurt and cheese. Perfect Day’s website says: “Dairy reinvented: Sustainable. Kind. Delicious.”

The end game is to provide a ‘base dairy’ protein that looks and tastes like milk, for inclusion in manufactured dairy products like cheese, ice cream, pizza, yogurt, and to work “synergistically” with the dairy foods industry as — according to the website — “a complement to cow-based milk that takes some of the stress away from the factory-farming system, rather than replace dairy cows entirely.”

Enter a caption

Memphis Meats and other companies on the fake meat side are doing similar things with cell-culturing to grow cellular protein blobs in laboratory bioreactors.

In each case, the ultimate goal is to decrease the need for cattle — be they dairy or beef bovines.

Think about this for a moment. Even at a 1 to 3% inclusion rate in common dairy foods or ground beef, these lab-cultured proteins and genetically-altered yeast give processors even more control over supply, demand and pricing of milk as well as boneless beef, and if standards of identity allow this, or if FDA enforcement discretion looks the other way – consumers will never know the integrity of their food has been changed.

If FDA modernizes its standards of identity to accomplish the goals as outlined by Commissioner Gottlieb — including a reduction in saturated fat consumption despite revelations that saturated fats are healthful not harmful — it is entirely possible that FDA’s new guidance could allow these protein “innovations” in standardized dairy and meat products, without being considered mislabeled and with no indication to consumers.

Gottlieb has already established FDA’s desire to accomplish certain nutritional goals by spurring innovation with more “flexible” standards of identity.

Ahead of the July 26 hearing, FDA published its intention to cover three aspects in the standards of identity discussion: 1) Protecting consumers against economic adulteration; 2) Maintaining the basic nature, essential characteristics, and nutritional integrity of food; and 3) Promoting industry innovation and providing flexibility to encourage manufacturers to produce more healthful foods.

FDA’s Federal Register notice also says the following: “Our intent is that modernizing standards of identity to improve the nutrition and healthfulness of standardized foods will promote honest and fair dealing in the interest of consumers and achieve the goals of the Nutrition Innovation Strategy.”

How can FDA pursue this course in the face of what has been revealed in the past three to four years? It appears that bringing these B2B products to market, along with the FDA nutritional innovation strategy, are happening ahead of the battleground brewing for the next round of Dietary Guidelines.

It appears they want to modernize standards of identity for dairy within less than one year, to get them in place before the current flawed dietary guidelines are challenged in the 2020 cycle, which begins in earnest in 2019.

Numerous investigations and scientific reports and studies show that the saturated fat avoidance of more than 30 years was not only never proven to be healthful, it is now shown to be harmful. And the rhetoric from the United Nations and various Sustainability projects continues to focus on cattle as being bad for the planet, despite evidence to the contrary.

FDA wants comments that specifically talk about how the agency can use standards of identity to encourage the production of more healthful foods, to take into consideration technology, nutrition science and marketing trends, and to assess what consumers expect these standards to tell them.

Is FDA about to help the food industry blur the lines of food integrity to trick people into eating according to USDA/HHS flawed set of dietary guidelines (and UN environmental sustainability assumptions)?

That would be the ultimate dishonesty, and much worse than the 10-plus years of ignoring dairy identity theft already happening daily in the supermarket dairy case. Expanding the standard of identity, depending upon how it is accomplished, would give large, powerful, multinational food corporations a true license to steal.

Last week, the American Dairy Coalition (ADC) launched a “Protecting Milk Integrity Initiative” to advocate for the proper use of federally standardized terms established for the word “milk” on product labels. ADC is a coalition of dairy, ag and livestock producers, and they are devoting a branch of their organization to work specifically on “providing clarity and consistency for consumers across the nation,” the organization said in a July 17 news release.

ADC is getting the word out that it believes the dairy industry must speak up to ensure the FDA understands how important it is, not only for the current standard of identity for milk and dairy products to be upheld, but for it to be fully enforced — restricting the use of the word “milk” on all future plant-based or alternative product labels.

They point out that the price of milk continues to decline while sales of plant-based alternatives are up 61% over the past five years with projections of more market share gains in the future.

Don’t be fooled by FDA’s admission that almonds don’t lactate. Instead of the enforcement of milk’s standard of identity that dairy farmers have been waiting for, FDA has already quietly launched its process for modernizing standards of identity to achieve specific (and flawed) nutritional goals.

To comment on Docket No. FDA-2018-N-2381 for “FDA’s Comprehensive, Multi-Year Nutrition Innovation Strategy,” due August 27, 2018, use the docket portal at https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=FDA-2018-N-2381.

To comment on Docket No. FDA-2018-N-2155 for “Foods Produced Using Animal Cell Culture Technology, due September 25, 2018, use the docket portal at https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=FDA-2018-N-2155 .

To mail comments for either one, reference the appropriate docket name and number in your letter and mail to: Dockets Management Staff (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852

In addition to commenting, a petition has been developed by the American Dairy Coalition’s Protecting Milk Integrity Initiative, and signatures are being collected to submit with public comments. ADC is also taking donations to raise funds to fight this cause.

More information about Protecting Milk Integrity Initiative, visit American Dairy Coalition

To learn more about the July 12 FDA cellular protein hearing (fake meat) and July 26 standards of identity hearing (fake milk), stay tuned to future editions of Farmshine for full reports ahead of the deadlines for commenting to FDA on both.

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CAPTIONS

FAKE MEAT and FAKE MILK

New Harvest and Memphis Meats testifed to FDA on July 12 that cell-cultured ‘meats’ are inevitable. They showed diagrams of how gene-edited bovine DNA and culture media are combined in bioreactors to make cellular blobs they want to call ‘boneless beef’ — without the cow. Similar diagrams can be found for Perfect Day and their phrase: ‘all the dairy you love with none of the cows’ at their website perfectdayfoods.com. Screenshot of materials displayed during FDA hearing by Sherry Bunting

Road to recovery

Posted on April 7, 2017 by Agmoos

By Sherry Bunting April 7, 2017

If there is one thing to come down the road of recovery from a tragedy in agriculture, it is the sense of community that agriculturalists make business-as-usual. It is the matter-of-fact way in which people are prompted to help each other, and the humility with which help is offered that allows proud and self-reliant fellow farmers and ranchers to accept.

All know that livelihoods and legacies are on the line, pending the external forces that cannot be controlled, and that, in an instant, a storm, fire, or other natural disaster could change everything.

KansasFire5

While driving through Ashland and Englewood, Kansas on Saturday heading back to Pennsylvania from other work in the Midwest, the post-wildfire realities stretched for miles.

Intermittent wheat pasture is credited with saving hundreds of lives.

It was a rain-soaked day, just what the land needs to recover. New life was springing forth, adding lushness to the intermittent wheat pastures that had provided refuge – credited with saving hundreds of human and animal lives as they interrupted the fires that spread rapidly through the dry grasslands and provided a safe haven for evacuees when roads were blocked during the fire.

Timely rains are softening the charred lands with emerging hints of green, red and gold, framing the wildfire zones as the Painter slowly re-fills this empty palette. Residents say that the rain has helped a lot, and the grasses will explode within the next two weeks in some areas. The hay being sent has been a godsend. And the move by the Trump administration to authorize emergency grazing on Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) lands located in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas – the three states which were most heavily impacted by ongoing wildfires – will help.

But it is the Sandhills of southwest Kansas that catch your breath. The Starbuck fire — that claimed over 500,000 of the total 711,000 acres burned in Kansas the first week of March — had burned so hot, sinking down through the sandy soil like a sponge, that many wonder if the grasslands will come back more than spotty at best in areas where windswept sand dunes present a desert-like appearance. There are areas with nothing on top, leading to lingering concerns about feeding surviving cattle.

Firefighters noted this was unlike anything they had seen in their 20 to 30 years. They described driving 60 to 70 mph, and being outrun by the fast-moving fire, seeing it move right past them.

Only time will tell how some of the acres will respond to the timely rains.

One thing is for certain, the help of fellow farmers and ranchers via donations of hay, fencing supplies, work crews, orphaned calf care, and fundraising — all of it represent blessings beyond measure.

As Ashland resident Rick Preisner put it: “Everyone here was shell-shocked at first. Everything changed in an instant. It was difficult to know where to start. Then the help came pouring in and it lifted this community up.”

Ashland is ‘home’ for Roddy Strang with sister Rhonda at Gardiner Angus, where their father worked 26 years.

“No one here is saying no to the hay that’s been coming,” said Roddy Strang. “They know they will need feed for a while here.” Strang trains horses and lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania with his wife and children, but he grew up in Ashland around the Gardiner Angus Ranch, where his father worked for 26 years.

Not only did he fill his livestock trailer with 250 compact alfalfa bales and some fencing for the trip “home” to the annual Gardiner Angus production sale Saturday (April 1), he helped connect the dots for Lancaster County dairy farmer Aaron Hess of Hess Dairy in Mount Joy and his neighbor Arlyn Martin. Martin drove the 1500 miles last week with a load of 36 large square bales from Hess, along with 1800 fence posts and 91 rolls of barbed wire the men procured with funds they had raised and with many companies offering equipment and supplies free or with discounts.

They worked with Kevin Harrop, of Harrop Hay and Bale, Exton. Harrop grew up on a dairy farm and today runs a hay brokering and custom harvesting business in southeast Pennsylvania. Between Harrop and James Hicks of Meadow Springs Farm, they filled another truck with 42 large square bales. Harrop and Martin set out for Kansas early last week, delivered the hay and fencing to Ashland Cooperative Feed and Seed by Wednesday, and were home by Saturday.

For Strang, the mission was personal. He stayed for the Gardiner Angus sale Saturday, where a few cows were purchased for the return trip to Virginia.

For those involved with the donations from southeast Pennsylvania — as for the numerous others organizing convoys over the past three weeks from Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, northwest Pennsylvania, and more — the mission to bring hay to fire-torn regions in four states was something they didn’t really think twice about. And it is something they don’t want recognition for.

The only fanfare being given to these hay donations is the sentiment of “God Bless America.” As Harrop explains it: “We saw it the Facebook posts, and we knew people out there, so we called to see what was going on and to figure out exactly what they would need,” he said in a phone call from the road last week.

Harrop put it best when he explained that people helping out do not want publicity or pats on the back for their own sakes, but they sure don’t mind if others share and publicize what they are doing for the sake of showing the world how farmers and ranchers network and move forward to get things done.

“In a small way, we just want to help keep this network going,” said Harrop. “The need is great in the wildfire zone. The mainstream media and the government are ignoring this. Farmers all over the country have responded.”

In fact, hundreds of trucks with hay and fencing and other needed supplies have poured into the affected areas of southwest Kansas, eastern Colorado and the Texas-Oklahoma Panhandle region. While some areas are saying they have enough hay, for now, southwest Kansas is particularly hard hit in this regard, and people are thankful for the trucks that continue to come – 200 of them, in fact, last Saturday, alone. The list of states represented is too numerous to be sure to acknowledge them all. Relief organizers say they have received calls from over 20 states. Plans are also underway for moving 1000 large bales that have been donated in Greene and Washington counties, Pennsylvania in the near future.
RainHelpsHayToo

“That is their lives out there. That’s what they do, and it’s not like they have a lot to fall back on,” said Aaron Hess after securing a load of large bale hay from his dairy onto Arlyn Martin’s truck. “I was just seeing the posts on Facebook, so I called up the Ashland co-op and they put me in touch with the guy in charge. I just felt like it was the right thing to do.”

Teams of volunteers have helped remove damaged fencing. Crews, tools and materials to re-fence perimeters are the priority now.

Strang notes that the recipients are amazed by the outpouring of people wanting to come out to the middle of nowhere and help. “It is emotional,” he admitted. “There are some good people in a bad way. They aren’t going to ask for the help, but we see the need and we know if it were us, they would help.”

Even in this time when agriculture is taking such a severe economic hit, people step up. That’s how agriculture rolls.

(Above) “From the Ashes” artwork displayed Saturday by Joel Milford of Fowler, Kansas from a photo captured by Cole Gardiner as he found this cow and her newborn calf a day or two after the fire. Milford’s painting was auctioned Saturday during the Gardiner Angus production sale, raising $35,000 and prints are still being sold for $200 each to benefit the wildfire relief efforts of the Ashland Community Foundation. Nearly 100 prints have been sold thus far. To purchase a print for wildfire relief, contact Jan Endicott, at the Stockgrowers Bank in Ashland, Kansas at jan@stockgrowersbank.com or 620-635-4032. Prints are $200 plus $15 shipping and 6.5% Kansas state sales tax.

How you can help

Wildfire relief organizers are indicating that the best way for distant donors to help is to provide monetary donations for transporting nearby hay and resources to the areas affected by the wildfires.

Supplies and funding for the volunteer care of orphaned calves is also requested. Follow the progress of 4-Hers and other volunteers caring for these calves at Orphaned Calf Relief of SW Kansas.

In addition, auctions are being organized to benefit wildfire funds. For example, a heifer donated by Oklahoma West Livestock Market was auctioned 105 times on March 8 to garner $115,449 with proceeds going to the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Foundation Fire Relief Fund. Similar ideas are creating a ripple response throughout the agriculture community and can be replicated anywhere. Visit Livestock Marketing Association for these auction notes and efforts.

Trent Loos at Rural Route Radio is helping to organize this idea to fund the recovery and rebuilding efforts in the fire-ravaged areas of the High Plains through means of raising cash. For information about how to participate in this and to find a list of upcoming auctions, as well as how to set one up, contact Trent Loos at (515) 418-8185.

To give supplies and trucking or to donate funds to foundations for direct wildfire relief, contact the state-by-state resources below.

Kansas

Monetary donations: Ashland Community Foundation/Wildfire Relief Fund at www.ashlandcf.com or P.O. Box 276, Ashland, KS 67831. The Kansas Livestock Association/Wildfire Relief Fund at 6031 SW 37th St., Topeka, KS 66614.

Hay, trucking and fencing donations: Call Ashland Feed and Seed at (620) 635-2856. (Ashland Feed and Seed is also taking credit card orders over the phone for feed and milk replacer or other supplies for ranchers in the area.)

Texas

Monetary donations: Texas Department of Agriculture STAR Fund.

Hay, trucking and fencing donations: Ample hay has been received for two to three weeks, so call to see if and when more is needed. Fencing supplies are needed, which can go to the Agrilife supply points. Contacts are J.R. Sprague at (806) 202-5288 for Lipscomb, Mike Jeffcoat at (580) 467-0753 for Pampa, and Andy Holloway at (806) 823-9114 for Canadian.

For questions about donations or relief efforts, contact Texas A&M Extension at (806) 677-5628.

Colorado

Monetary donations: Colorado Farm Bureau Foundation Disaster Fund at 9177 E. Mineral Circle, Centennial, CO 80112 and visit http://coloradofarmbureau.com/disasterfund/

Hay, trucking and fencing: Contact Kent Kokes (970) 580-8108, John Michal (970) 522-2330, or Justin Price (970) 580-6315.

Oklahoma

Monetary donations: Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Foundation Fire Relief at P.O. Box 82395, Oklahoma City, OK 73148 or www.okcattlemen.org.

Hay, trucking and fencing donations: Contact Harper County Extension at (580) 735-2252 or Buffalo Feeders at (580) 727-5530.

Other states organizing deliveries

Several states outside of the wildfire area are organizing assistance and deliveries. Find those resources at http://www.beefusa.org/firereliefresources.aspx

Ag Moos

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Road to recovery

How you can help

Kansas

Texas

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Oklahoma

Other states organizing deliveries

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Niche cross-breeding opportunity seen for dairy

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How you can help

Kansas

Texas

Colorado

Oklahoma

Other states organizing deliveries

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