By Gene Hall

We worked on a Texas family farm. As an adolescent and teen, I could think of 10,000 things I’d rather do.  Looking back on it now, I think I miss building fence with my grandfather more than the swimming hole.

My peers would spend the summer sleeping late and swimming, fishing and trying to impress girls on the banks of Big Cow Creek, or at the Palace Theatre in Kirbyville. I was baling hay, building fence and milking a cow. 

Everyone has to be good at something. I’ve not milked a cow since my mother stopped keeping one after selling the old farm in 1977. But in the 1960s—five minutes after the first lesson—I could harvest the daily milk from our Jersey faster than anyone in Newton County. What my Dad called “jerking the juice from the Jersey” was my early claim to fame. I was about eight years old when this task first fell to me. I like to believe now that this instilled a work ethic in my life. At the time, it was just another of the many chores we had to do to keep the farm going.

The keeping of a milk cow on the farm was a luxury for my mother. She scorned store-bought dairy products, except for cheese. She churned her own butter and I’ve never tasted anything like it, even in the finest restaurants. She made buttermilk which I never learned to like, and we drank our sweet milk the day after it was taken from Bossie or Cookie, chilled and with that rich cream skimmed from the top. That cream dressed up homemade desserts in a way you’d have to taste to believe. In coffee, those powdered creamers taste nasty by comparison. Don’t get me started on the homemade ice cream.

We kept one cow at a time in those days on our Texas family farm. The first was Bossie, later replaced by Cookie. One of them kept our family of six kids, Mom and Dad and my grandparents lavishly supplied with dairy products. I can remember half a dozen times when I carelessly let one of the Jerseys kick over the bucket. I dreaded reporting those unfortunate incidents. If Mom had to drive 17 miles to get the lesser store bought milk, I was in for it.

But the task went well for the most part. During the summers, I would get up to milk at around 7 a.m. I would attend to the afternoon milking after I got home from school. During school, my mother would milk in the morning and when I stayed for football practice and games. To tell the truth, of all the jobs on the farm, milking was probably the easiest. Due to my skills in that department, it was my job except for school and football. My brother got the harder jobs like feeding hay during the winter.

Bossie and Cookie were gentle souls and they gave me little trouble. A little feed in the trough, slip the two by four head latch—a painless device—and milking was under way. Cookie required what we called “kickers,” a metal device that would slip on above the joints of her rear legs, connected by a chain. This would prevent her from scattering the precious contents of the stainless steel bucket all over the barn floor.

Every time I milked, a group of six to ten barn cats would form a semi-circle around the rump of the Jersey. They waited patiently for the occasional stream of milk I would squirt in their direction, lapping it out of the air with relish.

All of this came to an end in 1977, along with our free range hens and several acres of potatoes and peas. Mom’s garden became smaller, and she became a regular at the grocery store in Kirbyville. I was married by then, and I had been to Texas A&M, so my participation in many farm chores became sporadic. My labor was missed. It all ended because those jobs were very labor intensive and the education we left to pursue and the jobs we eventually took made the keeping of milk cows impractical. Technology stepped in to feed families—even mine—as devoted to the country life as we were.

Many Texans are now returning to small acreages, seeking something that I grew up with. They are milking cows and goats, growing vegetable gardens of various sizes, raising beef cattle and loving all of it. Maybe one day I will join them. That’s a thought I never had with my head on Cookie’s flank, leaning in to steady her and milking her out by hand.

There were some disadvantages to growing up on a small East Texas family farm in the 1960s. We were somewhat isolated, and didn’t get to play with other kids as much as we would have liked.

Most of that seems unimportant now.  I have written in this blog of the life shaping experience of “growing up country.”  I share the feeling expressed by country music legend Barbara Mandrell – I was “country before country was cool.”

By Gene Hall
It is a lifelong habit of mine to check the comic page of the local newspaper. I no longer read them all, but I look for a few of my favorites. Imagine my surprise when, on April 17, I saw a large cartoon picture of a dairy cow on the Beakman-Jax science page near the comics. Initially impressed that agriculture was getting some attention, I read it with growing disgust.

It was not science. It was not even good propaganda, which usually has enough fact to present at least the veneer of truth.  You probably know of Beakman, the fuzzy headed science guy of Saturday morning cartoons. He’s done some good things—presenting science to kids in an entertainment medium. However, not unlike legions of entertainers, he has an agenda and U.S. agriculture in the sights of his bully pulpit.

The following was presented as science:

• “Almost all dairy cows are raised in factories where they’re fed surplus corn and soy—not the grass that is a cow’s natural food.”
• "Factory cows get more diseases, so they are medicated constantly. Their food includes drugs like antibiotics and hormones. They also get gas, which can hurt their four-part stomachs.” 
• “Factory cows live from 3-4 years before they die. Cows that eat grasses in meadows live and produce milk for up to 20 years. They are the ones farmers name and don’t number.” 
• “At 15 months old, a female calf is a cow.”

Wow, there’s that inflammatory buzz word, factory, used throughout this rhetoric. That’s news to the family farmers who own more than 98 percent of dairy farms in the U.S. 

I grew up on a farm where we had a dairy and later a beef cattle operation. I was taught by my dad, and later in agriculture class, that a cow was a female bovine that had produced a calf. That usually happens when they are about two years old. If I have my math and biology right, a 15 month old “cow” would have to be bred at six months. Since this would be risky for such a young animal, what dairy farmer would do this? It just doesn’t happen this way.

I’m no dairy nutritionist, but I know that dairy cows eat grain, silage (chopped green corn stalks) and lots of hay—dried grass.  There’s a lot of grazing going on in most operations. And come on—do you think that cows that eat only grass never get gas? As to “natural food,” just watch what happens if the gate to the corn field is left open. The cows will “naturally” walk in and help themselves.

There is no mention of the federal law that requires all antibiotics to be withdrawn before their milk is marketed to ensure that no residues are in the milk. There are strict withholding times for medications given to the cows. No dairy farmer I ever met regards a federal law lightly. Cows get veterinary care. There are regular checkups and vaccinations, just like people. Why is this presented as a bad practice? Are entertainers opposed to healthy cows?

The goal of America’s dairy farmers is to make a living. If they manage that, they’ve navigated a complicated regulatory environment and wound up producing a healthy and nutritious product that nearly everyone can afford.

The whole Beakman thing is right out of the “attack modern agriculture” playbook. It is poisonous, inaccurate and growing more and more stale. Fact checkers are either incompetent or so politically motivated they don’t care anymore.

This cartoonist has a political agenda. You may or may not agree with it but this kind of thing has no place in the funny papers. Even young activists should be armed with the truth. 

By Mike Barnett

I never met a steak I didn't like. Grass fed or corn fed, it's a taste I crave. I like beef  braised, broiled, roasted, fried and grilled. It goes great with a glass of milk.

I like the people who raise cattle–beef and dairy  They’re genuine. They’re sincere. I wish more of them would speak out for their industry. But that’s a subject for another blog  post.
 
What makes me bovine crazy are those with outside agendas who have a goal of eliminating modern beef and milk production. They fall into two categories. The ones I call the food crazies advocate a meatless society. Ecologically speaking, they maintain modern beef and dairy production is destroying the world.
 
The other faction urges you to eat grass fed beef exclusively. Feedlots are bad for the environment and waste huge food  resources (i.e., corn) which should feed hungry people, the argument goes. Grass fed, they maintain, is the environmentally correct way to raise beef.
 
Let me make it clear before the comments start flying. Grass fed is good. Corn fed is good. I don’t have problems with either. Each serves a market. There’s opportunity for both. Corn fed beef, however, has been taking it on the chin in environmental circles.
 
So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty in addressing beef  and dairy production that adds some interesting perspectives to the environmental claims.
 
A paper recently presented at the 71st Cornell Nutrition Conference in Syracuse, New York—Demystifying the Environmental Sustainability of Food Production– is not going to make the “back to 40 acres and a mule” people happy. The paper suggests that grass fed beef and organic milk might be more harmful to the environment than their traditional counterparts.
 
I can see the storm brewing now.
 
The authors argue that a true picture of environmental impacts of modern beef and  milk production will only be realized when the focus shifts from impact per animal or facility to volume of meat produced, taking into account the resources used for production.
 
They use the following example with dairy cows to explain the theory. Greenhouse gas (GHG) per cow has increased from 13.5kg in CO2 equivalents to 27.8kg since 1944. However, if you use the life cycle assessment of productivity—a model used by the EPA that takes into account all inputs and outputs to assess environmental impacts—the emissions per kilogram of milk fell from 3.7 kg in 1944 to 1.4 kg in 2007.
 
The authors also offer a different perspective on the carbon footprints of grass fed versus grain fed beef. At first take, it would seem correct to assume that beef cattle fed on pasture would have a lower carbon footprint. Those assumptions are wrong, the authors maintain, because grass fed advocates assume both systems have equal energy requirements, take the same amount of time to finish the animal, and produce the same quantities of GHGs.
 
When you deal in reality, a different picture emerges. Because of the slower growth rate of grass fed cattle, they take nearly 201 more days than grain fed to achieve a finished weight of 635 kilograms, the authors say.  They maintain grass fed cattle use nearly 3 times the total energy of grain fed and emit nearly three times the total methane emissions.
 
They add that  the resource inputs and greenhouse gas outputs generated by finishing the current U.S. population of 9.8 million fed cattle on intensively-managed pasture would require an extra 24.2 million hectares of  pastureland and massive amounts of energy. One hectare equals about two and a half acres. Do the math.
 
In short the authors say, “The increases in resource use per unit of output associated with ‘traditional’ dairy and beef production systems demonstrate that the popular perception of low-input sustainable systems does not align with true sustainability when trying to meet a static or increasing demand for food.”
 
I am in no way knocking grass fed beef. It’s a growing market and people who are raising it are meeting a demand. Kudos if you fall into that category.
 
What I am knocking are the environmental and food crazies. If they take time to read this report, I believe it will truly open their eyes. I believe they will see the error of their ways and I believe they will stop attacking modern beef and dairy production  methods.
 
I also believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and that pigs can fly.

The Obama Administration has its hands full right now but the president has expressed some interest in tackling the hot button issue of immigration reform. This is worthy of a serious discussion. Unfortunately, it is often clouded by the white hot anger of unserious people.

People involved in agriculture have a somewhat unique perspective on this issue. There is a universal acknowledgement among farmers and ranchers that we must gain control of our borders. Fortunately, there has been some progress there as the U.S. Border Patrol has been expanded to some 20,000 agents, making it the nation’s largest law enforcement body. There is some evidence that their efforts have improved the situation.

Yet, even in a down economy, the U.S. represents a huge “carrot” north of the border that looks appealing to citizens of a Latin America that still faces crippling poverty. It is also a fact that American workers are not lining up to fill the jobs that agriculture still needs done. U.S. dairy farmers, fruit and vegetable producers and many others still have a great need for labor, much of it unskilled. They want to hire legal workers to fill those jobs. The economics of the situation dictate that much of that labor will have to come from legal guest workers.

Some believe that U.S. workers would pick fruits and vegetables if farmers paid more. I guess you could get the wage high enough but remember that farmers and ranchers, in a system with many sellers and relatively few buyers, are “price takers.” There is no mechanism in our food and fiber marketing system for agricultural producers to pass along increases in the cost of production. At today’s commodity prices, there are many jobs at $10 per hour. There are very few at $15 per hour or higher. 

Increased enforcement has led to a labor crisis in agriculture. We are exporting some of our food production capacity to other nations due to a lack of labor. We have to fix this.

Here’s what I believe we need – continued strong efforts to control illegal immigration, giving law enforcement the tools it needs to secure the border. We also need a reasonable guest worker program. We need a way to legalize workers that are already here. This is not to say we grant amnesty or provide a red carpet path to citizenship.

It would be equally foolish to fling open the border and offer social services to a wave of immigrants. We need a program that allows people to work, go back home and come back when more work is available. Such a program would protect employers, who face an unreasonable burden in verifying the documentation of workers and it would protect the workers who always run the risk of exploitation.

The fact is that we need this labor in many industries. I’m speaking for agriculture. These are hard working people that want to work and provide for their families back home. We do need them. We have the jobs and the obligation to comply with the law in providing compensation and a safe working environment. Here’s hoping that the administration and the Congress have the political courage to get it right.