YERINGTON, Nev. – The Synder family has farmed the same parcel of land for five generations in southern Nevada.
Each generation has had to make substantial changes to keep the home place viable.
Eddie Synder’s great-grandparents came to the area in 1862 seeking gold but settled as ranchers. The original ranch was split four ways among the children. The current farm is on one of those original parcels near Yerington in the Mason Valley.
Of Eddie’s 10 children, Lucy, John and Jim decided to stay on the diverse operation, where they run a purebred bull test station and a heifer development program and grow garlic, onions and alfalfa hay on 2,000 acres of irrigated land.
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This is hard scrabble country with pale brown sandy soil supporting brush, no grass and plenty of rocks.
The area has few services but is giving way to subdivisions, which has driven up the price of land by as much as $13,000 per acre.
However, the collapse of the U.S. mortgage market in the last year has halted development. Many of the newcomers were retired Californians chasing a cheaper cost of living provided by the lack of a state income tax in Nevada.
Water availability is a big obstacle to development. Average rainfall is 100 millimetres a year so every piece of growing ground is irrigated with snow melt from the Sierra Nevada mountain range to the southwest.
“Without irrigation we would raise nothing,” Eddie said.
The farm uses 90 metre deep wells to supplement irrigation.
The onion, garlic and hay crops need 1,200 mm of water during the growing season.
“Everything you do in this onion business is expensive,” Eddie told a group of visitors to his farm. Onions cost about $5,000 per acre to grow and yield about 50 tons per acre.
The Synders plant about 300 acres of onions in April and harvest them in September.
The onions are stored, packed and shipped from the farm to produce distributors, and the garlic is shipped to another company for distribution. The family also grows about 200 acres of garlic.
The Synders’ alfalfa crop yields four cuttings a year. The first and fourth cuts are destined for the California dairy market and the other two go to local feed stores and the horse market. In the current hay market, the first cut is worth about $180 per ton and yields about 9,000 tons in the first harvest.
The feedlot is the farm’s major component.
The farm has produced beef cattle for more than 50 years, starting as a cow-calf operation and then switching to a 4,000 head feedlot in the late 1960s. The family stopped feeding cattle when it lost its packing plant across the border in California. About 10 years ago Eddie’s daughter, Lucy Rechel, took over the feedlot and custom bull test station, which feeds about 3,000 bulls a year.Â
Feeding bulls and developing heifers is about providing individual service to customers, she said.
“The business is based much more upon service than a regular feedlot.”
The farm organizes a 500 head bull sale in the spring and fall. Educational seminars are held the night before the sale so that buyers know what they are getting.
The heifer development program raises young females that are then bred and sent home pregnant.
The bull station is data driven.
A point evaluation system is used to assess the bulls’ mothers’ production records. That information is correlated with other performance measures such as ultrasound exams to assess carcass quality, correct body conformation, scrotal development and growth. Six breeds are on test this year.
In 2006 the family added net feed efficiency information, which is an electronic feed measurement system that tracks the feed consumption of each animal.
Developed by Grow Safe in Airdrie, Alta., the system uses radio frequency ear tags and individual feed bunks mounted on electronic scales to accurately calculate the amount of feed each animal consumes. Water intake is also measured.
Rechel said they had to educate their customers on the use of electronic ear tags and individual identification when they added the feed system.
It was a major adjustment for all concerned but they needed data such as individual birth dates so they could know the proper time to ultrasound and measure bulls.
“Those seedstock people have those animals in their hands the day they are born,” she said.
“If they could put that data like birth date, sire and dam on the tag so when they came here we would know it, it would be a huge advantage.”
While the family is dedicated fulltime to the operation, additional labour is always needed.
They keep about 30 core staff for the cattle and farming operation. At the height of their onion harvest, they bring in about 120 workers, mostly from Mexico on a guest worker program at a cost of about $1,000 per person.
They provide housing on the farm, which is government inspected, and staff must be paid equitable wages.
