Wyett Swanson remembers the good times in grain farming. That was in the 1970s when
grain prices were high and input costs were low.
“In those days it was just like printing money,” the Provost, Alta., farmer said.
“We never made as much money as we did in the ’70s.”
But times have changed and so have farmers’ fortunes.
Input costs are up, grain prices are down and farmers are on what Swanson calls an
agricultural treadmill.
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“We’re working four to five times as hard and making less and less money all the time.”
Farmers are well acquainted with the problem. They want solutions.
Swanson offered some ideas during the Manitoba Grazing School held in Brandon on Dec.
5 and 6.
“I think forages have the potential to be part of the solution,” he said.
“If we put as much money into growing forages as we did into growing grain, we’d solve a
lot of problems.”
But his approach goes one step further. He recommends a forage-livestock combination,
where forages are harvested by cattle instead of machinery, allowing the crop to be walked
off the farm as beef.
“You want to exchange horsepower for livestock power.”
He considers cow-calf operations a good fit in that scenario. Those operations are not up
against the competition found in running a feedlot or backgrounding cattle.
With the abundance of feedlots and packing capacity in southern Alberta, the demand for
feeder cattle from cow-calf operations is tremendous, Swanson said.
“We’ve got lots of demand for our cattle.”
The Alberta rancher was not advocating an increase in Western Canada’s cow-calf numbers.
Instead, he said he was trying to convey cow-calf’s potential to lower farm input costs and
increase profits.
He’s confident producers can earn a better income by managing forages to improve the
performance of their cattle while lowering their farms’ cost of production.
“Get off the high inputs,” he advised producers. “Get off that agricultural treadmill.”
Swanson outlined what can best be described as a whole-farm approach. Everything from
the nutrients in his soil to the performance of his cattle is viewed under a microscope.
He keeps careful records so he knows down to the penny how much it costs to put a pound
of gain on his steers.
He said a fundamental part of planning is knowing the cost of production, which includes
land, livestock, feed and nutrition, equipment and shelter.
“If you don’t know your costs of production, how do you know where you’re at?”
He has adopted a diverse range of methods to reduce costs.
He strives for highly productive forage crops. Legumes are incorporated into those crops
due to their ability to fix nitrogen into the soil and because of their high feed value for cattle.
Swanson also advises making the most of the nutrients from livestock manure, including
manure that can be hauled in from nearby hog operations.
On the marketing side, he underlined the importance of understanding the cattle cycle.
Producers need to know at what point in the cycle to sell and when to expand.
Networking is a good way to glean ideas for livestock marketing and production, Swanson
said. Seminars, such as the Manitoba Grazing School, are among the places to meet other
people with innovative ideas.
