SWIFT CURRENT, Sask. – Feed is the critical link between livestock and grain producers and should be the key to creating opportunities for both.
Vern Racz, of the Prairie Feed Resource Centre at the University of Saskatchewan, told a recent conference that grain and livestock producers took separate paths during the 1970s and 1980s.
There was “a drive toward independence with many operations forgetting the lessons of diversity and alliances.”
In today’s post-Crow rate world, he said, producers should be working to bring the sectors back together.
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“The number of opportunities to create alliances and even diversify the main livestock operation in this changing situation are present as never before,” Racz said.
“We’ve got to be able to create that linkage … and it has to be a synergistic one.”
Dockage is feed
One of the most obvious possibilities is feeding grain byproducts to cattle. Racz said there are about 600,000 tonnes of dockage contained in Saskatchewan grain each year.
“We have to pay for the shipping of that dockage out and gain nothing,” he said. “People in B.C. gain everything and we are nice enough to ship it out there for free.”
Racz said cleaning the grain on the Prairies and using the dockage in processing facilities like those at Wilkie, Sask., Weyburn, Sask., and Melville, Sask., could save producers $20 million annually on freight and generate two or three times more in value-added activity.
Saskatchewan could background another 600,000 calves from byproduct feeds, he said.
“This is just one way to capture benefits for both cattle and grain producers in that same area.”
Racz predicted more grower contracts for barley, which is Western Canada’s base feed grain. He said the export feed market is small, about one million tonnes, and is mainly in Saudi Arabia.
Low prices, loss of that market and opportunities in other areas could result in fewer acres planted.
“Livestock people will need (barley),” Racz said.
“I think we’re going to see, in the future, grower contracts,” in order to ensure sufficient supply. Racz also said many producers can make more money growing cereal silage.
“Ask the people who are selling their cereal silage unharvested to the big feedlots.”
Producers can use silage within their own operations to increase the number of cattle they feed, or they can contract the silage to a neighbor, or they can have a custom feeding arrangement where the cattle are moved instead of the feed.
“Recognize what is changing in your area,” Racz urged producers.
“Opportunities become real only after you capture them… Talking about them isn’t enough.”
