At the recent annual Kansas Grazers Association winter conference, Kit Pharo was the keynote speaker. Pharo is an eastern Colorado cattle rancher who has been instrumental in advancing the grass-based cattle industry. Pharo Cattle Company (www.pharocattle.com) primarily sells bulls and semen with appropriate grass-based genetics. Pharo challenges livestock producers to think outside the box and to not get caught up in the production driven paradigm of conventional agriculture. Below are some quotes and concepts from Pharo:
· “It’s not nice or profitable to fool Mother Nature.” Pharo was referring to the need to calve in sync with nature (calve when wild animals would naturally have babies); however, I think this statement has a much broader application to agriculture. Anytime we develop technologies or practices that are in direct conflict with natural ecosystems (monocultures, GMOs, pesticides, feeding grain to ruminants in feedlots, reliance on fossil fuels, etc.), there are a whole host of long- and short-term unintended consequences that may not be the best economic decision for individual farmers or society in general.
· “Dare to be a herd quitter.” We must break away from the status quo mentality. Doing what everybody else is doing is poor business practice.
· “The commodity business is a breakeven business.” If we remove ourselves from this business, we no longer are selling commodities, but products. By selling products, we have more control and are insulating ourselves against price fluctuations.
· “Profitable ranching = the most efficient use of forage resources.”
· To increase profit for commodities either increase production or reduce expenses.
· Management Decisions can be either production driven or profit driven, and these are not necessarily the same thing!
· “Sustainability = Profitability + Enjoyability”
· Grass-based livestock producers are in the business of “converting free solar energy into a high quality food product.”
