Ag News and Views: October 2013

For ranchers looking to rebuild their herds from within the ranch, the question arises as to how much it will cost to raise their own replacement heifers.

Are you a cattle manager, a grass manager or a soil manager? Many cattlemen view livestock as their base crop through the sale of beef. Others view grass as their base crop. While management of...

Most deer hunters, including me, are fascinated with large antlers. We generally want to see or harvest bucks with large antlers. "Trophy buck" is commonly used to describe a buck with large antlers; however, trophy buck means different things to different people.

By October, winter is just a few pages away on the calendar. With the change in season and forages entering dormancy comes the need to pay closer attention to your supplementation strategy to ensure cows do not lose body condition.

Traditional soil test methods have typically involved treating a soil sample with various acids and other reagents to extract a portion of the inorganic nutrients in the soil. This can hopefully be done with as few processes as possible to be fast and cheap, and fit the industrial model.

For decades, scientists have used molecular markers for research and breeding purposes to increase yields and water and nutrient efficiencies as well as disease and insect resistance in agricultural crops. Recently, pecan scientists have looked at the development of new technologies used in this research and considered its use in pecan breeding and research.

It has been a long time since profits from agricultural activities have justified the price of land. Escalated prices are often attributed to speculation, but with a fixed land resource and a growing population, the price of land is likely to continue to increase over the coming decades.