Francis Thicke

What advantages do grazing dairy farms have in terms of improving land quality?

Well, we often think that agriculture is the more we farm, the more we ruin the environment. But I think that with animals integrated onto the landscape, in an ecologically sound system, that we can actually enhance the environment by farming. So, we can actually build the soil. We can improve water quality. We have the land [all on forages], so the whole famer is a buffer strip, you might say.

And we improve wildlife habitat, and certainly we improve air quality, compared to a conferment system. So, I think that we can actually enhance our nature resource space if we farm in a sound manner.

I think it’s key that the animals are in their natural habitat. And like hogs being outdoors, there are many natural behaviors they can express being outdoors, compared to being in the confinement where they can’t express those natural behaviors. Cows are the same way. They need to move about. They like to lie in the grass and they prefer, I think, the natural habitat. And I think it keeps them healthier, as well.

It’s better for the cows to eat grass than corn?

A cow has a rumen, which is made to digest forages. That’s the way they evolved. And if you feed a cow a lot of grain, as is the case in concentrated dairy operations, it’s very hard on their digestive system. They have a whole range of digestive problems. And it tends to shorten their lifetime. It also causes foot problems, eating a high-grain diet. It produces more milk, but the cows have a shorter lifetime.

Do you have to user fewer antibiotics?

We are organic, so we don’t use any antibiotics. But, we find that over time, being organic, the cows tend to get healthier and healthier, and we seem to have fewer and fewer health problems. And so, we’re pretty happy with the way the animal health is in our herd.

What else would you like to add?

Here in Iowa, we seem to have a real focus on producing ethanol from corn. And we know corn is a very erosive crop. As a matter of fact, research at Iowa State University and other places shows that corn and soybeans are inherently [leaky], even used in the best practices. And so, if we’re going to produce more ethanol, we’re going to produce more corn, it’s not a sound system.

But if we look at all the ethanol we’re producing today, if we were to increase our gas mileage of our vehicles by one mile per gallon, we’d save more gallons of fuel than all of the ethanol we’re producing today. So, we can see that if we could increase our mileage ten miles per gallon, this ethanol in a sense, we’re throwing it down a rat hole by not improving our efficiency of the use of our fuel first.

In our federal farm programs, we’re subsidizing the production of corn and soybeans, cotton, and such very highly erosive crops. And so, we’re actually subsidizing erosion. We’re subsidizing the dead zone. We’re subsidizing the creating of a dead zone by subsidizing corn product. And that’s really not sound at all.

Unfortunately, though, we’re not putting enough emphasis on our conversation programs. What we really need to do is to reward farmers for conservation practices that lessen the dead zone. We need to have crops besides corn.

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