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Navarro County

Agriculture News and Views April 2009

NOTES FROM YOUR COUNTY AGENT Recent rainfall events have certainly improved soil moisture conditions and range and pasture conditions are improving quickly. The majority of corn is planted with some grain sorghum not yet planted. It appears as if the recent rains have salvaged the wheat crop however yields may be marginal. If you are a grain or cotton producer, you can access crop budgeting spreadsheets at http://agfacts.tamu.edu/~lfalcone/newweb/cropbudgets.htm To access the spreadsheet we developed specifically for dryland corn in Navarro County go to: http://navarro-co.tamu.edu/pubcat.cfm?COUNTY=Navarro&CatID=2021 and click on "Corn Break Even Spreadsheet". Also, for the latest Market Outlook Reports from Texas AgriLife Extension Service Agriculture Economists go to: http://agecoext.tamu.edu/resources/market-outlook.html. We have several programs planned for the year and hope you can attend. If you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to call at 903-654-3075 or email jdscasta@ag.tamu.edu.

UPCOMING EVENTS • Wheat and Oats Field Day – April 23, 9am to noon, this is a joint effort between Hill

and Navarro Counties with four demonstrations setup from Barry to Brandon. Demonstrations include: oat variety trial, 2 wheat variety trials and a wheat plant population study. 3 CEU’s will be offered: 2 General and 1 L&R. If you grow wheat or oats, this will be a tour that you will not want to miss. (see FLIER PAGE 4)

• Native Prairie Restoration Workshop – May 29, Hunt County. (see FLIER PAGE 5/6)

• Stiles Farm Field Day – June 16, Thrall, TX. (more details in next newsletter)

• Navarro County Ranch Tour – June/July, Corbet, TX. (more details in next newsletter)

• Texas Pecan Growers Association Annual Conference – July 12-15, Mesquite, TX. http://www.tpga.org/annconference.html

• Texas A&M Beef Cattle Shortcourse – August 3-5, College Station, TX. http://animalscience.tamu.edu/ansc/BCSC/index.html

• Navarro County Hay Testing Drive – Entries Due Thursday, October 1.

• Fall Forage Workshop – October 27 – Corsicana, TX.

IN THIS ISSUE:

- Notes from County Agent

- Upcoming Events

- Navarro County Ag Blog

- Cow Herd Efficiency?

- Wheat/Oat Field Day Flier

- Prairie Restoration Flier

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NEW!!! Navarro County Agriculture Blog In an effort to improve the communication about events and issues affecting agriculture and natural resources we have developed a new resource. A blog for Navarro County Agriculture has been started and will have updates on programs, agriculture news and policy items. You can find the blog at:

http://navarroag.blogspot.com

Is Your Cow Herd Efficient? – Dr. Stephen P. Hammack Have you questioned the efficiency of your cow-calf operation. Dr. Stephen P. Hammack, Professor and Extension Beef Cattle Specialist Emeritus – Texas A&M Stephenville, addresses several key points in this article that will help you better evaluate efficiency. This article is reprinted from the Winter 2008 Texas A&M Beef Cattle Penning Newsletter. We must become more efficient in order to survive. Sound familiar? Okay, but what is efficiency? My favorite dictionary (Webster’s Unabridged, 1940) says simply that efficiency is the ration of useful effect to expenditure. Another way of saying that is output is relative to input. In the beef cow business there is biological efficiency, how much of some product you get compared to what you have to put in to get it. There is also economic efficiency or profit. Again from Webster’s, profit is excess of value received beyond expenditure. In other words, it’s dollars out versus dollars in. A producer told me recently, “My weaning weights this year averaged 648 pounds, and 20 years ago they probably wouldn’t have been even 550.” Since I know him pretty well I asked if that meant he’d become more efficient, or more profitable. He said, “Well, that’s more pounds and we still sell calves by the pound.” But weight alone (output) can’t measure efficiency, because there’s no accounting for input. I read recently that pounds of beef produced per cow has increased more than 50 percent over the last 40 years and that meant greater efficiency. Pounds of beef is a measure of output and a cow could be a measure of the input needed to get that beef. But is a cow today the same as 40 years ago? No, they’re now bigger and are producing bigger calves, resulting in bigger carcasses and therefore more beef per cow. And we are finishing most of our calves today, instead of slaughtering them right off the cow as was done with a good many calves 40 years ago. Neither average weaning weight nor beef per cow measure biological efficiency and they certainly say nothing about economics. Besides not accounting for input, average weaning weight is not even a complete measure of output. How many calves did you have to market? That brings in reproduction and survival. So how about measuring average weaning weight per cow exposed to breeding, which includes reproduction, survival and production? That’s how biological efficiency is often measured in a beef cow herd. But pounds per cow exposed still says nothing about economics. To deal with that, Unit Cost of Production can be used. For beef cow enterprises that’s total cost per pound of calf produced. But calves are not all the same. Lighter calves almost always sell for more per pound than heavier calves. And even calves of the same weight don’t all sell for the same price. Some are more highly valued than others. Every measure discussed so far has been on a per-head basis. Is that a good way to measure efficiency? Cow herds mostly operate on a fixed resource, a piece of range or pasture land. So, it’s the total of what happens on that resource that is relevant, not some

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average figure per cow. A 1400 pound cow should be able to produce more calf weight than a 1000 pound cow. But we can’t run as many of the larger cows on the same land. Does that mean that a higher number of smaller cows is more efficient? Or could reducing cow numbers on an operation, resulting in fewer calves to sell but lowered input costs, be more efficient? Maybe, or maybe not. But we simply can’t answer such questions by looking at things on a per cow basis. It’s got to per total operation. In the end, four things should be considered in a cow-calf enterprise. How many animals are marketed in a year? What is their average sale weight? What is their average value (price per pound)? Combining those three factors gives total income. From that must be subtracted cost. That means every cost that is relevant. (Yes, that includes such things as something for the revenue you could get by leasing out your land instead of operating it yourself, even if your grandfather paid it off a hundred years ago). Standardized Performance Analysis (SPA, http://agrisk.tamu.edu/irmspa.htm) is a widely accepted tool to evaluate cow-calf operations. What is the final value that comes out of SPA? Its Percent Return on Assets (ROA). ROA in SPA uses those four things listed above: numbers, pounds, value of pounds and cost. And ROA is figured not by looking at averages per cow but at the total operation.

Texas A&M Beef Cattle Penning Newsletter Online @ http://animalscience.tamu.edu/academics/beef/penning/index.htm

“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.”

Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States Contact me at 903-654-3075 or jdscasta@ag.tamu.edu. Kind regards, Derek Scasta Navarro County Extension Agent – Agriculture and Natural Resources

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WHEAT AND OAT FIELD DAY

NAVARRO/HILL APRIL 23, 2009

Schedule 9:15 am – #1 Oat Variety Plots – Reed Farms - Barry, TX 10:00 am – #2 Wheat Variety Plots – Martin Farms – Frost, TX 10:45 am – #3 Wheat Variety Plots – Degner Farms – Mertens, TX 11:15 am – #4 Wheat Plant Population Study – Surovik Farms – Brandon, TX 12:00 pm – #5 Lunch at Brandon Community Center

• Texas Wheat Producers Association Presentation – Kody Bessent – Lubbock, TX

• Laws and Regulations Presentation *Dr. Gaylon Morgan, Texas AgriLife Extension Service Small Grains Specialist will be on hand to provide updates on varieties, diseases, conditions and yields.

3 CEU’s will be offered (2 General and 1 Laws and Regulations)

Please call and RSVP to 903-654-3075 or 254-582-4022 by 5pm April 21st.

Educational programs of the Texas AgriLife Extension Service are open to all people without regard to race, color, sex, disability,

religion, age, or national origin. The Texas A&M University System, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the County Commissioners Courts of Texas Cooperating

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