Austin Texas

I spent the last two days of my trip though the mid west in Austin Texas. Austin is the live music capital of the US, it's also the home of Stevie Ray Vaughan who died 20 years ago on the 27th August 1990 and the town was in tribute mode when I arrived, which was great as I'm a SRV fan and every second place was playing the blues.

I also got to see Hot Hot Heat and Rooney at Momo's one of Austin best live music venues as well as about 15 other acts around the city both during the day and at night. Austin is unlike any other city in the US, it's very liberal and open and it celebrates it's culture and the fact it's different, in fact their saying is "Keep Austin Weird"

Noble Foundation

I spent two days at the Noble Foundation in Oklahoma and it was one of the highlights of the trip. There doing an amazing amount of work with some of the best ag research facilities I've ever been in. I had a look over some of their transgenic work including in lucerne and Tall fescue. Josh showed me some forage soy beans that looked great and Dave to kiwi showed me around the green houses which are some of the largest in the country. If bugs aren't your thing, then it would be a good place to avoid as their huge.

Driving

If there one part of the trip I've enjoyed the most it's the driving. The roads are great, the traffic move fast without ever stopping and the drivers are the most courteous I've ever encounted. Not once did I hear a horn, when you stop at a all ways stop ( which is like a round about, with out the round part) people all gesture at each other to go, the traffic merges without slowing down and the cars are big and fast.

Included in the collection of photos are some of the cars I would like to take home with me and the endless interstates that are so great to travel on. Also and most importantly is being able to turn right on a red light, Brilliant!

Oklahoma Livestock Exchange

I was traveling through Oklahoma when I saw a sign leading to the Stockyard Livestock Exchange. Firstly it's just outside the city's CBD due to the fact it's been there for more than 100 years and secondly it's a major tourist attraction. There's great places to eat and lots of western wear shops and if that's not enough you can see the cattle being auctioned. The livestock exchange is one of the largest in the country and auctions cattle nearly every day.

No Till in Kansas

Josh Lloyed and Doug Pallen are from Kansas, are two of the best no till farmers I've met. Their both pushing the limits of the system and in seems to me the harder they push the better the results. They've fired me up to re look at our no till system in both the equipment and techniques we use.

No Coast Derby Girls

On the Saturday night I decided to get a bit of American culture and go watch the roller derby in Lincoln. It was the Mad Maxines up against the Pikes Peak Roller Dames. Anna Wrexx-it and Flash Gloria assisted by Lt. SlamHer and Princess Lay Ya Flat dominated the game against Count Smacula, Slaughter Than Hell and Fanny Fister.

There was a mix of people from the hard core fans with posters and T shirts through to Families and people like me just curious to have a look. I have to say it was entertaining, they really put their bodies on the line and take each other out and there is allot of skill in the game. Check it out.

Anyone for free fertilizer

I spent the weekend with a friend of mine Bart Ruth from Rising City, Nebraska. After two and a half weeks and 4,000 miles of traveling through the mid west it was great to spend time with Bart and his family looking around his farm and generally relaxing.

Bart runs a great operation with his son Geof, growing soy bean and corn, no till with most under centre pivot irrigation. But the most interesting part is that a large amount of the water comes from a dairy next door. They need to get rid of the water and it's loaded with nitrogen, phosphors and potassium, a win win for every one. The dairy has about 6000 head and they cut corn silage on Barts place for the feed. A model example of nutrient recycling.

Iowa State Fair

I went to the Iowa state Fair today and had a great time. There was the usual Giant vegi comp, produce display and the butter sculptures.

There were the livestock displays featuring all sorts of breeds including giant boars, miniature Hereford cattle, giant cattle, giant sheep (230kg) and recent inductees to the klu klux klan of sheep. In case your wondering what the lady is doing with the hose, she blow drying them after their shampoo and grooming.

But it was the food that was the standout at the show. If it can be deep fried or covered in cheese, it's for sale here. For the record I didn't sample any of it, any one of those plates contain enough calories to feed a small African village for a month.

There is a serious side to the show and I'll blog about that later. All in all it was a very good show and the people of Iowa are always so welcoming and friendly.

Bailey Yard

Union Pacific's Bailey Yard is the largest train yard in the world. 10,000 cars per day are handled 24 hour a day 365 days per year with over 2500 workers. It's situated in North Platte, which is in the centre of the US. It's 8 mile long and covers 2,800 acres. Rail transport in the US caries everything from frozen peas to coal. When traveling through Wyoming, where the coal comes from, the railway runs along the the side of the road. The coal trains are 130 cars long and are about 5 minutes apart from each other both full and empty. In other states cars, ethanol, fuel, corn and every thing else is frighted by rail, but even with this efficient system 5,000 trucks pass North Platte on the I80 every day.

Traveling through Nebraska

The lack of trees and the wide vistas are the hallmark of the prairies. If all you did was drive down the interstate you would miss the rolling hills and the vast diversity of agriculture.

ARS Akron

Merle Vigil showed me round the trail plots at Akron, Colorado. They run a 20 year rotation trial displaying no till and conventional systems. The no till and variable rotation systems show the best margins long term but most of the farmers still use the wheat fallow rotation and are now moving to corn as the varieties improve.

DNA storage

On Monday I visited Phil Purdy at USDA ARS in Fort Collins, Colorado. We talked about new research in sheep AI and their storage of the DNA of all the animal breeds in the US. The DNA is stored in these Liquid N tanks in a room that is water tight with 1m thick walls. Just in case.

Wyoming

I spent the day traveling around Wyoming with Ken Hamilton, Executive VP of Wyoming Farm Bureau. From snow caped mountains to wide open space with no trees and vistas spreading for hundred of kilometres. There are 500,000 people and 4 million cattle. The main enterprise is breeding stock for the feeder markets going in to Nebraska. Like so many farming areas profitability and farm succession are the main problem areas, but like WA, Wyoming is rich in resources so the economy is booming.

Tourist today

Ed and I joined the tourists today and traveled to Mt Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument.

Chad & Amanda's place

Chad saw no future in farming the way he had in the past, so he went back to school and learnt about short term rotation farming. For those of you familiar with cell grazing it's the same. He uses cover crops to restore problem soils before re pasturing them and only grazing them for one day a year. It's not until you see the pastures of his neighbors that you see the great work he is doing. Chad isn't your average North Dakota farmer, he gave up a career as an engineer to pursue his farming passion, and his doesn't have one regret.

Rocky's Place

Rocky is a farmer in ND who was struggling to make a living as a farmer using the conventional techniques he had been brought up with. So he switched to no till farming and hasn't looked back. Rocky increased the diversity of crops grown from a wheat fallow rotation to sunflowers, corn and canola. On the soils that had become too degraded to farm he is using cover crops to try and fix the land and improve the soil.

ARS Mandan

Both Ed and Myself spent two days with the ARS research centre in Mandan North Dakota. We looked at integrating livestock and cropping systems with corn planted in skip rows with the trash kept in the narrow rows to feed the stock during winter. (it's -20c at times with 2-3 ft of snow) This is then rotated with oats with clover under sown and sorghum wind rowed. All these systems are used for winter grazing. We also toured some farms which I will write about next.

Ed's on TV

When at the USDA, ARS centre in Mandan in North Dakota we got interviewed by NBC North Dakota News. Ed was a natural and was asked weather his does this often, at which he replied yes all the time, always happy to speak in front of large crowds! See for yourself.

Leaving the land of corn

I've had a great time at Tim's (on right)and we spent the last morning looking around his corn with Jackson, Tim's business partner. It looks like the crops are some of the best for years and as you can see both boys are petty happy.

Sacramento Welcome

Monday I met up with the farm Bureau in Sacramento, California. We just sat down to order and began to talk about how the general pubic had disengaged from farming and knew little about how their food was produced when, a group of young people started dancing in front of the restaurant. As we latter found out their from the URJ, the acronym on the front of a pamphlet they handed out. Who is the URJ? after googling them, they are the Union Reform Judaism. What were they doing? they were protesting about food justice. According to the pamphlet their for GM but against it, their for eating meat but not is it's done commercially, they want all their food produced locally and think chickens should get more sunlight. My lunch companions took all the credit for the live example of how detached we are from our food production and we then ordered lots of meat.

The lunch was great, thanks to the Jammie and the farm Bureau for putting on such a great show.

Corn as far as you can see

Iowa is like an energy factory. Corn for ethanol production and wind for power, two products they have plenty of. With in the area of Tims farm there are 240 wind turbines.

So what do you use all that corn for

30% of the corn grown in Iowa is used for ethanol production and the other 70% go's into livestock production in either dairy, hogs or feedlots. Today I visited an ethanol plant that uses Tims Corn and a 1000 head Dairy that uses three of corns products. Green chop, corn grain and brewers grain from the ethanol plant.

The ethanol plant was great. Very little of the energy from the process is wasted and Two products are produced, ethanol which is carted by rail to the east coast and brewers grain which is used both locally and exported to China as feed stuff. It's important to the ethanol plants that the brewers grain goes back into the food chain as it negate much of the image that the corn is being taken away from the food production.

Ames, Iowa State University

Met with Mat Lieberman today at the Iowa State University. Matts research is looking at crop rotations with corn, soy, alfalfa and Oats with red clover under sown. Most of the rotations in Iowa consist of Corn, Corn, Corn and Corn. There looking at Native pasture as biomass for conversion to fuel and to stabilize the landscape. 33% of the corn is used for Ethanol production and there are wind turbines every were. There is 33 million aces of production land in Iowa and it's all tile drained and planted to corn, with a soy bean plant every now and then.

Chicago to Ames, Iowa

I had a great day today driving 600 km from Chicago to Ames in Iowa. My Jeep SUV drives well but like all things petrol choose the juice. I stopped in at John Deere in Moline. I was meant to go for a tour of the Harvester factory this morning, but due to my bags not arriving until 10.30 am, all I could fit in was the pavilion and gift shop. It was corn and soy from the time I left the out skirts of Chicago all the way.

The interstate highway system is great and a fast way to get around. Every second vehicle is a truck and I past the largest truck stop in the world and there would have been 250 trucks parked up at lunch time. The big M is every 25 miles or so along with a number of fuel stations and other eateries.