Air February 20, 2002

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. Don’t forget tomorrow night that we have the lease hunting program at the Clay County Extension office starting at 6 pm. Call me if you need details on this. It’s going to be a real good opportunity to learn details about setting up the increasingly popular leased hunting arrangements on your farm. A week from Friday, March 1st is the 89th Annual Cattleman’s Day at Brandenberry sports complex at the K-State campus in Manhattan. I’ll give you a full run down on the schedule next week.

Pasture leases always concern me. As far as Kansas law is concerned, they are somewhat of a gray area, not nearly as well defined as the cropland leases, especially in the area of oral versus written, notification of termination, etc. But what concerns me even more, is the way that the terms are determined. How many acres per head or pair. Do we charge by the head or by the acre. Who’s responsible for fence maintenance, corral facilities, noxious weed and brush control. Is the pasture burned or not and who does it. I feel that we’ve had some grass mining going on over the years and we are starting to see the results of too few details and too much business as usual. Grass mining is a term I’ve started using and it simply means that more forage is taken off on an annual basis than is healthy for the overall good of the pasture. There are several causes of grass mining, and if you think I’m starting to sound like a broken record, well you ain’t seen nothing yet. The first is failure to recognize the changing nature of our livestock, meaning larger, and the fact that larger cattle need more grass meaning more acres. Cows, on average, are about 15 to 20% larger than they were 40 years ago. Yet we are often using the same stocking rates that we were 40 years ago which means that there are more pounds of grass being consumed per acre than there used to be. Secondly, we have too many pastures rented by the acre rather than by the head. While maximizing returns for the landowner, it makes it tough for the cattle owner to make a go of it. I’d rather see pastures rented by the head, or pair. This means that the cattle owner is going to have a flat expense per pair and if it is necessary to increase acres per head, for less pressure on the grass, the cattle owner isn’t paying more to do the right thing. It’s a big change for a lot of folks, but it makes sense if you stop and think about it.

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2002.

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