Myotonic goats have a very distinctive breed type that is based mostly on head and body conformation. They also have a muscle condition called myotonia congenita. This inherited trait leads to an overall increase in muscle mass so that the goats are very muscular when compared to other breeds of similar size. This trait is so distinctive that it is easy to confuse the trait with the breed. However, the Myotonic goat is much more than just a myotonic condition; it has a host of other consistent traits that are very important and need to be conserved for future generations.
Several important characteristics are typical of the breed:
Docile temperament
Myotonia congenita leading to stiffness and muscularity
Abundance of high quality muscle
Good adaptation to low-input forage-based feeding systems
Genetic distance from other breeds such that crossbreeding yields great hybrid vigor.
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Rabbits are quickly becoming a mainstay on many small homesteads and even in urban backyards because they are small, easy to care for, and provide excellent meat. However, sometimes unexpected things can happen, and it’s a good idea to have some knowledge beforehand.
Dana at Piwakawaka Valley Homestead in New Zealand is very experienced with raising rabbits. She created this Rabbit Diseases Reference Guide that is unbelievably complete and interesting! Here is another article she wrote about Rabbit First Aid. Because things just go wrong, sometimes!
Kathryn, of Farming My Backyard, raises rabbits and has written quite a great article on Flystrike and Ear Mites. And, seriously, flystrike is nothing to mess around with—you have to catch it and treat it fast, or your animal can die a painful death very quickly. Mr. V. and I learned this from experience last summer. It’s pretty horrible. She also has a great article on How to Resuscitate Baby Bunnies, Even if They Look Dead…which was REALLY interesting.
Rabbit’s teeth are quite important to their health! Liz, at the Cape Coop, wrote a great article about Caring for Rabbit Teeth! If you are considering rabbits, check it out! She goes into the importance of their feed, among other necessary things to know about dental care for rabbits.
I don’t currently have rabbits, but Mr. V. and I are thinking about adding them to our animal livestock after we get ourselves moved in a few months! These are all good things to know about ahead of time!
Rabbits are quickly becoming a mainstay on many small homesteads and even in urban backyards because they are small, easy to care for, and provide excellent meat. However, sometimes unexpected things can happen, and it’s a good idea to have some knowledge beforehand.
Dana at Piwakawaka Valley Homestead in New Zealand is very experienced with raising rabbits. She created this Rabbit Diseases Reference Guide that is unbelievably complete and interesting! Here is another article she wrote about Rabbit First Aid. Because things just go wrong, sometimes!
Kathryn, of Farming My Backyard, raises rabbits and has written quite a great article on Flystrike and Ear Mites. And, seriously, flystrike is nothing to mess around with—you have to catch it and treat it fast, or your animal can die a painful death very quickly. Mr. V. and I learned this from experience last summer. It’s pretty horrible. She also has a great article on How to Resuscitate Baby Bunnies, Even if They Look Dead…which was REALLY interesting.
Rabbit’s teeth are quite important to their health! Liz, at the Cape Coop, wrote a great article about Caring for Rabbit Teeth! If you are considering rabbits, check it out! She goes into the importance of their feed, among other necessary things to know about dental care for rabbits.
I don’t currently have rabbits, but Mr. V. and I are thinking about adding them to our animal livestock after we get ourselves moved in a few months! These are all good things to know about ahead of time!
Editor’s note: This is a summary of the article “Agriculture Is Being Left In The Digital Dust”, authored by Steve Cubbage, president of Record Harvest, and contributing writer to Farm Journal Ag Tech, published March 27, 2018. Read it here.
Over the past two decades, agriculture has seen major advancements in big data, self-driving tractors and combine yield monitor technology. However, according to the McKinsey Global Institute’s Digitization Index, agriculture currently is in single digits for realizing the digital potential in the U.S. economy.
Cubbage explores the index research and questions why, agriculture, with it’s focus on precision agriculture ended up in the “rear view mirror” regarding digital data. The good news is that agriculture has a lot of potential to grow. But who will drive the change?
Editor’s note: This is a summary of the article “Collect. Organize. Use.,” authored by Katie Humphreys, managing editor for Farm Journal, published Jan. 5, 2018. Read it here.
Growers across the U.S. — like Angela and Kerry Knuth, Mead, NE — are building a digital strategy despite an industry filled with conflicting technology, services and software that lack interoperability. Farm Journal tackles the complexities facing farmers and tell how the Knuth’s have made huge strides with real-time collection across a mixed fleet and the ability to ingest and use a uniform set of agronomic and machine data into software to drive greater efficiencies.
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Weeds are becoming a more and more appreciated component of gardening. We have been reintroduced to eating the weeds, with things like dandelion leaves becoming a niche crop. Also, we are encouraging plants that, up until recently, were viewed as weeds (dynamic accumulators like comfrey and pioneering legumes) to revitalize our soils. And, many gardeners are once again celebrating weeds as a means of reading the soil.
Geoff Lawton says weeds are not the problem but rather symptoms of glitches within the soil. In other words, weeds have arrived because the soil has some sort of deficiency or condition that both allows them to thrive and prompts nature to repair systemic damage. Nature will move towards a permanent, stable system, and weeds are part of that process, especially in troubled landscapes.
With each problem, there are particular weeds that characteristically appear, and if we learn to read these weeds, we can assess unfamiliar landscapes and recognize the sources of troubles within our own systems. Then, we can begin to speed the soil’s recovery into something more stable, and in the meantime, we can cultivate appropriate plants to aid this process and provide production, as well as utilize weeds that are already present.
While each landscape, soil type, and climate has its own particular set of pioneering plants, there are some basic ideas that can help us begin to understand more how to use the weeds to read the soil. From there, we can research and make more practical and informed decisions as to how we might move our projects in positive directions.
The Root Systems
The root systems of weeds can tell us a great deal about soil conditions. For example, weeds that have deep taproots, such as dandelions and burdock, generally indicate soils that are compacted, preventing plants with lesser roots from taking hold. These taproots break up the soils and eventually, as they decompose, create pathways for water, nutrients, and weaker roots systems. On the other hand, weeds that have spreading, hairnet root systems or clumping grasses are likely there because soils are loose and erosive.
So, when there is an abundance of weeds, we can start by noticing their root systems as these might indicate soil conditions that we can either address with rehabilitative gardening techniques or by choosing appropriate plants to grow in the conditions. This can also lead us into identifying the weeds that are present and learning what other things they might be telling us.
The pH Balance
Just like crops, some weeds thrive in different levels of acidity and alkalinity. We wouldn’t plant blueberries in a soil that we know is alkaline because we recognize that blueberries are particular to acidic soils. Well, certain weeds—plantain, hawkweeds, sheep sorrel—could help to indicate more acidic areas, whereas others—goosefoot, true chamomile—signal the likelihood of alkaline soils.
A shrewd gardener would use these signals to help with choosing what crops he or she might try to cultivate in an area. If the soil is acidic, berries might be a great choice, but if the soil is alkaline, different cruciferous vegetables are likely a better option. Similarly, noting these bits of information can be guidance for what not to plant in an area, something that might prevent wasting time and resources.
The Soil Types/Conditions
The ability to recognize the weeds we are looking at can also give us an assessment of the type of soil it is growing in and the conditions of that soil. If it’s sandy, we might see sandbur, cornflower, or dog fennel, but a heavy clay soil is more likely to yield wild garlic, plantain, and creeping buttercup. Wet soils—cattails, sedge, marsh mallow—will have different weeds than dry soils—potato vine, Virginia pepperweed.
Again, this can aid cultivators greatly by knowing whether to plant crops that thrive in sandy soils over clays or wet soils over dry. Recognizing these needs before investing the time and money needed for a garden can mean the difference between low-maintenance success and hard-working struggle. Taking a moment to familiarize with the weeds common to a place is just a good idea.
The Nutrient Profile
When we stop looking at weeds as only pests and recognize they are plants, we realize that, like all plants, they have certain nutritional needs and outputs. The existence of certain weeds can provide clues to what the soil nutrients is like. Chicory, purslane, and lamb’s quarter (all edible) indicate rich soils, but sheep’s sorrel and broom sedge might mean the opposite. Thistle could mean deficiencies in iron and copper, or the growth of ferns and blade grasses will show up in places that have been burned, indicating a lack of available phosphorus.
Learning certain sure indicators of nutrient abundance or absence can lead growers as to which soil amendments they might need to make, as well as which crops—one’s that like similar nutrient profiles—they might want to plant. This could help in moving the soil slowly and deliberately back into a more balanced system with more biodiversity.
The Weed Community
In the end, it’s important to remember that no one weed necessarily provides all the information we need to assess soil, but using the community of weeds growing in an area will provide a more complete view of what the soil type and conditions are, as well as what sort of issues need to be addressed or considered in developing the land. Identifying the prominent plants in a space and where the meaning behind each weed overlaps could provide reasonably accurate results.
The unfortunate thing is that different climates and locations have different weeds and often different names for the same weeds, so this might mean buckling down for some research before being able to read the weeds well. Luckily, there are plenty of books to reference, as well as local experts and online sources. The point is that learning what weeds we are looking at and what they are saying is an effort most certainly worthwhile.
5 Books to Help Getting Started with Reading the Weeds:
Editor’s note: This post was contributed by Blake Hurst. Blake is a farmer in northwest Missouri, who grows corn, soybeans, and flowers with his extended family. He and his wife Julie have 3 children and 6 grandchildren. Hurst is also president of the Missouri Farm Bureau. You can follow Blake on Twitter at @HurstBlake.
I spent a couple of days in September listening to the dreams of a bunch of inventors, entrepreneurs, and visionaries, who were making their pitches to investors from around the world. New companies at this year’s InfoAg conference made presentations about gee whiz technologies — companies lacking only money, loads of money, and oh by the way, they’re short on customers as well. We’re in the middle of a tech boom in agriculture, the first one I can remember, and we’re seeing an exciting influx of venture capitalists and geniuses into the farming industry. There may be a few charlatans in the mix as well.
The only people conspicuously absent at this event were the farmers who will someday, everybody hopes, pay for all of these ideas. This scene of slide presentations, talks about various kinds of financing, plans for roll outs, and worries about burn rate bears little resemblance to the average farm show, where farmers and salesman discuss the latest new attachment for tractors or the newest high-yielding seed. Yet this event had a lot in common with the typical farm show too, as the owners of these firms making a successful pitch meant the difference between success and failure. It was exciting to think that some of the innovations might someday be explained to farmers inside the big tent at a farm show, with farmers kicking the dirt, and wearing brand new baseball caps, and holding sacks full of well-branded giveaways.
Of course, we’ve had investment booms in agriculture. Some farmers took the ride during the consolidation of the pork industry, and many participated in the ethanol boom that blew through the Midwest like a March tornado. That experience is one most of us will never forget. Some of us won, some of us lost, and some of us managed to do both; it was exhilarating.
We’ve also lived through rapid technological change: the increasing size and complexity of machinery, new chemistry to fight weeds and bugs, and the genetic modification of seeds. But almost all of these innovations were brought to us by large companies. To say that Monsanto, John Deere, and Dow Chemical are large and well-established firms is an understatement.
This is different. Companies at the event ranged in size from miniscule to small, with few of them having any kind of track record. And instead of the traveling road show through small town diners that funded the ethanol industry, these entrepreneurs were looking for funding from well-established and one assumes gimlet-eyed venture capital firms — investors who know their way around Silicon Valley and MIT. This marriage, or at least flirtation, between agriculture and startups is something very new, and it’s exciting to a corn farmer from Tarkio, Missouri, population 1500.
Companies at the investment show could coat your cocoa or citrus with something, I’m not sure what, that will protect the fruit from bugs. We learned about seed inoculants, drone technology, and a process by which tobacco plants produce squalene, which is normally sourced from sharks. Growing tobacco seems much safer than catching sharks, who presumably don’t give up their squalene without a fight, and environmentally more desirable as well. One firm promised that it can produce proteins and oils from CO2 and microbes, which, as a soybean producer, causes me to have mixed emotions. One entrepreneur, with whom I had a spirited conversation over a beer, is farming crickets. A great protein source, he tells me, although he didn’t offer a sample, and I didn’t ask. I did, however, a couple of weeks later, find a brownie shared with me by a guy using chicory to replace wheat for gluten-sensitive customers. I can report that it tasted fine, even after spending a fortnight in my pocket.
For years, venture capital investment in agriculture averaged around a half million dollars per year. Only in 2014 did the total investment in agriculture venture capital exceed the investment budget of Monsanto. In 2015, investments from VC firms in the agriculture field totalled 4.6 billion dollars. That’s a breathtaking increase, and it will be interesting to see if declines in farm prices and profitability will slow the flow of investment capital into agriculture technology startups. Many of the companies entering the field are developing technologies that increase the efficiency of farmers, so it may be that financial pressures in farm country will increase the demand for these technologies.
One thing is for sure. Agriculture must innove. All of us will benefit if a few of the dreams on display at last September’s event come true. Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, stands high atop the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City, Missouri. One company at this event promised to destroy pigweeds by honing in on their genetic code. There is, as I only dimly understand, some problem with the delivery mechanism, but know this for sure: if a company figures out how to target Palmer amaranth and waterhemp, two particularly noxious kinds of pigweed, Missourians will replace Ceres on our capital with that company’s logo.
Editor’s note: This post was contributed by Jason Tatge, the CEO of Farmobile, the farm data company. He’s been working one-on-one with farmers for more than 20 years. You can follow him on Twitter at @jasontatge.
My company, Farmobile, made news when we paid farmers for their data for the very first time last month. It was an exciting moment, driving around to visit farmers in Minnesota and handing out checks for completed electronic field records. It was the first time they saw a concrete, bottom-line ROI from their data.
Up until now, farmers have been giving their data for nothing, sometimes not even realizing they were ceding control and ownership. But as agriculture goes digital as an industry, farmers are beginning to learn that data is one of the most valuable crops they can harvest. Especially in today’s difficult and uncertain economic environment, farmers need to be in control.
But there’s a lot of controversy around this approach. In fact, when we posted our news about paying farmers on LinkedIn, we got this response:
This is skepticism that we get often (though not from farmers themselves). And in some ways we totally get it. This is a net-new way to think about farm data, and it’s going to be uncomfortable at first. But we heartily disagree with the old way of looking at farm data and its value. We thought this warranted a response longer than the word count LinkedIn would allow.
Here goes.
The Tables of Power Must Be Turned
“The farmer is the only man in our economy who has to buy everything he buys at retail — sell everything he sells at wholesale — and pay the freight both ways.” JFK September 22, 1960.
Richard mentioned that the value of being a digitized sector is huge, and he’s not wrong. Just look at the music industry, the financial industry, or even the auto industry. The digital revolution is changing how we all do business.
The big problem that we see in agriculture, however, is that if farmers do not own their own data first, the real value will only be created for companies upstream of the farmer. In this scenario, everyone wins except the farmer. Sure, farmers might get marginally better equipment and prescriptions — and we’re certainly not suggesting that they give up using these services — but by not owning their data, they give up the right to analyze the data, compare prescriptions, and ultimately make their own decisions about what’s best for their farms based on their data and their generational knowledge.
They also lose the right to control a new revenue channel. Farmers take gigantic risks every single year, but they’ve never seen rewards to match. Owning their data helps stave off some of that risk by creating a new revenue source season after season.
We should also note that while having a density of data definitely results in better quality analysis, none of the analytics companies can collect all of the data a farmer produces. Most farmers we talk to own mixed fleets these days. As you can imagine, equipment manufacturers make it very difficult (if not impossible) to share data with their competitors.
We agree that the lifeblood for the digital-ag economy is high quality information from the farm operation. However, obtaining and standardizing this information is more difficult than most realize. Obtaining this information is a challenge because, although the sensor technology exists, there is a last mile problem. Standardization is a challenge because incentive structures are out of alignment.
Farmers are the only ones with the ability to paint a complete picture of their farms with data collected agnostically.
How Big Ag Fits into the Picture
Richard also mentioned John Deere and Monsanto, so I want to address them here.
Deere makes money from equipment sales and service. Monsanto makes money from seed and trait technology. In each case, market share matters, as does revenue extraction from the farmer. The goal of each is to extract as much marginal revenue without surrendering market share.
Offering up free data provides a window into surrendering farm operations. Not to mention the possibility that one or both of these companies are already directly monetizing the farmers data. It’s difficult for me to understand how this can be a positive approach for farmers.
It’s important to note that our approach doesn’t preclude players like John Deere and Monsanto from acquiring farm data. There’s nothing to stop them from collecting data that they own, and nothing to stop farmers from profiting from the data they own.
But there’s a bigger point to call out — Monsanto and Deere are certainly not the only two big data players in agriculture. Why should Big Ag have a monopoly on all of the farming data in the U.S.? Farmers can capture immediate value now by sharing their data with their agronomist or selling it to a genetics company. Waiting 10 years for one of the big companies to deliver on transformative solutions is a bet many farmers can’t afford to take, especially given the current economic climate.
Not to mention that there’s a major conflict of interest between what the farmers want (lowered costs, more yield) and what equipment manufacturers and genetics companies want (more equipment and seed sales, consistent yield). No matter how you slice it, unless a farmer owns his or her data, he or she will be taken advantage of by companies with greater bargaining power.
The Value of Data Today
Respectfully, Richard is dead wrong on this one. Google and Facebook data was also “dirt cheap” 10 years ago, but now it drives 85% of every ad dollar spent online. I will concede that the value of agronomic data is just being priced. But even at its initial offering, the figures are compelling enough for farmers to get off the sidelines and into the game. I live and breathe this every day.
One point I do agree with Richard on is the fact that data in a vacuum is just that; analysis is key.
But I believe a free market with hundreds of thousands of data analysts is more powerful than a data duopoly. Also, left unchecked, how would the farmer ever know what a company like Monsanto and John Deere are prescribing is actually better? Without agnostic bodies for benchmarking and full transparency, farmers will continue to be manipulated and taken advantage of. That’s why it is critical for them to own and share their data deliberately, not blindly.
Especially in an environment where the economics around farming are tightening, one of the best things farmers can do to protect themselves in the long-run is to invest in a data strategy.
Editor’s note: This post was contributed by Todd Janzen. Todd is a frequent author and speaker on legal issues affecting agriculture. He writes a regular blog column on law and technology issues facing agriculture. Todd is currently an agriculture, tech, and business attorney for Janzen Ag Law.
A number of poultry growers have filed suit against Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, and other poultry integrators alleging that growers’ production data was shared among integrators to depress grower payments. This is the first case where farmers’ ag data is the center of the lawsuit.
The suit, titled Haff Poultry, Inc. v. Tyson Foods, Inc., was filed in the Eastern District federal court in Oklahoma. The suit alleges that Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, and other integrators (called a “Cartel” in the complaint) collect and share farmer level data through a third party, Agri Stats, Inc., for the purpose of suppressing grower compensation. The ag data collected and sent to Agri Stats includes a range of production level data, such as:
a. Grower compensation;
b. the sex, breed, genetic makeup, and genetics company used for the primary breeder stock of the Broilers used by each Complex’s Integrator;
c. the type of equipment and grow-out houses used by each Complex’s Integrator, including numerous mechanical aspects of the facilities;
d. Broiler weight for each Complex;
e. the type of feed and medicine utilized by (and costs) for each Complex;
f. Broiler transportation costs from Grow-Out facilities to the each Complex;
g. the number of chicks delivered, bird mortality by week and overall percentage, average daily weigh gain by chicks (weighted against the feed utilized, referred to as a feed-conversion ratio) for each Complex;
h. live pound of Broiler produced per square foot of grow-out house for each Complex;
i. monthly operating profit per live pound, sales per live pound, and costs per live pound for each Complex;
j. anticipated capacity and future output for each Complex; and
k. the general geographic location of each Complex by Sub-Region (Agri Stats includes at least 50 and likely more Sub-Region identifier codes)
The complaint alleges that Agri Stats is a data hub that allows the “Cartel” to collect and share grower data:
Agri Stats “partners” with Integrators. Cartel members all disseminate information through Agri Stats, representing some 120 Complexes [grower farms] covering 98% of Broiler production. This data includes production information on individual Complexes, broken down by region as well as viewable at the “farm [i.e., Grower], flock [i.e., transaction], or plant [i.e., Complex] level”; in other words, the information is not aggregated, but disaggregated down to the transaction level.
At the center of the growers’ claim is the allegation that Agri Stats’ data aggregation is ineffective at anonymizing the data. “While the data is purportedly anonymous, it is so granular and disaggregated that anyone familiar with the industry can identify precisely which data belongs to which Integrator and even the location of the specific Complex. In particular, the Sub-Region identifier code, the type and genetic makeup of the Broiler, and the type of poultry house and equipment, can be quickly used to determine the Integrator that owns a given Complex and the specific identify of the Complex.”
As a result, “Cartel members can identify, by Complex, various Grower compensation data, such as cost per liveweight pound, cost per square foot, and other “Actual Live Production Cost” data, including base compensation for Growers.”
In other words, the complaint alleges that, by reverse engineering the data, every Cartel member can determine the compensation paid to specific growers. This, in turn, leads to price-fixing and suppression of grower compensation.
While the case is interesting for its anti-trust implications, the suit may help answer some of the ag industry’s burning questions about data: Who owns ag data? Is production data something that the farmer can own and control? Can companies share ag data “anonymously” without running afoul of anti-trust issues? To what extent must geographic information be stripped from ag data to make it truly anonymous?
As far as I know, this is the first case to address these ag data issues. I am sure it will not be the last.
You can read the entire complaint here: Haff Poultry v. Tyson Foods. This post is not intended to express an opinion as to the merits of the growers’ or integrators’ position.
This article was posted on The Dirt with permission from the author. The original piece can be seen at Janzen Ag Law Blog.
America’s First Ag Data Case was originally published in The Dirt on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
SXSW Interactive, taking place March 10–19 this year, will bring together tech leaders, VCs, journalists, government, artists and musicians for compelling discussions, presentations, and panels on what’s next in innovation.
What does this have to do with ag? Well, food and ag are making a significant appearance at this year’s conference. The Dirt will be on the ground, scouting out the most interesting and impactful conversations, people, and events in food and ag.
The biggest trend we’re seeing this year is that of data: how can the industry as a whole better leverage the power of data to improve food supply chains, farming, and how consumers eat and get information about their food? How can we capture and harness all the data the food and ag industry throws off? How do we make it structured, useful, and actionable?
While there is a lot of ground covered at SXSW this year in topics of food and ag, there are some key conversations missing when it comes to the future of agriculture. Below, we’ve collected some of the most interesting panels we’ve found covering food and ag from a variety of angles. If you were in charge, what else do you want to see?
Caleb Harper of MIT’s Media Lab, Tyne Morgan at Farm Journal, and Teddy Bekele at Land O’Lakes will discuss how food producers are leveraging tech and data to create long-term solutions to the growing water scarcity crisis that impacts farmers across the country.
Jason Tatge at Farmobile and Maria Fernandez-Guajardo at Clear Labs will discuss the need for a data standard in food and agriculture for greater traceability and transparency. They’ll discuss the challenges we face to get to an intelligent future in food an ag, and some of the solutions emerging today.
Microbes are a hot topic right now, and this panel will look at how synthetic biology and microbes can enhance food to increase nutrition, improve flavor, and satisfy hunger.
….The Dirt will be in Austin from March 10–12th. If you’ll be there too, drop us a line. We’d love to meet up!
This post is a summary of “Earth Day 2017: Celebrating Soil Health!”, by Karen Batra published on BIOtechNow.org, Apr 19, 2017. Read the full post here.
When it comes to Earth Day you must think about the serious business of food production. Most often, it gets taken for granted in the public domain until food prices increase or something goes wrong.
As we speak, farmers are in fields across the United States planting the 2017 harvest. U.S. farmers—from crop and livestock to fruit and vegetable production — have always deployed their entrepreneurial skills and willingness to adopt technology and science to improve the stewardship of land, water and natural resources and increase yields to feed an increasingly hungry and expanding world population.
Editors note: This post is a summary of “Ag Tech: On the Cusp of Something Big?”, by James C. Sulecki published on CropLife, May 15, 2017. Read the full post here.
While tech in ag has been frustrating, evidence at World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in San Francisco, CA, indicates that ag innovation may be about to turn a corner in driving on-farm value. Breakthroughs in digital tech that solves real on-farm problems, affordability and the ability to drive value are some of the reasons “why” farmer perceptions may be shifting.
