Grazing the Net

How to get out of the cattle business

(A)Go check the electric fence with your tongue

(B)Read this

(C)Read this

(D) Do the math

Does HSUS have a mole in the IRS?

That Zombie farm bill

Give credit to this Grist writer for recognizing the "walking undead" nature of the farm bills that recently worked their way out of committees in Congress.

Speaking of zombie legislation, the immigration reform bill is still wiggling, too

CBS News: Immigration Deal Reached in House
ABC News: Immigration Reform Stand

Do we need—as in "need"-- national standards for chicken care?

Why we believe climate change is so biased

Headlines that are funny if you read them aloud to a 5th grader:

Fox News: Scientists Study Violent Winds of Uranus, Neptune

COOL Poll shows consumer support a mile wide; of unknown depth

Hey. That sounds like us cow people

NBC News: How to Tell if the IRS is Eyeing You

Free advice on naming BBQ events: Avoid the word "pony."

Mama of the year

Anaplasmosis. Learn it. Live it.

A nice story about a ranch family we can all envy
 

The general media didn't much notice the Senate farm bill Monday, but Tuesday's House farm bill had a shiny object: More restrictions on food stamps. So, it gets more coverage. This story is not, of course, over. Not even close. The Senate passed a farm bill way back last year, but the House rejected it. These guys don't always agree with each other. 

If Obamacare makes you sick

You might want to spend the 1.5 hours--yes, 1.5 hours--watching this video about how employers can live with upcoming changes in health care requirements. Expect to be in a bad mood later.

Lori Bell xoxoxo Her Non-Cafo Pig

NPR xoxoxo Vilsack

Bad idea: Making your friends play vegan

Grist has a lady trying to get her friends to stay vegan for a month. Turns out it's more hard than fun

Good idea: A hamburger eating club

This bunch of folks makes a regular event out of looking for better hamburgers. Let's all join clubs like that.

Bobby calves in Australia

Dairy calves aren't worth much in Australia. And it's always fun to see how Australians talk.

JBS is doing fine

Tyson: Lower beef demand

The company plans to do more product innovation, but says high chicken feed prices, reduced beef demand and a supply-demand imbalance in pork are impacting profits.

A job we may not want

Here's a look at the bottom rung of the chicken business

You've got to go looking if you want to read about the Senate Ag Committee's new farm bill. None of the major papers have anything out front this morning. Too much news on Angela Jolie to waste space on an object so unshiny, we suppose.

You can read what Official Cowdom thinks of this dough from which Congress will eventually knead a policy that will impact all of agriculture--including the eating segment--for the foreseeable future here.

Preach to the mirror. Please

It's seldom that we'd recommend the New York Time's beefaphobic columnist Ken Bittman to anybody seeking advice, but we hope he read his own column this morning. He begins by warning against snap judgments based on intuition and incomplete evidence and, without taking back any of his anti-beef crusade, actually says that even sugar has its place.

That's good. That's true. It's like he's preaching to his scare-mongering ownself there for a minute. But then, darned if he doesn't turn around and do it again. This time on Monsanto and the dreaded "superweeds."

They aren't "superweeds." They are resistant to Roundup. They still die if you plow them or hoe them, just like they did before Roundup. And the ground behind the plow still washes away or blows away, just like it did before Roundup made reduced tillage workable.

Oops. "Scientific consensus" does another U-turn

Now they tell us to take even their salt advice with a grain of salt.

USDA puts our money where its mouth is

Well, we suppose that headline could be construed as negative, but it shouldn't be. The government in general needs to spend less time talking about climate change and more time getting ready for it.

McDonald's new burgers. With beef this time.

Talk about your encouraging news. McDonald's has some new products that actually involve hamburger.

Beer fed cows

We've no idea how beer affects beef flavor, but this idea strikes us as important in at least two ways. The animal rights groups can hardly complain about "unhappy cows" if you keep them drunk and mellow. And, this would make the cow farmer's beer deductible, wouldn't it?

NBC notices wild horses again

We all know what fine medicine for low ratings the government's mustang roundups are, and NBC News has been giving us a good dose this week. You've got to love it when you get these debates between celebrities-who-feel-something and experts-who-know-something.

John Deere's quick outlook

Just a set of slides, but it says it all

Secretary Vilsack likes organic farming

Go vegan or go home? That's a choice?

Department of Very Practical Ideas:

Let's all surround our cows with red ribbons!

A main stream reporter we might like.

He says "Ever since then, steak has been at the top of the list of what Americans eat when they go out to celebrate." Well, yes.

So we're all bulled up about the ever-pending end of the liquidation phase, which just HAS to happen soon, and it turns out we're still killing cows. Faster than even the last couple of years, which were themselves extraordinarily dangerous for mama bovines in the drought belt.
The Drs Tom Troxel and Michael L. Looper of the University of Arkansas take a few paragraphs to marvel about it.

Tennessee governor: no to ag gagging

Bill Haslam vetoed the ag gag law passed by the Volunteer state's legislature, suggesting he empathizes with the intent, but frets about the constitutionality and the impact on freedom of speech.

Good press for electronic cattle management

We ran onto a couple of interesting pieces on the promise--as in "not here yet, but worth following"--of using Smart Guy Stuff to manage cattle. Virtual fencing, health management, feed intake. That kind of stuff. Dean anderson is always a great interview and The Atlantic took him aside for a long interview on his electronic cattle management researchers at the Jornada station in Southwest New Mexico. He's got some awful handy stuff coming if the manufacturers ever catch up. Are you listening, AllFlex?

The BBC has some information on how electronics are impacting thing on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

The reason to read this silliness about eating dogs

"Choose vegetarian" transit ads compare eating cows to eating dogs is to get to the comments, wherein one fellow advises us:

"I love dogs because they ALWAYS greet me with a friendly yelp and a wagging tail. Unlike my wife who almost always greets me with an unfriendly yelp and won't let me near her tail - except when she is in the mood. So yeah, I love dogs because they are great companions - and I eat cows because they taste good. Dogs make terrible bar-b-que and cows are lousy at playing fetch."

COOL. Lots of discourse

Deadline looms on the mandatory Cool thing. Will USDA stand by its original plan? Will it suit the WTO? Will Congress change the ground rules anyhow? There are lots of opinions:

Next volley over meat labels due soon
NFU: 2013 Farm Bill gaining momentum
Meat packers say Obama administration labeling rules will cripple industry

Labeling we can support

Another story on USDA's lax oversight of needled beef cuts.

More about immigration

Most of the papers would rather talk about the sundry Obama scandals of the week, but immigration "reform" continues to get some attention.

We’re not talking to you, of course, but just on the off chance some of our other readers happen to be lax with the guns around the house, we include this piece about a father being charged. You read it here first: Gun safety is about to become gun control advocates’ equivalent of the MADD campaign against drunk driving.

Another zinger comment on this story about Whole Foods putting chicken in their vegan salad.: "How do you know someone is a vegan? Don't worry, they'll be sure to tell you." That's too true for comfort. Veganism is the Fad of the Day.

NCBA is on this long list of organizations opposing dairy's supply management plans.

We learned it in England. Here's a nice piece about why we like steak so much in the U.S.

Pitts on equestrian one-up-manship

Finally, you'll want to look in on Lee Pitts' take on the importance of proper horsemanship.
 

Three Fifty Corn? Thuree Five Zero!

All the angst about delayed planting may mean less corn than we'd like, but USDA still thinks we'll get more than enough. Last week's WASDE report cut its yield projections from its last guess, but still projects plenty of corn.

It was enough that Jerry Gulke used the $3.50 number in his outlook for new crop corn prices. He says it will take $3.50 to $4 corn to "buy back demand." Wouldn't that be nice for feeder prices?

CO2 hits dinosaurian levels

The big news last week was that carbon dioxide levels have reached the highest point in 300 million years. That's serious stuff on the global warming front, and it provided lots of scary fodder for the press.

Eat more bugs. No. Seriously.

Who says we can't feed the teeming billions of the future? The UN says we just need to eat more insects and they say industrial agriculture is just the outfit to develop the production systems. (Once we work the bugs out, of course.)

So if eating arthropods  is good for the world, that must make this French chef and his crickets not so much eccentric as avant garde, we suppose

We know this constitutes a potential competitor for beef, but we remain confident that, well, bugs ain’t beef. They eat horses in France and the Peruvians like the occasional guinea pig. But they all prefer beef. We suspect the same will be true long after the New York Times’ food critics have declared dung bettle soufflé the wave of the future.

NPR delivers the poop on biosolids as fertilizer

Is It Safe To Use Compost Made From Treated Human Waste?

The news here: Bankers think

This committee of bankers, wise and studied men, no doubt, think there just may be some bit of a bubble--a bit of irrational exuberance, perhaps--in these land prices. You think?

Iowa's sue-the-farmer ruling

Montana's wolf kill debates howl on

But the Canadians have a better idea.

You just scrape up the road kill and do a copter drop to the predators. Maybe the Montanas could furnish some dead wolves.

We continue our search for good burger advice

Politico says the "powerful" beef lobby has won one on the Farm Bill 

We continue our search for good press for ag gag laws. Again, no luck.

Hey, we're foreigners there, so they’re saying we’re good workers!

NPR's take on crop insurance

An economic upswing?

Fighting cholesterol

Bacon weiners

Fly reminder

Beef board at Wine and Food festival

Ted Turner's good buffalo deal

Paul McCartney's daughter does a vegetarian book

Curing the hiccups