By Will Verboven Contributing Editor
Your humble writer from the Great White North and his patient wife had the pleasure of making a long road trip into several U.S. western states last September. Among the many highlights was that, after 15 years, I finally met with the illustrious publisher of CALF News, the indomitable Betty Jo Gigot. There are few American publications that feature a regular column from a Canadian writer, so I am forever grateful to her kindness for all these years.
I believe one of the reasons for her publishing a Canadian perspective is her insightful understanding that the cattle and beef business is North American in scope and one of the most integrated of cross-border agriculture industries. That integration has been to the mutual advantage of cattle producers on both sides of the border. It’s confirmed by the long, close alliance between the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Canadian Cattle Association on numerous beef and cattle trade issues.
Our road trip provided insights into American agricultural diversity, both past and present. While travelling the San Luis Valley in Colorado, roadside signs mentioned the historic role of the once-enormous, Hispanic-dominated sheep-grazing industry in the area. The vast numbers were astonishing; one sign noted a long-ago loss of a 3,500-head flock in a sandstorm. One also notices the presence of old wool collection warehouses along a railway line. Yet today, sheep flocks of any size are rarely seen – albeit not many cattle either.
Our road trip provided insights into American agricultural diversity, both past and present.
Hispanic families pioneered large-scale sheep grazing in the 1700s. Those families and subsequent Basque, Spanish and Greek immigrant settlers became the West’s principal sheep owners and herders. Due to favorable geography, sheep-preferred vegetation and climate, much of the western slopes of the Colorado Rockies became inundated with hundreds of thousands of sheep. The expansion happened over a short period – about 50 years. At one time, there were 40 million sheep in the U.S., mainly in the West. Today, fewer than 9 million remain.
Near Durango, Colo., we discovered that ancestral Puebloan Indigenous cultures practiced large-scale farming around 900 years ago. They were farming corn, squash and beans. Corn was cultivated on a large scale as the sizeable population needed a crop that could be successfully farmed. It was estimated that the population in the Mesa Verde area in southwest Colorado may have been as high as 20,000 around the 11th century. Simple hunting/gathering for food would not be enough to feed such a population. Corn seeds and farming knowledge made its way north from central Mexico.
The Mesa Verde area would have been the northernmost boundary of corn growing as it needed at least 150 frost-free days. Interestingly, the mesas also had deep, arable soil and rainfall necessary for growing corn. Some estimates were that just Mesa Verde Puebloan farming involved 2,000 acres all by hand. That would be a commercial endeavour as corn was stored for winter use or trade. Upon visiting the Mesa Verde National Park, one notes the ancient farmed area is now overgrown by brush, pinyon scrub trees and invasive weeds.
Further along in southern Idaho, we came across the state’s super-sized dairy farms. That state has about 350 commercial dairy farms with 650,000 dairy cows; it’s the third-largest dairy state after California and Wisconsin. The Idaho dairy industry is the largest ag business in the state, even larger than its massive potato industry. We compared the size of Idaho’s dairy industry of 2,000 cows per farm to Alberta, which has 500 dairy farms with 85,000 dairy cows, which works out to only about 170 head per farm. Idaho was not always a major dairy-production state. But it had a considerable base of available arable land, much of which had access to irrigation. It also had a climate and geography suitable for intensive livestock production. Interestingly, a byproduct of those big dairy farms are thousands of crossbred beef-dairy calves, which have been found to feed out well in commercial feedlots and grade well in processing plants.
We also chanced upon the Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot, Idaho. What a charming discovery; who would have suspected it contained the world’s largest collection of potato mashers, french fry cutters and potato peelers? What was an eye-opener was learning about the development of a small, local farming enterprise into the world’s most concentrated potato-growing and processing mega industries.
One notes that Idaho state license plates feature the slogan “Famous Potatoes,” and they aren’t kidding. The southern part of this state has 300,000 acres in production, producing an estimated 1 billion spuds annually. That’s around 25 percent of U.S. production; add in adjacent Washington state production, and those two states grow nearly half of all American potatoes. That’s a lot of production compared to Canada – where national potato acreage is around 390,000, with 80,000 in Alberta. This province recently became the largest potato producer in Canada. Idaho claims its spuds are better because they are grown in volcanic soils. Be that as it may, most spuds are processed into french fries and potato chips. Nowadays, the potato variety is more important than where they are grown.
We had a delightful trip to an amazing country.
