| The Business of Beef |
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Various locations, April 8 & 10 If looking for ways to improve the efficiency and profitability in beef operations, we have some speakers not to be missed. Steve Kenyon with Greener Pastures will be presenting on intensive grazing systems, and how they can impact and improve the profitability of a beef operation. Note to be missed is Dave Pratt’s intensive on transforming ranches into profit generating business.
Year Round Grazing Systems
Year Round Grazing Systems will be a brief overview looking into the management of a farm business. It will emphasize the need to understand the production practices involved in the systems as well as describe the importants of the business side of a farm. It will describe the grazing concepts and principles involved in summer grass management and look into the planning and management of dormant season grazing including swath grazing, residue grazing and bale grazing.
Steve is a grazing mentor through ARECA’s sustainable grazing mentorship program and he has developed and instructs the “Year Round Grazing Systems” Agricultural Business Management Course. This three-day course includes a human resource component, economics, finances, grazing principles, cell design and pasture rejuvenation. This course will take you right into design and planning of a year round grazing system
Steve has been teaching sustainable grazing management for more than seven years and has been a keynote speaker at many conferences and seminars throughout Canada and the U.S. He is a writer for the Stockman Grass Farmer magazine and also for the Canadian Cattleman Magazine. He is a director for the Gateway Research Organization and on the executive board for the Agriculture Research and Extension Council of Alberta (ARECA). Steve was chosen as one of the 5 cooperating producers in Alberta through ARECA’s “Year Round Grazing Demo” project, and nominated for the Outstanding Young Farmers Program. Steve has a very energetic personality, which compliments a very down to earth common sense approach to farm business management. Yet he is still just a producer and presents in a very honest and straightforward style.
The Mission statement of Greener Pastures is “Economic Sustainability for Generations” It is important to Steve to provide an enjoyable, profitable and sustainable business for future generations. Steve believes that to be profitable in the long term, you must use sustainable agriculture practices. You have to work with Mother Nature, not against her. Greener Pastures is an environmentally sustainable ranch that improves the land. The focus is to maintain an effective water cycle, carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle and mineral cycle. Our wildlife habitats and riparian areas need to be preserved. The health of our soils and our soil organisms needs to be understood and protected in order to ensure that our agricultural businesses remain profitable and sustainable. Knowing how to raise livestock is very different than knowing how to develop and run a business that raises livestock. Most ranches aren’t real businesses. A real business is more than a bunch of jobs and a collection of assets. A real business makes a profit. Without profit a ranch isn’t a business, it is just an expensive hobby. Participants will learn how to transform their ranches into real businesses and why doing so will increase profit and improve the quality of their lives. They will learn why working in their ranch won’t increase profit until they work on their ranch.
There are only three ways to increase profit in business. Participants will learn what they are and how they apply to ranching by building a livestock business from scratch. They will see how ranchers have traditionally, and unsuccessfully, tried to increase profit and understand why it hasn’t worked. They will leave with the tools to determine which of the 3 “secrets” for increasing profit applies to them and see how others have applied this knowledge to build sustainable ranch businesses.
Bio: Dave Pratt is one of the most sought after speakers on sustainable agriculture and profitable ranching in North America. He has taught the Ranching for Profit School in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia and Africa. Dave has devoted his life to increasing the sustainability of ranching. A 5th generation Californian, he grew up on a small ranch and worked for cattle and sheep ranchers in northern California where he learned ranching from the bottom up. In addition to his practical roots, Dave holds BS and MS degrees from the University of California and Washington State University. As a Range and Livestock Advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension Service for 15 years, Dave researched management intensive grazing and strategic issues impacting the sustainability of ranches. While with the University, he earned a reputation for innovative teaching with a practical edge and helped hundreds of farmers and ranchers develop and implement strategies to increase profit. Dave was instrumental in developing the Sustainable Ranching Research & Education Project, a large-scale, long-term effort to develop, research and demonstrate economic, environmental and socially sustainable ranching practices. He also co-founded the California Grazing Academy, which provided ranchers hands-on experience applying management intensive grazing.
In 1991 Dave began working with Stan Parsons, who created the Ranching for Profit School and founded Ranch Management Consultants. Dave began teaching the Ranching for Profit School in 1992. In January 2001 Dave became President of Ranch Management Consultants, Inc. He now manages the Ranching for Profit School and Executive Link program in North America.
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