Many of our economists have encouraged tracking profits based on enterprises to better identify profit centers. While that is good from an economic standpoint, it is also important to look at the beneficial interactions between enterprises to capitalize on the potential synergy between both. Integrating livestock and cropping is the focus of the Match Made in Heaven: Livestock + Crops project led by the Green Lands Blue Waters program. Livestock enterprises can use crop acres seeded to cover crops and crop residue to stretch the grazing season and save on feed costs. Crop operations benefit from the nutrient value added through livestock manure and to help with pest management.
Match Made In Heaven: Livestock + Crops is a regional project that examines how grain and livestock integration works to improve soil health, protect the soil, provide a more diverse income stream and reduce fertilizer and pest management costs. It is a collaboration of over 50 agriculture and natural resource groups in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin. One of the unique aspects of this project has been the coordination and cooperation between crop and livestock associations, state and federal agencies, universities, soil and water groups, and both crop and livestock farmers. It is funded by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, North Central Region SARE program.
The Match Made in Heaven project has several components including a producer survey, producer case studies and field days. The results of the survey and case studies can be found at the Green Lands Blue Waters website. The Iowa field day demonstrated a great example of how producers are making the most of the crop and livestock integration.
More than 90 producers attended the field day coordinated by Iowa State University (ISU) and Fayette County Extension at the Damien and Rick Matt farm near Clermont, Iowa, in August. The Matts’ cattle, sheep and crop operation demonstrated the benefits of rotating annual forages for feed or grazing with corn for grain or silage, and the benefits of grazing livestock and manure application on cropland.
Rick’s involvement as a Fayette County soil commissioner sparked his interest in ways to improve soil health. Moving from a continuous corn rotation to a rotation with corn silage, fall-seeded cover crops and a summer-annual forage blend on part of his acres fits the bill for him. Keeping living plants on the ground year-round provides a food source for soil microbes, which in turn reclaim and recycle nutrients for the crop. Plus, they can either harvest the forage for winter feed or let the cows do the work by grazing. Using cover crops and summer annuals also helps to extend their grazing days by starting to graze earlier on the cover crops and by moving to the summer-annual forages during the heat of summer when permanent pastures need a longer rest period to catch up on growth for fall grazing.
Their “salad mix,” as Rick calls it, consists of forage peas, sorghum-sudan, sunflower, radish, kale, rapeseed, brown flax, buckwheat, Japanese millet, sudangrass, red clover, Persian clover, faba beans and sun hemp. In good years, the summer-annual forages may regrow enough for a second summer grazing or to stockpile for winter grazing after grazing corn stover. Last year, the Matts were able to swath graze the summer-annual blend well into January using tumble wheels to move the fence. This combination of grazing summer annuals on traditional corn ground also allows them to allocate more of their permanent pasture for the sheep flock to graze. This is their first year raising sheep, with the long-term goal of creating a leader-follower grazing system, where lactating cows graze pastures first since their nutrient requirements are much higher, followed by the sheep flock grazing the remaining lower-quality grass. In this system, they can add about one ewe for every cow in the system without needing additional pasture acres. However, there has been a learning curve to provide more initial forage and move the cows off earlier than they have in the past to provide enough forage for the sheep.
The big question is, Does this pay from an economic standpoint? Damien says yes – with some caveats. Rough calculations of their actual crop input costs with custom rate charges for field operations and an estimated rental cost of $294 per acre results in corn costs of $3.27 per bushel and a profit of $120 per acre, while the winter-annual/summer-annual combination costs about $39 per ton of dry matter and a profit of $59 per acre. This estimate is based on a single grazing of the summer forage blend, and most years, they can get a second grazing to reduce costs and increase profits even more. However, the forage grazing also allows them to keep their corn input costs lower by using less fertilizer and reduced pesticides.
Obviously, these economics don’t apply to everyone, but incorporating some annual forages, especially with the double crop of winter or spring annuals followed by summer annuals, may have a place in many cattle operations. It is the perfect example of the benefits and synergies of incorporating livestock and cropping enterprises.
