re: Beef prices and farmers...

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Why the hell would you pay taxes maintain a 15k acre ranch that you can accomplish with a feed lot?

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Most "ranchers" with 15k acres are not solely cattle ranchers. They just need the cattle for agricultural exemption on 15k acres.

quote:

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Why the hell would you pay taxes maintain a 15k acre ranch that you can accomplish with a feed lot? Why every cattle farmer should just convert to feed lots?

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Because, as bad as the taxes can be on that 15K acre ranch, the costs associated with cattle in feedlots are even more.

Every steer in a feedlot has to be provided every bit of it's feed. It all has to be bought, and if the amount of feed is large enough, the feedlot operator has to invest in special equipment to handle the bulk feed (they aren't just throwing around 20 tons of feedbags every day.) Next, the feedlot has to handle the collection of manure and move it away from the cattle. If they don't, they get diseases in the herd that cut into their sale process, and because the cattle are in such cramped conditions, those diseases may spread rapidly. So, the feedlot operator has to be more vigilant about disease mitigation processes.

All of the sudden, it becomes easy to see why cow-calf operations are usually on pasture: a majority of the feed is free, manure doesn't need to be moved most of the time and diseases aren't as damaging. Oh, and it can happen on land that generally isn't suitable for row or grain cropping.

Hope that helps.