Hi, lot to visit about this time… Nick Levendofsky: Nick, a great KFU staffer for the past couple of years, has moved on. He has taken a marketing position with NFO. I miss the kid. I pushed a lot of stuff off on him that I no longer had the passion to give it my [...]
By Tom Parker Since the inception of the computing era, a simple acronym evolved to become an icon of visual acuity and perception: WYSIWYG. The concept works for tangible objects as well as for digital data, but not so much for agricultural purposes. What-you-see-is-what-you-get might be fine for digital publishing or Web site creation, but [...]
By Mary Howell The Cover Crop Bus Tour will compliment the information covered Friday in Salina with actual examples in field of many varieties of grasses, legumes and cover crops. Various cropping and grazing practices will also be featured. The focus of the workshop both days will be how to improve soil health, increase soil [...]
Mark Green, NRCS specialist from Missouri, will return to Kansas to offer his popular workshop on electric fencing and livestock watering options for all species of livestock this fall. Water availability is the number one limiting factor for grazing possibilities. The addition of electric fencing will increase grazing options that can in-turn benefit range health, [...]
Workshop 1: Economics of the Livestock Industry September 21-22, Ramada Inn, Topeka Farming and ranching can only be sustainable if it is profitable. Too many operations have been focused on production, not profit, for far too long. Less than 5% of the variation in profitability among cow-calf operations can be explained by weaning weight. About 60% [...]
Gail Fuller and Amazing Grazing bring two experts on soil health and carbon sequestration to Kansas! Gabe Brown and Dr. Christine Jones headline this summer’s Fuller Field School.
By Tom Parker Listening to economist Bill Helming talk forecasts and demographic changes and economic trends and growth rates and market shares and income streams and—above all—fractions and whole numbers and percentages is a lot like getting tossed into a commercial clothes dryer set to permanent press. At first the momentum is dizzying as you [...]
By Tom Parker Okay, so tall fescue has a bad rap. It has, shall we say, a checkered reputation. And for good reason, too. The cool-season forage could be a livestock producer’s best friend or it could be a killer—literally—depending on circumstances. Sure, it was known to host a toxic endophyte that could introduce summer [...]
By Tom Parker In the history of Kansas agriculture, trees have something of a checkered past. From initial legislative efforts to expand tree cultivation through the payment of generous bounties to today’s wholesale eradication of windbreaks and hedgerows, the importance, and value, of trees has shifted due to economic, ecological and climatological trends. Those same [...]
By Tom Parker The booming popularity of goats, alpacas, sheep and other non-traditional species for livestock production has created new markets and avenues of revenue for producers willing to learn how to integrate and innovate into more diversified operations. One lesser-known but potentially lucrative niche market associated with non-traditional animals is the fiber market, where [...]
