The Forage Crop Alternative

"Farmers in Iowa would grow something other than corn and soybeans if it were profitable."
-Commonly heard statement around Agronomy Hall at Iowa State University-


The need for alternatives
I argue elsewhere on my website and in print that alternatives to the corn-soybean rotation typifying much of the Corn Belt in the USA are urgently needed, both to diversify farmers' risk and to limit the risk of the corn-bean crops to devastating disease and pest outbreaks. Increasing diversification would also improve the aesthetic quality of the state, a feature given all too little consideration. The main alternatives, in my view, are forage crops. Alfalfa is the forage crop most easily commodified, and though it has the highest management requirements of most forages suitable for Iowa and the highest associated production costs, it offers the potential of the highest returns on investment compared with other forages.

Costs of production
Actually, figure it out. Based on the market prices that have existed for the past several years, the net returns on alfalfa are FAR superior to soybeans or corn, if you don't consider government welfare...er, support....payments. The data, compiled by Mike Duffy in the the ISU Agricultural Economics Extension program, are here: Estimated Costs of Crop Production in Iowa--2002. Current commodity prices can be found at ISU Extension's Commodity Market Report; hay prices are here.

Per Acre Basis

Corn

Soybean*

Alfalfa**

Estimated yield

160 bu

50 bu

4 tons

Market Price (April 5, 2002)

$1.90/bu

$4.50/bu

$87.50/ton

Average receipts

$304

$225

$350

Cost of production

$383.53

$296.79

$271.15

Total returns

-79.53

-71.79

+78.85

* Assuming non-transgenic variety.
** I assumed the highest corn and soybean yield level and the lowest alfalfa yield level given in the ISU guide; Alfalfa price assuming 2 tons of good-premium hay at $100/ton and 2 tons of fair hay at $75/ton (small square bales); Costs are for non-establishment year, including 1/3 of establishment costs.

Some notes
1. My corn and soybean yield estimates were on the high end, but my alfalfa yield estimates were on the low end. Thus, the alfalfa situation is probably even better than that shown.

2. The erosion potential of land in permanent cover is much less than that of row crop land and the alfalfa likely contributes other positive effects on soil tilth and fertility; these and other positive environmental benefits of perennial forage crops are not included in this accounting.

3. Having a perennial alfalfa crop probably helps to control pests like the corn root worm, which can now survive a single year soybean field (note that this is a new trait that this pest has evolved due to the corn-soybean rotation).

4. The returns of alfalfa, or other forages, could be markedly improved through rotational grazing--that is, let the cattle (or hogs!) do the harvesting and fertilizing while you sip lemonade in the shade.

What are we going to do with the hay?
After showing folks this information, I am usually assaulted with this question: "Well, what are we going to do with all that hay?" Good question! Let's look at what we do with all the corn and soybean. The uses of most of our corn and soybean is not for food (we aren't feeding the world with this stuff), but for livestock feed. This paper, by Mark Muller and Richard Levins of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, shows that about 60% of our corn crop is used for feed (and the 20% that is exported is almost entirely used for feed as well). Thus, what we are doing is producing corn in large part to feed to ruminant livestock....good idea! If ever there was a waste of energy, this is it. This sorry situation is most cogently exposed in Power Steer, a recent article in the New York Times Magazine written by Michael Pollan. The soybean situation is slightly different, but most soy meal is fed to chickens and hogs, neither of which are raised to any appreciable degree on pasture anymore. So, in sum, about 80% of the corn and 60% of the soybeans produced in the U.S. are fed to livestock.

Feeding forage to ruminants, like cattle and sheep, just makes sense. And many improvements in our systems can be made if we would reintegrate the beef fattening operations with corn production. This is how value added can help the farmer get more money for his/her products, rather than provide some downstream operation, like Archer Daniels Midland, with a new way to make money on a raw material. What many people have apparently fogotten, however, is that hogs can be raised on pasture, too, and indeed that they can acquire considerable nutrition from alfalfa or clover pasturage. The 20th edition of Feeds and Feeding by Morrison (1936) includes these figures:

and
(click on the pictures for full size--the captions are great)

which not only suggest that hogs do better when legume pasture or hay is part of their diet! So, what if we put our hog operations back on pasture in Iowa? Well, we'd have something to do with the forage land then, and we'd avoid the hog odor and disease problems currently plaguing confinement operations. In the process, we would probably make the hogs much happier to boot. Morrison has this to say: "For breeding swine and growing pigs ample exercise is of the utmost importance. Even for fattening pigs limited exercise is preferable to close confinement." As to shelter, "Even in the northern states, where the winters are cold, inexpensive shelter is all that is necessary for swine." So, what Morrison teaches us is that we don't need expensive buildings to raise hogs and that we can use pasture that simultaneously provides nutritional and health benefits to the pigs and improves the cropping system in toto. The big problem here, as I see it, is that the agribusiness providers are cut out of the loop. Too bad! 

If we do this, food prices will rise substantially
This is one of the bigger falsehoods propagated in support of our current food system. What may come as a shock is that the farm value only represents 20% of our food dollar! That's right, only $0.20 of each dollar spent on food in the US goes to the farmer. So, even if the farmer's take doubled, food prices would only rise 20%. These data come from Figure 1 and Table 9 in Life-Cycle Based Sustainability Indicators for Assessment of the U.S. Food System, a masterful analysis of our food system by Martin Heller and Gregory Keoleian at the University of Michigan. Most strikingly, then, is the fact that 80% of our food dollar goes to someone other than the farmer. That alone should make us question our food system. Of course, the amount of the food dollar a farmer receives varies with the particular foodstuff: it is 30% for meat, 42% for eggs, but only 6% for cereal and bakery items.

Moving toward a local food system could reduce transportation, processing, and packaging costs of our food. This in turn could help maintain food costs to the consumer close to where it is currently by offseting any increase in farm gate receipts resulting from a shift toward a forage-based (or at least, forage-integrated) farming system. As with any change, a move toward a more integrated farming system, incorporating forage crops and livestock, will present both challenges and opportunities. The question we need to consider is whether our currently severely flawed system is worth propping up just because we can't envision what the future system may look like, or whether we have the desire to improve our system in the hope of developing a new system that sustains both humans and the environment. I will opt for the latter.

All of this is linked to the current concentration in the agriculture sector, discussed at length in this site from the University of Missouri. Concentration limits the options of farmers to buy and sell products. More on this later.

You just want to go back to the past
I've always found this argument specious. Simply because you want to do something along similar lines to that done 50 years ago doesn't mean that you want to go back to the way life was 50 years ago! Farmers used tractors 50 years ago; is using tractors today simply a throwback to a bygone era? Technological progress is being made in many areas of agriculture. The large round baler, portable fencing, and low-cost watering systems are all major innovations that allow virtually anyone to get into pasture or hay production without needing serious amounts of labor. Just because they aren't costly high-tech systems doesn't mean that they are not profit generating systems. In fact, they probably will generate much more net income for a farmer than any amount of precision ag systems ever will. We need to rethink why we did certain things in the past, and then figure out how we can take the best of those systems and improve on them. The advances in grazing gear are one way that makes forages much more tractable to today's farmer than they were 50 years ago.

Why do you hate corn and soybeans so much?
I often hear this criticism, too...you just don't like corn and beans. Not true. I have had a lifelong fascination with corn, and I spent a part of my life doing research on soybeans. Both crops grow well in Iowa and should be part of the cropping mix. What I don't like is the idea held by many that only corn and beans should be grown. When growing only corn and beans means that governmental intervention is required to keep farmers from going under, that pest and weed problems become ever greater, that the cost of improving the crops continually escalates, then I think we need to reconsider why we are growing only corn and beans. Unless someone can show me otherwise, I am at a loss as to why forage crops are not considered an economically viable alternative to corn and soybean.

Related discussions:

Bioenergy crops
Energy and agriculture

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