Management recommendations for limiting undesirable ecosystem state shifts driven by cheatgrass in the West and Eastern red cedar on central US grasslands can now be outlined with greater certainty. Jeremy Maestas, NRCS National Sagebrush Ecosystem Specialist, and Dirac Twidwell, range and fire scientist at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, present the Defend the Core framework for invasive species management, a fresh approach that prioritizes preventing degradation where intact, functional plant ...
Feb 15, 2023•50 min
Is it time to surrender the Western U.S. to cheatgrass and frequent fire or regroup and work smarter? Jeremy Maestas, NRCS National Sagebrush Ecosystem Specialist, and Dirac Twidwell, range and fire scientist at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, present the Defend the Core framework for invasive species management, a fresh approach that prioritizes preventing degradation where intact, functional plant communities exist and reducing risk of invasives spreading from areas already compromised. After ...
Feb 02, 2023•49 min
Trying to stay up on the most recent developments in soil health? SoilCon, a free virtual conference, will address the latest research to help people put soil health principles into practice for regional systems. In this episode, Molly, an organizer of SoilCon, shares more details on the speaker lineup and the Washington Soil Health Initiative. SoilCon 2023 will be held on Feb. 14 and 15, with daily sessions running from 8 a.m. to noon. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE https://pheedloop.com/w...
Jan 19, 2023•29 min
What if you could insure calf price against catastrophic price drops? LRP puts a price floor under feeder calves, paying for the difference between an insured calf price and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange feeder cattle index value for a selected marketing date. This episode with Jack Field and Clay Worden continues our series in ranch financial health with a deep dive into LRP mechanics. Find resources mentioned in this episode as well as the transcript at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-97...
Jan 05, 2023•1 hr
"1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" has been a New York Times best-selling book since publication in 2006. Charles C Mann's writings have reformed popular ideas about Native Americans and challenged cherished notions of nature. Join Charles and Tip in part 2 of a two-episode discussion about the origins of the book and some of the revelations about the peoples in North, Central, and South Americas over the last 2000 years. Look up 1491 wherever you buy books and get yourself ...
Dec 22, 2022•50 min
"1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" has been a New York Times best-selling book since publication in 2006. Charles C Mann's writings have reformed popular ideas about Native Americans and challenged cherished notions of nature. Join Charles and Tip in part 1 of a two-episode discussion about the origins of the book and some of the revelations about the peoples in North, Central, and South Americas over the last 2000 years. Look up 1491 wherever you buy books and get yourself ...
Dec 08, 2022•49 min
The global nature of agricultural trade and market forces makes cattle price cycles less predictable, and this presents a different kind of risk than historical pricing pressures. But Dr. Shannon Neibergs, director of the Western Center for Risk Management and a livestock economist, believes there are real opportunities to respond to (in winter 2022-23). Listen in to learn about the current milieu. We conclude with Jack Field (CKP Insurance) on how Livestock Risk Protection can help you mitigate...
Nov 17, 2022•44 min
"Nature’s regeneration was the primary source of the Pristine Myth." --Shawn Miller. The influence of the idea that the American continent was essentially untouched by man at the time of European arrival is great. The Pristine Myth, a term coined by William Denevan, a cultural geographer, strikes at prejudicial ideas about the primitive-ness of indigenous peoples. And the persistence of this idea reveals a desire to coerce modern man into a preservationist policy toward most public places. In th...
Nov 04, 2022•45 min
The giant bathtubs off the western and southern coasts of North America contribute large amounts of heat and moisture to the continent, driving much of the climate (long-term) and weather (short-term) of the Western United States. And oceans have regular oscillations in temperature, which drives moisture delivery. Researchers looked at historical yearling cattle production data going back to 1939 at the Central Plains Experimental Range to see whether correlations existed between the Pacific Dec...
Oct 20, 2022•54 min
What exactly are we hoping to sustain in applying the term sustainability to ranching? Without definition, sustainability could just be circular reasoning: "that which persists is sustainable". But this is not what is meant by any of the many proponents of rangeland-based livestock production. Dr. Sayre offers partial answers to this question and prompts to reader/listener to further thinking in this essay from 2005 read here by Tip. RESOURCES RELATED TO THIS EPISODE https://geography.berkeley.e...
Sep 29, 2022•32 min
Measuring the financial health of a ranch operation is as important as measuring rangeland health. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) combine production and financial data into metrics that measure various elements of ranch financial health. Stan Bevers describes how to accurately calculate KPIs and use them to improve a cow-calf operation. OTHER RESOURCES Learn more about KPI calculations and values at https://www.ranchkpi.com/key-performance-indicators/key-performance-indicator-targets-for-cow-...
Sep 08, 2022•1 hr 15 min
You need a ranch financial team. Keeping ranch financial records for tax purposes is not the same thing as managing the financial health of a ranch. Stan Bevers has been teaching and consulting on ranch finance for decades with Texas A&M Extension, the King Ranch Institute, and now RanchKPI. This is the first episode in a two-part series with Stan on managerial accounting and key performance indicators (KPIs). In this episode, co-hosted with James Rogers and Clay Worden, we discuss tax accou...
Aug 24, 2022•1 hr 11 min
The summer of 2022 is nearly in the books, as they say, but range managers and graziers should pay attention to increasingly sophisticated tools to characterize both forage yield and fire risk in order to respond to annual and seasonal anomalies in forage quantity and type proactively. Listen to an update on 2022 conditions and a description of Fuelcast.net, a decision support platform that everyone should have in their range management toolbox. TRANSCRIPT coming soon at https://artofrange.com/e...
Aug 11, 2022•39 min
Financial resiliency requires knowing and tracking costs of production and comparing the costs and revenues of a specific enterprise against other possible enterprises. In this second episode with Jack Southworth, James Rogers, and Clay Worden, they discuss the many ways every ranch's context is different from another's, highlighting the importance of spending some time working on the business and not just in the business. RESOURCES MENTIONED ON THE SHOW are available at https://artofrange.com/e...
Jul 14, 2022•56 min
Many ranchers don't do it for the money, but one cannot ranch for long only losing money. In this first episode in a grant-funded series on ranch financial resiliency, Jack Southworth discusses principles and common problems in ranch money management with James Rogers and Clay Worden. Stay tuned for more. TRANSCRIPT available at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-86-intro-ranch-financial-resiliency-jack-southworth-james-rogers-clay-worden.
Jun 30, 2022•28 min
Americans hear news of social conflict and small-scale warfare in Africa and we ignore the news because it's far away and doesn't affect us. It's also not possible to meaningfully engage emotionally with everything bad happening around the globe. But there are real people and animals in Cameroon whose lives are disrupted, and because pastoralists are often politically marginalized it's important to tell their stories. This interview touches on the geography of West-central Africa, the lifestyle ...
Jun 16, 2022•59 min
Paul Bechtel is an almost-centenarian, born 1923, whose family was lured to Eastern Montana by hopes of homesteading good land still free for the taking. Reality wasn't quite so gentle in the northern Great Plains in the rainshadow of the Rocky Mountains. He lived in Ekelaka in harsh conditions through the Great Depression and until he joined the U.S. Army in 1941, but his best memories of his entire life are from this era. It was a good place to be a free range child. In this episode, co-hosted...
Jun 02, 2022•55 min
This episode is the second in a two-part series with the authors of a recent article in the journal Rangeland Ecology & Management telling the story behind their work on ranch sustainability: Clare Kazanski & Marissa Ahlering (The Nature Conservancy), Patrick Lendrum (World Wildlife Fund), and Sheri Spiegal (Jornada Experimental Range). Sheri was recently honored with the USDA ARS Early Career Scientist of the Year Award. The organizations represented by these and other contributing auth...
May 12, 2022•40 min
This episode has the authors of a recent article in the journal Rangeland Ecology & Management tell the story behind their work: Clare Kazanski & Marissa Ahlering (The Nature Conservancy), Patrick Lendrum (World Wildlife Fund), and Sheri Spiegal (Jornada Experimental Range). Sheri was recently honored with the USDA ARS Early Career Scientist of the Year Award. The organizations represented by these and other contributing authors are all involved in evaluating environmental and social suc...
Apr 28, 2022•45 min
Jim O'Rourke and Barbara Hutchinson have been part of the effort to have a United Nations International Year acknowledging the importance of rangelands and the people of rangelands for many years. On March 15, 2022, the UN General Assembly finally approved this proposal. Listen to Jim and Barbara describe why this matters for people who already know and care about rangelands and how you can heighten awareness of the social and ecological importance of rangelands worldwide. LEARN MORE ABOUT THE I...
Apr 14, 2022•1 hr 9 min
We're taking a break this week from the normal release schedule. Come back on April 14 for the first episode in a two-part series on ranch sustainability indicators. You can prepare for that episode by downloading the article at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2021.08.011. If that link gives you trouble, email me at [email protected].
Apr 01, 2022•1 min
Ranching for Profit is an organization started by Stan Parsons and recently run by Dave Pratt that has been helping ranchers work on the business instead of in the business for decades. Dallas Mount, former Univ. of Wyoming Extension economist and now co-owner of Ranch Management Consultants, talks with Tip about ranch finance competencies, common weaknesses in ranch financial planning, and fundamental steps livestock producers can take to understand costs and put assets to work for them. This e...
Mar 17, 2022•57 min
Forestry and range sciences are tied to each other in a long and complex social history, and many areas of the Western U.S. and semi-arid parts of the world host rangeland and forest plant communities in the same space and within the same management boundaries. So there is good reason to encourage range folk to given some attention to forestry, not necessarily 'board-feet' production forestry but the ecology of forests and their interactions with rangeland plant communities. This interview with ...
Mar 03, 2022•1 hr 2 min
How do we build soil health? What is soil health? Is careful grazing helpful or hurtful? Can anything be done to meaningfully influence soil health? And how would we know? What can be measured that indicates progress? These are the questions Derek Scasta and Jeff Goodwin and their team intend to begin to answer through a recently funded national-scale project called Metrics, Management, and Monitoring: An Investigation of Pasture and Rangeland Soil Health and Its Drivers. This ambitious research...
Feb 17, 2022•56 min
Seeding in extreme environments such as arid and semi-arid rangelands requires extra care in site preparation, species selection, seed selection, seed placement, planting timing, and care for emerging seedlings. Mel Asher and Jerry Benson have been successfully doing large-scale restoration on challenging rangeland settings for many years. Jerry owns BFI Native Seeds, specializing in locally-sourced native species for the Intermountain West; Mel is the new owner of Derby Canyon Natives, a compan...
Feb 07, 2022•1 hr 10 min
Deciding whether to seed, what to seed, and how to apply seed after wildfire are weighty questions. Seeding costs money, seedings often fail, and most rangelands won't pay you back for rehabilitation failure. Richard Fleenor, NRCS state rangelands conservationist in Washington, has a background in plant materials and revegetation and discusses with Tip analyzing burn severity, pre-fire plant community composition, and options in seed selection and application. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE...
Jan 21, 2022•1 hr 10 min
Soil organic matter is considered an indicator of soil health, there are numerous methods promoted for building it, SOM is credited with the potential to alleviate greenhouse gas increase, but Andy & Doug say the way we've understood SOM is perhaps an artifact of the old ways of measuring it. The complexity of what we call 'organic matter' is significant, challenging, and prompts a re-thinking of both soil health measurement and soil-building practices. This episode is not quite "Why Everyth...
Dec 16, 2021•50 min
Soil organic matter is considered an indicator of soil health, there are numerous methods promoted for building it, SOM is credited with the potential to alleviate greenhouse gas increase, but Andy & Doug say the way we've understood SOM is perhaps an artifact of the old ways of measuring it. The complexity of what we call 'organic matter' is significant, challenging, and prompts a re-thinking of both soil health measurement and soil-building practices. This episode is not quite "Why Everyth...
Dec 02, 2021•35 min
Ranch sustainability requires land care that works for the long haul and management that makes a profit more years than not. Jim Rickert, owner of the Prather Ranch in northern California, makes the case that a ranch must take care of people and animals, too, in order to last, and these goals are synergistic, not mutually exclusive. This two-part interview with Jim chronicles his circuitous path from a masters degree doing linear programming models of farm financial alternatives under Earl Butz,...
Nov 18, 2021•48 min
Ranch sustainability requires land care that works for the long haul and management that makes a profit more years than not. Jim Rickert, owner of the Prather Ranch in northern California, makes the case that a ranch must take care of people and animals, too, in order to last, and these goals are synergistic, not mutually exclusive. This two-part interview with Jim chronicles his circuitous path from a masters degree doing linear programming models of farm financial alternatives under Earl Butz,...
Nov 04, 2021•51 min
