Introducing: Corporate Cultivators
“Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will, in the end, contribute most to wealth, good morals, and happiness….” — Thomas Jefferson, 1787, in a letter to George Washington, from Paris.
Thomas Jefferson, a wise and intriguing man, knew what he was talking about. He was a “spokesman for democracy,” the author of the Declaration of Independence, the third President of the United States, and a Founding Father. Not on that list provided by whitehouse.gov, however, is the title of “agriculturist,” one which Jefferson was incredibly proud of.
Jefferson inherited a large plantation in Monticello, Virginia, and farmed there while building our nation. As did many of our founding fathers, he knew the importance of agriculture and that the free world would need a strong agricultural foundation to sustain a lifetime. However, I feel Jefferson’s vision of the ideal “agriculturist” may be a bit different than the ones we see today.
For instance, Jefferson most likely had no idea there would be agriculturists out there who made full-time, 50-year careers out of selling fertilizer and chemical to farmers. I’d say there’s a 0% chance our Third President predicted Lobbyists would get paid one day to fight for or against antibiotic-feed-additives for livestock. I’d put my life savings down that the guy on the Dime didn’t foresee people like me actually STRESSING about social media posts against agriculture and how I can, in turn, make a different social media post to combat those claims.
Since Jefferson’s Ideal of an Agrarian Democracy, American Agriculture has changed in many ways — but the spirit and overall concept is still there: American citizens dedicating their lives to putting food on their family’s table and yours.
As I wrote last week, there’s more to agriculture than just plows, sows, and cows (according to pretty much every FFA kid ever). In other words, more goes into putting food on the table before and after crops or animals are harvested. For example, let’s look at the beef lifecycle, based on information provided by Beef. It’s what’s for dinner. coupled with my incredibly basic gate to plate knowledge:
(Remember, a cow is a sexually mature female who has had a calf; a bull is a male who has not been castrated and can breed with a heifer or a cow once he has matured; a heifer is a young female who hasn’t borne a calf; a steer is a male who has been castrated; a calf is a baby; I’m not going to explain breeding, ask your mom and dad about that one.)
First, a bull must breed a cow or heifer and they will either have a bull calf or a heifer calf. After this calf gets their mother’s colostrum, they are given an identification number and ear-tagged which goes into a record book and is submitted to a cattle breed specific association for record keeping purposes. The calf is later branded with the rancher’s brand, sometimes castrated if the calf is a bull and the rancher chooses to do so, and doctored with a vaccine provided by a veterinarian, who got the vaccine from an animal pharmaceutical sales representative, who works for a large animal pharmaceutical company, who works with scientists to develop effective vaccines.
This calf spends months “growing” while getting nutrition from its mother’s milk and eventually from grass and/or hay as well. At around 6 to 10 months and when they weigh between 450 to 700 pounds, the calf is weaned off milk and may begin receiving a small amount of supplemental plant-based feed for extra energy and protein to help them grow and thrive.
The real-life Steer 910 actually became a bottle calf. A bottle calf is a calf whose mother cannot sufficiently raise them, meaning we have to feed them via bottle until we can find a cow to “graft” them onto. Grafting means we have a cow whose calf most likely died, so we put the bottle calf on her in hopes she will raise the bottle calf as her own. Steer 910 was only a bottle calf for about a day before we found a cow to graft him onto.
Next comes a decision. Heifer calves, in many cases, are retained by the rancher or sold to another rancher to one day be bred to a bull themselves and repeating the entire lifecycle process listed above. Bull calves, however, can go one of two ways. The rancher may keep the bull calf in-tact (meaning they aren’t castrated), and sell them to another rancher to breed their herd. The other option is to castrate the bull calf and turn him into a steer. For the sake of this example, let’s say we have a calf who was turned into a steer and follow his life cycle. We’ll call him “Steer 910,” and he’ll live a life like many other steers would at LC Cattle Company (aka my husband’s family’s ranch).
Steer 910 was born sometime in March and spent all spring and summer growing. In July, LC Cattle contracted the sale of Steer 910 and many more steers by the pound a livestock auction market which requires the help of auctioneers, the person who comes out and films Steer 910 at LC Cattle’s ranch, tech wizards who put Steer 910’s video online and enter all his information like what vaccines he’s been given and what his genetic lineage is, and brokers or “cattle buyers” who deal with the transactions between LC Cattle and the person who actually wants possession of Steer 910.
Steer 910 is then shipped out with dozens of his buddies in October to the person(s) who bought LC Cattle’s steers. We see the cattle buyer again on shipping day, he helps us transfer all paperwork over and deals with money transactions. We also see a brand inspector who’s employed by the Department of Livestock to check our brands and records with our cattle, making sure LC Cattle actually owns Steer 910 and didn’t steal him. We have someone in the scale house at the stockyards making sure Steer 910 and his companions are properly weighed, giving us and the cattle buyer an exact number to multiply by whatever we sold our steers for back in July. We then send off a truck driver, who hauls Steer 910 to wherever his new owner wants him to go, most likely to be wintered on pasture or on a semi-confinement grow yard. After 120 to 150 days (give or take) Steer 910 is 12 to 14 months old and now weighs 850 to 950 pounds. He is sent to a Confined Animal Feeding Operation, or feed yard. Steer 910 is now ready to spend the next few months of his life in a finishing cattle feed yard to become a full-grown slaughter animal.
A feed yard or feed lot is typically home to cattle for 4 to 6 months, they are sent there to grow by eating at feed bunks containing a carefully balanced diet made up of roughage (such as hay and grass), grain (such as corn, wheat, and soybean meal) and local renewable feed sources. While at the feed yard, pen riders check on Steer 910 to make sure he’s doing okay and eating what he needs to. Pen riders work together with veterinarians and nutritionists — that’s right, cattle have their own nutritionists — to ensure Steer 910 is eating the right kind of food for him to gain weight, ultimately producing more meat for consumers to later eat. Veterinarians also assist with this process and have played a hand in Steer 910’s entire life up until this point. Another level of the feed yard is the making of feed given to Steer 910 which involves seed, fertilizer, and chemical salesmen and women along with farmers, factories, and even more nutritionists.
Two delicious ribeyes from Meats of Montana in Big Timber, Montana.
After Steer 910 has gained plenty of weight, usually around 1,200-1,400 pounds or 18 to 22 months old, he is loaded on another cattle truck and sent to a packing plant. In Steer 910’s case, this is a large USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) inspected plant, meaning a USDA inspector oversees the implementation of safety, animal welfare, and quality standards from the time animals enter the plant until the final beef products are shipped to grocery stores and restaurants. This packing plant also employs general office workers just like any other business would: administrative managers, marketing experts, financial gurus, etc.
Does Steer 910’s story stop there? Nope. Whilst at the packing plant, Steer 910 comes in contact with key packing plant employees including people who euthanize Steer 910, “cut up” Steer 910 to break down Steer 910’s meat, and package the meat from Steer 910. After Steer 910 hamburgers and steaks are all packaged and ready to go, a trucker once again picks up Steer 910 — this time in edible form — and ships it off to a grocery store or restaurant.
Let’s say Steer 910’s ribeye steaks are shipped to Albertsons in Livingston, Montana. After those ribeyes arrive, someone’s got to stock the meat coolers; someone’s got to ring up the lucky customer who bought a delicious LC Cattle Company ribeye; and someone’s got to take inventory of how many of Steer 910’s steaks are leftover.
At every single step along the way, the good folks at LC Cattle, the feed yard, and Albertsons may be working with bankers, insurance agents, government workers, accountants, land surveyors, businessmen/women, rangeland consultants, industry organization’s such as the local Farm Bureau or Stockgrowers association, engineers, heck, they may even work with a media and marketing minded person like me to communicate THEIR story to the person who threw a piece of Steer 910 on the grill last night. The crazy thing? There’s a good chance I missed an ag employee or two along the way while explaining everyone who works together for Steer 910’s life.
That long-winded explanation above shows just how far Agriculture has come since Jefferson wrote the quote I shared at the beginning of this column back in 1787. It’s seen technological advances which allows us to feed more people than ever before. It’s grown into a vast industry spanning from sea to shining sea. It employs countless people who wouldn’t have had their job back in 1787 or even 1987 — and, as someone who’s a cubicle cultivator, I’m incredibly grateful for.
In the coming weeks, I hope to enlighten you on other pencil and plow pushers, just like myself, so you can understand and appreciate the importance of the every agriculturist out there working to feed and clothe you.
