The Art of Range Podcast

"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 a copy to read.

See books and articles mentioned in this episode as well as the full transcript of our conversation at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-95-charles-c-mann-americas-columbus-part-1.

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 market volatility.

RESOURCES

Livestock Risk Protection for Feeder Cattle, USDA Risk Management Agency fact sheet, https://www.rma.usda.gov/Fact-Sheets/National-Fact-Sheets/Livestock-Risk-Protection-Feeder-Cattle

Episode 66 on LRP, https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-66-livestock-price-risk-management-jack-field-shannon-neibergs

TRANSCRIPT at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-94-current-cattle-market-risks-opportunities-shannon-neibergs-and-jack-field

"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 this episode, Tip reads an article by William Denevan (91 yo, who declined to be interviewed about it but granted permission to release a verbatim reading. "After 1492: Nature Rebounds" is a 2016 article in Geographical Review, the oldest journal in the United States devoted to geography. The article makes the case that the apparent wilderness encountered in the 16th through 18th centuries reflected a landscape recently wiped clean of people, that there were a lot of people prior to 1492, and that our conception of wildlands mostly comes from an entire hemisphere that suddenly had few humans to influence it.

For links to more articles by William Denevan and related resources, go to https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-93-after-1492-nature-rebounds-william-denevan-pristine-myth

TRANSCRIPT: https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-93-after-1492-nature-rebounds-william-denevan-pristine-myth

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 Decadal Oscillation and the El Nino Souther Oscillation and cattle performance. Interactions between the PDO and ENSO have an effect on both rangeland production and livestock weight gain. Listen to this panel discussion with Drs. Justin Derner, David Augustine, and EJ Raynor to learn more.

LINKS

Best PDO info: https://ecowatch.noaa.gov/thematic/climate-indices

EL NIÑO/SOUTHERN OSCILLATION (ENSO) information from NOAA: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml

PACIFIC DECADAL OSCILLATION information from NOAA: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/pdo/

ARTICLES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Colorado State University Extension publication "Early Warning for Stocking Decisions in Eastern Colorado", at https://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/agriculture/early-warning-for-stocking-decisions-in-eastern-colorado-3-115/.

"Large-scale and local climatic controls on large herbivore

productivity: implications for adaptive rangeland management", in Ecological Applications (2020): https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/1354/23.%20Raynor%20et%20al.%202020%20Ecological%20Applications%20-%20climatic%20controls%20on%20LHP.pdf

More information about the LTAR Network, https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/30123025/Publications/2022/Goodrich%20et%20al.%202022%20Hydrological%20Processes%20-Long%20term%20agroecosystem%20research%20experimental%20watershed%20network.pdf

TRANSCRIPT at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-92-what-hath-ocean-currents-do-colorado-cattle-derner-augustine-and-raynor

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.edu/professor-nathan-sayre

TRANSCRIPT at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-91-nathan-sayre-essay-prospects-and-tools-sustainable-ranching-western-us

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-calf-operations/.

King Ranch Institute, Go to krirm.tamuk.edu/ to see current learning opportunities.

Northway Ranch Services, individualized administrative and financial help. northwayranchservices.com/

Heymer Management Accounting Services. Brenda can be reached at [email protected] or(806) 605-6101.

TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE AT https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-90-key-performance-indicators-measure-ranch-financial-health-stan-bevers

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 accounting v. managerial accounting, benchmarking, regional differences in KPI values and expectations, and the relationships among financial stability and environmental sustainability. As Clay says here: "If there's no margin, there's no mission."

TRANSCRIPT available at https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-89-ranch-managerial-accounting-stan-bevers

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Stan Bever website, https://www.ranchkpi.com/

King Ranch Institute, Go to https://krirm.tamuk.edu/ to see current learning opportunities.

Northway Ranch Services, individualized administrative and financial help. https://northwayranchservices.com/

Heymer Management Accounting Services. Brenda can be reached at [email protected] or(806) 605-6101.

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/episodes/aor-88-forage-fuel-fire-forecasts-matt-reeves

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

https://www.fuelcast.net/

Crop Condition and Soil Moisture Analytics: https://nassgeo.csiss.gmu.edu/CropCASMA/

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/episodes/aor-87-intro-ranch-finance-part-2-jack-southworth-james-rogers-clay-worden

TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE SOON AT https://artofrange.com/episodes/aor-87-intro-ranch-finance-part-2-jack-southworth-james-rogers-clay-worden

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.