"Michael Percy" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger wrote:
Ruminates are one of the most important food sources on earth in arid
regions turning grasses, trees and forbs into top quality protien. Only
in
countries that can raise a surplus of grain do you feed it to ruminants.

While not knwoing much about arid land, I imagine it to be not very
productive whatever use it is put in. Most beef must originate elsewhere.

Well it is not as productive as high rain fall areas with out irrigation but
it makes a very damn large part of the world.
http://earth.rice.edu/mtpe/hydro/hyd.../rainfall.html

In my lifetime we have increased the wheat production by 100 to 125%. The
successful no till farmers are getting 10 to 20% more out of cotton as well
and organic mater increases of 1 % a years and fuel reductions of 50 to 70%
per acre. It is closing the gap on weather areas. As we lean that tillage is
on of the worst the worst enemy the farmer has it burns fuel, oxidizes
organic matter in the soil, dries out the ground and gets the soil ready to
blow and wash on the next rain.

Many of the arid soils are fertile and high pH becase they have not been
ravaged by man and mother nature by using up the fertility and washing out
and carrying of the nutrients that are washed away in high rain fall areas.
High rainfall is the main culprit in using or washing away all the nutrients
and leaving an acid soil.

I guess that you could call it low production when I take 30 or 40 bushels
of wheat and 150 pounds of beef off an acre of wheat from grazing the tops.
We have wheats you must graze or run the chance of freezing out. The have
tropical geneticist in them and when enough time has pasted they start to
boot unless you keep enough cattle on to slow it down in maturing. Fifty
years a go 2 to 2 & 1/ 2 bales of cotton crop was a great. Now with half the
water we are making 4 bales to the acres. Alfalfa even beats that for
profit if you are good a marketing. Both dryland and irrigated.

There are genetic modified crops in the pipeline that use brackish water,
need a third less water and hang on for days longer waiting for a rain than
the crops we have to day. Doubling our yield again in the next 50 years in
not impossible.

Pasture management has the same potential to improve production with strip
grazing and controlled burning double, triple and quadruple stocking rates
are possible here. We feed more and more every day than the high rain fall
areas in the tropics.
--
Gordon

Gordon Couger
Stillwater, OK
www.couger.com/gcouger