All the rain in half the time

Jul 07, 2022

Lentils take 80 - 110 days to grow, and we talked to Marengo area farmer Richard Schmalzbauer exactly 60 days ago. It was his first day of seeding.

"Right now I think the lentils might be under a little bit of pressure just with how wet it is. If it stays like this, the disease will start showing up."

He said that the Marengo area has had 4.5 inches of rain, but hasn't seen much flood damage yet. "The disease starts showing up when they close their canopy in, and it never dries up. But who knows it could get sunny again, and it sure beats how it started out."

It's too early to say how harvest will look. Schmalzbauer says the rain may have came too late for some guys. He also wanted to note that crops like canola are benefitting quite a bit right now from this wetter weather.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.