June Dairy Month Being Celebrated With A Special Emphasis Called Honor The Harvest

Jun 03, 2016

With the arrival of June, it's time to celebrate the US Dairy Industry with June Dairy Month. Susan Allen with DairyMAX stopped by to visit with Radio Oklahoma Ag Network Farm Director Ron Hays to talk about the Oklahoma Dairy Industry and a special emphasis called Honor the Harvest.

Allen says that experts predict farmers will have to grow 70% more food by 2050 to feed the growing population. She adds that the dairy community is committed to being a leader in sustainability and has significantly and voluntarily decreased the resources needed to produce each gallon of milk.

Allen says there are three important pillars to Honor the Harvest.

Feed people.

1/3 of the food grown in this country is wasted and winds up in the land fill. The most significant thing that we as the general food eating population can do is to buy what we can eat and eat what we buy, which will reduce food waste.

Feed animals.

Cows can eat things we don't like cotton seed hull and citrus pulp (left over) and instead is that being wasted, they turn that into high quality food like milk, cheese and yogurt to in turn feed the world. (Magical recycling machines)

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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.