Contract # 03IE08310152

Planning and managing the production and market risks of both the livestock and pasture/rangeland operations are essential to the success of many farming and ranching operations. This planning and management is true for any given year, but also in an effort to avoid multiple-year losses when considering the longer-term feed-or-sell decision for livestock producers.

To successfully manage their operations, forage and livestock producers must continuously assess and balance the complex interconnections of weather, plant physiology, animal physiology, and market conditions. The search for the best information to support their daily decisions can be tedious and time consuming. Most producers, therefore, manage their operations by relying on only a few information sources that are often too general to be optimal. For example, many producers obtain their weather information through the media, viewing regional-scale products at best, which will not provide a forecast beyond a week. Given market conditions and the long-term drought across much of the United States, the ability of forage and livestock producers to continue profitable operations in the future is strongly dependent on accessing environmental and economic analysis tools that are focused on their specific decision-making requirements. Furthermore, access to this information must be easy, fast and reliable.

A key to any agriculture producer’s total risk management plan in today’s volatile environment is knowledge of the characteristics of his/her operation and its associated risks. With knowledge of the operation come understanding and the ability to make informed risk management decisions, which mitigate or reduce the impact of unforeseen circumstances. Producers with a detailed understanding of current and projected conditions affecting their operations have the ability to appropriately adjust production practices to maximize resources and capitalize on potential opportunities.

The need for application-specific, local-level forage and livestock risk management tools has been recognized for some time. Preliminary research revealed few management tools, all with limited usefulness; and no tool combined environmental conditions with economic analysis. This project proposes to create a straightforward “everyday useful” decision support system for forage and livestock producers. The Forage and Rangeland Decision Support System (FRDSS) will provide information for the full range of producer decisions from daily grazing management activities to stocking rates to feed-or-sell decisions. By using FRDSS, producers will be able to obtain the local, application-specific information they need to operate profitably. The initial deployment of the tool will cover the entire region within each of the four states: Pennsylvania, Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming.

Objectives

The objective of this partnership was to develop a web-based tool called the Forage and Rangeland Decision Support System (FRDSS), that will assist livestock producers in improving price, revenue and lowering market risk and will offer easy access to a specialized combination of local environmental information (weather, soil moisture, terrain elevation, etc.) and financial management tools specifically designed for forage and rangeland applications. The initial deployment of the tool wicovered the entire region within each of the four states: Pennsylvania, Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming.