Why cattle and ecotourism combine on one Nebraska ranch

Facing the most difficult downturn in nearly four decades, farmers and ranchers across the United States are experimenting with a burst of new ideas and technologies. The surge in entrepreneurialism stands in sharp contrast to the 1980s, when many operators hunkered down by slashing costs and sending spouses to work in town. And it’s occurring along two tracks. The dominant trend is that large conventional farms, on the cusp of adopting artificial intelligence, self-driving tractors, and other technologies, are getting ever bigger and more efficient. The less visible trend is that other operations – usually smaller ones – are diversifying into new products and services, such as branded beef and ecotourism, to offset low commodity prices. “$3.50 [per bushel] corn is the mother of invention,” says John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union in Lincoln. The diversification “is all over the board.” The trend includes people who are relatively new to farming or who returned to it after a time away. Ms. Sortum and her husband, for example, launched the foray into ecotourism after coming back to the ranch in 2006. It is also being led by farmers who broke the mold during the last downturn and tried something new. In 1985, Leo Barthelmess introduced some sheep into his cattle ranching operation outside Malta, Montana. Now, he and his wife, son, and brother run 1,100 ewes and 700 cows on some 25,000 acres, half of which is owned by the family and half by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. When cattle prices are low, the ranch hopes to make a profit off mutton and the sheep’s wool...Companies like John Deere and International Harvester mechanized plowing and harvesting so a single farmer could tend more acres with far less labor, which led to ever-bigger farms. And the trend continues. Since 1997, the number of operations with $500,000 or more in annual sales has doubled, according to the latest agricultural census by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The only other kind of farm that’s grown – up 14% – is the smallest operations, which sell $2,500 or less annually. Now, small startups and big companies, including Airbus, Amazon, and gaming graphics firm Nvidia, are pushing into agriculture technology, which is likely to lead to another jump in big farms. In April, IBM announced it would marry its artificial intelligence, big data, and blockchain know-how with the agronomy expertise of a leading crop-nutrition company in Norway. Deere is using face-recognition software to train insecticide sprayers to recognize and treat specific weeds without hurting the crop...MORE