An open mind TSCRA Director Frank Price, who ranches near
Sterling City with his son, Sims Price, frequently uses the term RTC factor. The Frank and Sims Price Ranch was named the
national winner of the National Cattlemen’s Founda- tion Environmental Stewardship Award Program in 2014. The Price team recognizes the potential of RTC infl uence on our lives and strives to keep it out of their ranch operational plans. They constantly explore new ideas for improving their operation.
If you try to ignore the situation, change will slam into you and knock you off balance.
Resistance to change is human nature and is often
the reason that new ideas are not accepted. We enjoy our comfort zones and feel uncomfortable leaving them. It gives us a warm fuzzy feeling to say, “That’s how Grandpa and Daddy did it and they were suc- cessful. So we run the ranch the same way they did.” The problem is that conditions have changed since
Grandpa was the manager. Grandpa’s methods prob- ably worked well during his tenure, but they may not be the most effi cient and productive in today’s economy and culture. Change occurs everywhere. In the mid-1900s,
change was occurring so rapidly in industry that training was given to employees on how to deal with it. The commonly used text was The Employee Handbook for Organizational Change written by Price Pritchett and Ron Pound. Suggestions listed in the handbook’s introduction apply to beef producers as well as manufacturing employees. Some of these are “If you try to ignore the situ-
ation, change will slam into you and knock you off balance. Don’t sit around thinking and talking about ‘the good old days’ and hope they’ll return. This is the Age of Instability, where managing change is everybody’s job. Think of it as your personal as- signment.” Progressive producers constantly break the bound-
aries of their comfort zones and keep an open mind to new ideas. They don’t immediately adopt new ideas, but they evaluate them and determine if they could improve their operation.
74 The Cattleman February 2016
Continued education New technology and products for use in beef pro-
duction are constantly unveiled. The only way to keep abreast of these new opportunities is to take advantage of educational opportunities such as fi eld days, semi- nars, webinars and magazines. Networking with other progressive producers is
another way to gain information. Without continued education, a person can get out-of-date within a very short time. I experienced the importance of continued education
when I began writing for beef cattle magazines. Most of my life has been involved in beef cattle as a ranch hand, ranch manager, salesman, tech service represen- tative and product development manager. I spent the last 6 or 7 years of my corporate career in other fi elds. When I started writing, I thought I would be able
to pick up where I left off in the beef cattle industry. To my surprise, I found I couldn’t even speak the same language as modern day cattlemen. It took about 2 years before I could converse intelligently about beef cattle. Continuing education is important for everyone.
Drought is survived by matching animal numbers to available forage and by spreading grazing over the whole ranch.
Flexible stocking rates “Flexible stocking rates are an important practice
required for successful management of the resource — grass,” says Goodwin. “The key is to properly manage the resource, but be profi table. If you are not profi table, you won’t be in business next year. To be profi table, you must also have a grazing resource that comes back every growing season. Successful grazing-land man- agers have 2 common goals — sustainable economics and sustainable ecology.” Flexible stocking rates help avoid overgrazing pas-
tures. Animals are added when there is surplus forage and removed when the stocking rates begin to exceed the safe level of available grazing. A safe minimum
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