The BioPac'r grass handling and packaging system has many profitable and social benefits outside of saving landscapers labor and diverting green waste from landfills.
The barrier for future young farmers in America to enter the cattle business is overwhelming. Unless the family is going to part out the family farm to multiple children to get started, the small farms are soon to be a distant memory. Our kids may be able to purchase some small grazing areas but to purchase ground to grow winter feed like grains, hay or alfalfa becomes the non-starter. We envision a new paradigm in animal agriculture and the new young farmer with a footprint less than 1 ac.
If you are able to find some ground, what then about water? Tractors cost $100,000 to a million dollars and then you are a slave to the bank. This is not the freedom our forefather envisioned. It is possible however to raise 15-20 head on a small footprint and then market the beef and dairy products as a "locally grown" and "grass fed" product which is currently yielding higher profits, but is all starts with low cost, sustainable supply of feed.
Irrigation water applied to residential lawns, parks and golf courses can be reclaimed through ensiling. A harvested grass blade is 65% water and its been verified that when the lawn clippings are collected/removed during mowing and placed inside an airtight BioPac'r Bag, that 65% moisture will not evaporate, it stay locked inside the pickled lawn blade until it is consumed as livestock silage. When clippings are mulched back into the lawn, this water is lost.
Water conservation occurs when Grass Clipping Silage™ (GCS) is fed to livestock because wet feed results in less thirsty animals decreasing their desire for free water according to Shane Gadberry of the University of Arkansas publication FSA3021. Try it out for yourself, eat 8 ounces of shredded wheat breakfast cereal dry, and record the ounces of milk you require to finish off the bowl. The next day soak your shredded wheat in milk and see your thirst decline. Cattle are no different.
Grass Clipping Silage is proven time and time again to be a safe, sustainable feed that rivals corn in energy and nutrition, so why not feed your animals a diet of lawn clipping silage from start to finish? In a 2013 adaptive research project in Star Valley Wyoming, overseen by University of Wyoming educators, we fed calves a dry basis 50/50 ration of 20 lbs of GCS + 10 lbs of inexpensive, down right cheap hay per day and observed the same gains as in our control group of 100% hay over a 42 day trial period.
This concept creates a great opportunity for new farmers to enter animal agriculture without purchasing ground to grow hay or grain. It will only takes a fixer-upper farmstead sitting on 1 acre and a few local landscapers. City folks will always water their yards during times of drought which makes Lawn Clipping Silage a very dependable and sustainable feed supply. According to NASA, turf grass is the number #1 irrigated crop in the United States when surveyed by their satellites orbiting overhead. Turf grass covers 3 times the land area of irrigated corn or 35 million acres of potential feed! The cropland is already in place, it’s just not being used properly for animal agriculture!
Until Next Time!
