From the Farm — livestock and pecans

摘要

Most of you probably don't realize that most of the early part of my life was spent as a cowboy. I was born on a 300,000-acre cattle ranch in California in 1949. The farm I grew up on in Arizona also operated several thousands of acres of desert rangeand my family currently operates a cotton farm, feedlot and ranch land in Arizona. I bring this up to demonstrate experience in trying to operate farming operations in conjunction with livestock grazing. The topic came to mind after reading last month'sNative Timbre article in this magazine which had a paragraph in it on native pecans and cattle grazing. This paragraph has generated quite a bit of interest in the industry, including shellers, as to the appropri-ateness of grazing livestock in an orchard so close to harvest and the potential it poses from a food safety point of view. So much so that some shellers have indicated they do not want nuts from orchards that have had livestock in them through the -summer.