DOT special hearings on grain shipments to California

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It's an interesting coincidence that on January 2 1999, the Altamont Press railroad news site posted an article relating to upcoming Federal DOT hearings concerning insuring continued grain shipments by rail into California. The article mentions "the large numbers of dairy farms in California" as being the reason for the hearings. Of course my Y2K tuned ears hear something else. Anybody elses antennae go up at news stories like that?

WW

-- wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), January 03, 1999

Answers

Something strange about that. I'm no expert on dairy farms, but where I used to live in Southern California I'd drive by tons of them getting off the mountian. Noticed "lots" of hay and alfalfa stacks. Virtually every dairy had extensive surrounding fields to grow the animal's food supplies locally. Maybe chicken feed? Or then again, L.A. feed.

Humm. I'll keep the antennae up.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), January 03, 1999.


Diane,

Now that just turned on my light bulb. When I was in the Victor Valley, the only things that local farms grew was alfalfa, for the dairies down in the LA Basin. BTW, Where were you located out in SoCal? The phrase "coming off the mountain" makes me think we were in reasonalble proximity of each other.

Oh, and in my first post I crossed some wires. It was CalDOT and the USDA, not the USDOT that called the hearings. But like you said, "LA feed?"

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), January 03, 1999.


Utah alfalfa growers have been supplying 'dairy-qualtiy' [ first cutting, high protein, tender] alfalfa to the So CA dairy herds since before 1973; recently most has been cubed for export to Japan. [higher price...]

relevance?

-- Perry Arnett (pjarnett@pdqnet.net), January 03, 1999.


WW,

I was living in Idyllwild and most the dairy farms were down in the Hemet/Moreno Valley areas near Riverside. Lots of 'em. Not a fragrant drive-by. The farms are right close to the roads with very tall hay stacks and definately hay bins for feeding. Don't think "grains" were part of the picture.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), January 04, 1999.


Cattle background here. Almost 100% certain that those dairy herds have grain in addition to hay. Hay has the protein, grain has the carbos.

In addition, all animal waste is recycled into giant fermenting towers after being admixed with some new fresh feed, then that resulting mixture of $#!+, urine, grain, etc. is fed to to cattle again. Cattle are inefficient digestors and this is how agribusiness keeps its costs down.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), January 04, 1999.



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