Today, I´d like to mention the importance of rain. Be sure to get yourself some good rain.
As well as being great for your pastures, a rainy day is perfect for a glorious extra hour of sleep, miscellaneous maintainance of buildings and machines, and general catching-up on paperwork and inventories. It´s great for a guilt-free glass of beer and maybe a summertime fire to roast a tasty lunch.
As a lifelong city boy myself, I´ve always heard weather reports saying that X number of inches fell last night ...blah, blah, blah. So what? It rained. It ruined the weekend, rained-out the ballgame, concert, BBQ, etc. It was wet.
The ears of any rancher of farmer, however, will perk-up like a stock broker on the floor of the NYSE. "Shit. Only an inch" or "Yeah! 7 inches real steady all night long!" If the tone of voice makes it sound as good as sex, you´re listening well.
Rainfall in our part of the pampas is a lot like the mid-western US: about 40 inches per year. As I write this morning, about 5cm has fallen already and there´s no sign of it stopping. So ...how much rain is 5cm? It depends.
Imagine yourself an average Argentine ranch of abount 2500 acres and let´s say that 5cm is 2 inches. At 27,154 gallons per acre, you´re average Argentine ranch has received about 136 MILLION gallons over its surface ...and you´re gonna need a lot more and and on a regular basis: if soils dry-up too much between rainfalls, they can become brick-like and can´t absorb gifts like this morning´s.
On the other hand, fields saturated from previous rains or areas where the groundwater is naturally close to the surface have a lot of trouble absorbing only 3 inches. The State of Florida, for example, considers 4 inches in 24 hours to be torrential.
7 inches of rain for a big well paved suburb will probably result in impassable roads and parking lots. Grassland is much more forgiving, though. Although here in the center of Buenos Aires Province even our roads are grasslands! They´re unpaved. So if this rain gets to 7 inches today ...my Missus and I won´t be going to town tomorrow. We´ll be counting on our provisions until the roads dry-up a bit.
This year has been a "la niña" year. OUr winter and spring were wonderfully wet ...but this summer has been hot and dry. Grasslands are forgiving under those circumstances too. Although it was a little scary waiting for the rains to finally return, our natural and cultivated pastures came through like champs and our animals haven´t looked this good in years.
The value of rain (especially after a long dry spell) is incalcuable ...but I´m still tempted to put a $ figure on every inch or hour. If, for example, you figure all the money that you could lose if the rain doesn´t come then divide that by hou much rain fell, your whold attitude toward rained-out picnics changes forever.
A real prolonged drought like we had 3 or 4 years ago is nightmarish for any rancher that depends on grass. What happened in Texas and Oklahoma 6 months ago was very similar. Ranchers were faced with either selling off their herds or watch them die in the fields (usually a little of both.) All the selling-off coming at the same time caused cattle prices to fall, making it less profitable to stay in the business.
When the rains finally returned, all the femaile animals were gone and the price of the remaining "mommies" had skyrocketed making it impossible for most people to get back into a business that may have been generations old.
To those who hung-on, the rains were a windfall that left them with high cattle prices and few competitors. Such is the game-changing power of rain!
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