Jim Gerrish - 7 Things I Have Learned About Profitable Ranching

This is a presentation given by Jim Gerrish prior to Pharo Cattle Company's 2023 Fall Bull Sale in Three Forks, Montana.

Jim Gerrish is an independent grazing lands consultant providing services to farmers and ranchers on both private and public lands across five continents. He currently resides in the Pahsimeroi Valley of Idaho.

Jim's Early Years: He received a BS in Agronomy from the University of Illinois and an MS in Crop Ecology from the University of Kentucky.
From there, he went on to serve 22 years of beef-forage systems research and outreach while on the faculty of the University of Missouri. The University of Missouri-Forage Systems Research Center (FSRC) rose to national prominence as a result of his research leadership. His research encompassed many aspects of plant-soil-animal interactions and provided the foundation for many of the basic principles of Management-intensive Grazing.

He has written a regular monthly column in The Stockman Grass-Farmer magazine for over 20 years. He has authored two books on grazing and ranch management. "Management-intensive Grazing: The Grassroots of Grass Farming" was published in 2004, and "Kick the Hay Habit: A practical guide to year-around grazing" was published in 2010. He also did a major revision of Allan Nation’s ‘Quality Pasture’ with the new 2nd edition published in 2019.

Jim was the co-founder of the very popular 3-day grazing management workshop program at FSRC. These schools were attended by over 3,000 producers and educators from 39 states and 4 Canadian provinces from their inception in 1990 through 2003. Fifteen other states have conducted grazing workshops based on the Missouri model, and Jim has taught in eleven of these states. He is an instructor in the University of Idaho’s Lost River Grazing Academy held annually near Salmon, ID. He typically speaks at 20 to 25 producer-oriented workshops, seminars, and field days around the US and Canada each year.

For 22 of the years he spent in Missouri, he stayed in touch with the real world on a 260-acre commercial cow-calf and contract grazing operation. In this setting, he took a worn-out marginal crop farm and converted it into a highly productive grass farm. After the move to Idaho, Jim keeps his day-to-day grazing tools sharp through the management of a ranch unit consisting of 450 center-pivot irrigated pastures, 90 acres of flood ground, and several hundred acres of rangeland. He was deeply involved in the Green Hills Farm Project, a grassroots producer group centered in north-central Missouri and emphasizing the sustainability of family farms. His research and outreach efforts have been recognized with awards from the American Forage and Grassland Council, Missouri Forage and Grassland Council, National Center for Appropriate Technology, USDA-NRCS, the Soil and Water Conservation Society, Progressive Farmer, and the American Agricultural Editors Association.

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