Thistle Ha’

The Thistle Ha’ corn harvest is done. Despite a late planting due to a very wet spring, the corn yield was quite good.

I accompanied a 20-tonne load of corn to the local mill, and talked to the general manager. He surprised me when he said that they sell most of their corn as ethanol feedstock. Although Canada started promoting use of biomass (corn, wood products) to manufacture ethanol fuel in 2000 to combat global warming, he said the shift of corn sales from food to fuel has occurred just recently, after the U.S. government started subsidizing corn as a biofuel. This resulted in construction of numerous ethanol plants using corn as feedstock.

40% of the 2010 corn crop in the U. S. was converted to ethanol. This is past the “tipping point”; the U. S. corn crop is now insufficient to meet food needs. The wet spring in the U. S. mid-west and drought conditions in southern hemisphere corn growing regions has resulted in reduction of world-wide corn production in 2011, pushing corn to its highest price in recent memory. This has led to increased prices for other food crops such as soybeans and cereal grains. Although this trend has been beneficial to grain farmers and big agribusiness, increased feed prices have hit the poultry and hog industries hard. Cattle farmers are less affected since the corn mash byproduct from ethanol production is sold for cattle feed. More worrisome, some economists claim that the price of corn has started to track the price of crude oil. Has the U. S. policy to increase corn ethanol production in an effort to reduce the cost of imported crude oil to the American economy not only failed to reduce the cost of energy, but actually caused a permanent increase in global food prices?

As told by: Hugh Miller/Thistle Ha’.
Photo credit: Argentine Shorthorn Breeders Association.

Tarquinos cattle

While showing Shorthorns at the International Livestock Show in Chicago one year, Hugh Miller/Thistle Ha’ was introduced to Pedro Laco, Secretary of the Argentine Shorthorn Breeders Association. He remarked that the Miller name was famous in Argentina. Laco said that another John Miller, who “must have been a relative of yours” [debatable, sources differ whether this John Miller came from Scotland or England], sailed up the Ri­o de la Plata in the 1820s with the first pedigreed bull imported into Argentina – a Shorthorn bull named Tarquin. It was at “The Caledonia” ranch near Cañuelas, Buenos Aires that John Miller began crossbreeding Tarquin with native Spanish cattle, resulting in such a remarkable improvement in the quality of the beef that he is considered the founder of the modern beef industry in Argentina.

Laco added that Tarquin had white feet. This proved to be a bad trait on the pampas, since the white hair attracted ticks. Tarquin proved to be so prepotent that it took ten generations to completely eliminate white feet from his “Tarquinos” offspring.

In an 1867 letter to the editor of the farm journal The Canada Farmer, correspondent George Buckland reported on his visit with the Millers in Pickering and Markham townships, giving us a glimpse of the Miller enterprises 144 years ago. It is interesting that George Miller was farming a total of 1,100 acres [445 hectares] in 1867.
Source: George Buckland, correspondence to the editor, “A Few Days with the Messrs. Miller”, The Canada Farmer, Volume IV, Number 18, Globe Printing Company, Toronto, September 16, 1867, pp. 280-281.

A Few Days with the Messrs. Miller.

To the Editor of the CANADA FARMER:

Sir, I had the pleasure of a day’s intercourse with Mr. John Miller, of Pickering, who occupies a situation commanding a view of one of the finest landscapes that is to be met with in this section of Canada. Mr. Miller has some well-bred pure Durhams [English Shorthorn cattle], and an excellent bull, that is doing good service in the neighborhood. His herd of grades, consisting of cows and young stock, is really superb, illustrating the supreme importance of what I endeavour everywhere to enforce, the necessity and advantage of using a pure-bred male animal in all our endeavors to improve permanently the live stock of the country, and wherever practicable, no other. The sheep on this farm, consisting of Leicesters and Cotswolds, are very superior, denoting great care and sound judgment in their breeding and management. The high character which the Millers have long earned in this particular department of agriculture, continues to be well sustained. Mr. William Miller, father of John and brother of George, of Markham, has now retired from active business; he is among the oldest, perhaps the oldest improver of farm stock in Canada, and both he and his brother George were favorably known in Scotland in these relations, nearly half a century ago. They now own and cultivate a large tract of very productive land, in this and the adjoining township. Mr. John Miller’s four years old Clydesdale Stallion is a very pretty symmetrical animal, rather small, but having the more distinguishing characteristics well brought out; he is a sure stock getter, and his numerous progeny are well liked by the farmers.
(more…)