Beef vs. Bushels: Is Grazing More Profitable Than Grain on Tough Ground?

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Beef vs. Bushels: Is Grazing the Smarter Move on Tough Acres?
When margins get tight, farmers start thinking outside the box. And for some, that means asking a hard question: Does it make more sense to graze than to plant grain?

In a recent conversation on the podcast, we dug into a real-world example from western Iowa. One farmer, working with tough, low-production dryland ground, decided to run the numbers—and what he found flipped the usual thinking.

Turning Tough Ground Into Profit with Grazing
This grower chose to skip corn altogether on some of his sandy, hilly acres. Instead, he enrolled in a cover crop program, got seed paid for, and planned to graze calves on the field through summer. No crop insurance, low fertility inputs, and minimal herbicide cost. His ROI from grazing steers beat corn by a mile.

With corn prices hovering near $4 and expected yields around 130 bushels per acre on his land, the math just didn’t add up. Meanwhile, his gain per steer made the grazing system not only more profitable—but far less risky.

It’s Not Just Theory—It’s Proven in the Field
We’ve seen it elsewhere too. A neighbor with a small field next to pasture plants sedan grass every year, then turns cows and calves onto it late summer. Year after year, their calves show up to the sale barn 75 lbs heavier than others with the same genetics—just from better summer grazing.

That extra weight can mean an extra $200+ per calf in today’s cattle market.

Rethinking the Crop Calendar
Even if you’re not in cattle full-time, there’s opportunity in rotational grazing and strategic forage use. Many growers in the past used a 3-crop system:

Wheat

Forage crop like millet or sedan after wheat

Winter cover crop for grazing

That kind of rotation isn’t just smart agronomically—it’s smart financially too. It maximizes every inch of ground and spreads out risk across multiple income streams.

What About Beans?
In some areas, double crop soybeans are now insurable, which changes the equation. If your insurance covers 75% of a 20-bushel average, it often guarantees seed and herbicide costs—even if the crop fails.

That safety net has shifted a lot of acres away from forage. But is that always the best use of the land? Not necessarily.

Final Thought: Know Your ROI, Not Just Your Crop
It’s tempting to default to what you’ve always done. But in today’s market, every acre needs to be evaluated for what it can truly return—not just in bushels, but in beef, forage, and flexibility.

You might not fence off your whole farm tomorrow. But if you’ve got the setup—and the cattle—grazing could be your best-paying “crop” this year.

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