Risk*A*Syst

Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Tuesday was fairly laid back. Tara and I got up to go for a run/walk and didn't have to be over to Alpena, Michigan until 2PM. There, we met with USDA's employee, Emily, who assesses new farms via the Risk*a*Syst program to become Wildlife Risk Mitigated. She first walked us through the steps she takes before arriving at the property.

She uses an ArcView program that helps her assess the producer's property from Google Earth. This helps her to get a grasp on what she can expect when she goes out to the farm. She also has the ability to look at soil types, habitat types, TB-affected farms within a certain mile radius from the farm, natural water sources, elevation, and various other details that can help her better assess the risk of a particular place. From the look of the pictures, the place we were going to visit altered the use of their land slightly from year to year. Sometimes a field looked like a torn-up pasture from the map and other years it looked like it had crop rows throughout. She also saw a pond on the map that she wasn't too concerned about because it was far enough away from the woodland junction, that deer didn't pose a huge threat. However, this particular property was in TB haven with, I think it was 5, affected farms within a 10-mile radius and additional ones closely surrounding.

After studying the map, we drove out to the property to talk to the owners. She walks through questions in the Risk*A*Syst booklet to ask them about water sources, food sources, feed storage, where cattle are fed, and what land the animals have access to. Based on how she scores them and what her totals come out to be, they will be in a "safe" category, or high risk. The typical scoring is from 1-3, with 1 needing the most work on the farm. After running through the booklet, we walked through the property with Emily and the owners to look at their pasture and check if there was at least a wire fence between the pasture and woods. The owner had all of his haylage and silage stored inside, so he practiced ideal food storage, but he was very honest that he has deer on his property all the time and there's nothing he can do about it...

By the end of the assessment and explaining some of the perks to becoming a Wildlife Risk Verified farm, Emily explained that almost everything looked good for them. Deer would always be a problem until every farmer, unrealistically, can build 10 foot fences along their entire property. An advantage to becoming verified is that the producers do not have to get movement certificates before taking their cattle to the market, which you would have to do if you chose NOT to be WRV. Now too, in NE Michigan, buyers in the Northern Michigan Livestock market are only looking to buy cattle that are from WRM farms. They feel safer about buying the animals because they know they have been tested as well as protected the best way they possibly can on their property of origin. Therefore, ideally, you would want to be WRV, but there are many different perspectives on this topic depending on the amount of change farmers have to allocate on their farms.