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E.Central MN | Smaller dairy farms are going away not because of CRP or crop insurance, but because nobody can make a living milking 50 cows. If one big dairy expands in the area, that's pretty much the straw that breaks the small guy's back, the big dairies will try to rent every piece of ground in the county. And that's also a problem for the beef feeder buyers, the small dairies often sold their bull calves locally so they could concentrate their resources on milk production. The big dairies look at bull calves as another revenue stream to be maximized, some ship them to their own feedlots in other parts of the country, etc. Dairies actually have an advantage over cash grain operators in terms of being able to grow a variety of crops for feed as silage, can raise multi-year hay crops, and use manure to fertilize their crops thus reducing input costs. Unfortunately equipment costs are escalating too fast for small dairies to survive, just not enough income for living expenses such as health insurance, etc. | |
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follow up to are cattle too high
