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cropsey, il 61731 | In the grain farming world livestock has always been a necessary evil. We will raise animals but only until we don't need to anymore. There are lots of empty facilities around (or now torn down and gone).
In hogs the integration makes total sense for those of us who do it. The number of folks wanting to deal with sows are relatively few and finishing with limited risk is way to diversify with a little less pain. Some guys rant and rave about a contractor being a glorified janitor and I guess I'm good with that. Keep in mind it's not particularly easy either. However, integration does make livestock production like grain production - it never stops or adjusts for market signals as it once did. Still no one will do it for free so there is always some money in it.
ON THE OTHER HAND, guys (and gals) will grow grain for free or, worse yet, for a significant loss and do it for multiple years. It's like all the guys who built fancy model train sets complete with daily runs and schedules are grain farmers now. The equipment is nice and the actual field work has become much easier. Frankly I'm surprised that some farmers don't run a tractor or combine. Seems like you're missing out on the fun part of the job like building a train set and not running it.
Anyway, there is no room for integration accept for some value added product. Already guys are jumping harder on the nongmo bandwagon to get a premium and I could see more direct supply to end users so at least the middle man charges are cut out. It's nothing new, either play the open market or contract for a specialty crop that will earn you more (until it doesn't - nongmo has already been down that road once). Since market signals are generally ignored by us producers, we will over produce every year if the weather cooperates. As long as someone will do it for free, there is little justification to take over production. Why do you think we build cars in mexico? | |
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The Big Reset underway..?? Corn to $2.. Beans to $6. When does it hit input prices?
