SW “Ohia” | Big Ben - 6/6/2019 15:52
Of course I don’t know how every farmer treated their livestock. That’s a given, not some “gotcha” moment like you’re trying to make it. Nobody knows, but when you have multi millions of family farms involved over the decades, it’s absurd to insist that nobody ever mistreated anything.
Your bleak outlook for the US dairy industry seems to stem from some sort of sour grapes over what happened to domestic tobacco. Jealously seems to be the common thread that ties all the people that are willing to sacrifice the dairy industry to the vegans.
Dairy has been doing fine competing on a global basis with technology and economies of scale. Your prediction of the failure of the industry will be a self fulfilling prophecy if people like you and TP can’t get over your hurts and side with the radical vegans to strip the industry of a key competitive advantage.
Big Ben,
Never tried to make it a “gotcha” at all. Just pointing out that it goes both ways.
I am jealous of nobody. The size of a farm does not impress me, regardless of it is acres or numbers of cows. Nothing of my self worth is based on how much I farm. I’m not sure what “sacrifices” I have made to the vegans either, nor have I “sided” them. Absolutely nowhere did I even infer that. It appears you view anybody with a differing viewpoint as the enemy, and that’s going to end the dairy business a lot quicker than any produced video.
I only brought up tobacco to use it as a tangible example of ongoing industry collapse.
We have no skin in the dairy business today, but my grandfather spent 40 years working with dairy farmers as a cooperative field representative until his death in 2005. It’s not hard to see how the industry has consolidated, and it has only accelerated since then.
These ideas are not unique to dairy. The produce business is experiencing it, and yes, with Brazil coming online, even the grain commodities are feeing the heat of global competition. The main wildcard in all of this is the cost of international transportation, which is incredibly cheap right now. Should that change, domestic production would gain some cost advantage. Should it get even cheaper, it only tightens things more.
On the note of technology, that’s interesting. Unless it’s a trade secret, any technological improvement in efficiency in a high-cost-of-production area gives you roughly 10 years of advantage. Nothing is preventing those concepts from being applied by your competitors except that they aren’t needed with cheap labor. When the cost of labor exceeds the cost of automation, automation occurs. You custom chop silage, you know choppers are rapidly getting bigger.
At the end of the day, the areas that are cheaper always win. Whether that’s land, inputs, labor, insurance costs, taxes, transportation, electricity, water, or anything else.
Edited by Red Paint 6/6/2019 17:49
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Fair Oaks Farms
