Columbia Basin, Ephrata, WA | Red Paint - 6/6/2019 15:42
Big Ben,
Never tried to make it a “gotcha” at all. Just pointing out that it goes both ways.
It does not go both ways. It may be true that neither of us have witnessed animal abuse on a small farm, but that certainly doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist. Neither of us have seen as asteroid strike the earth either, but everyone knows it has happened.
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 did not say you have made sacrifices to the vegans, I said that you are too willing to sacrifice the dairy industry to them.
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.
FWIW choppers stopped getting bigger about a decade ago.
I’m not sure where you’re going with all this, unless you are trying to say we are all doomed to fail because production can be done cheaper elsewhere. Again, your actions can make that a self-fulfilling prophecy. American ag can compete, but not if we allow radicals free reign to distribute their propaganda to the ignorant masses.
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Fair Oaks Farms
