MANAGEMENT

It doesn’t matter how you explain it away, it just comes back as the most irritating thing about the business of hoof trimming. Whether the farmer decides to retire and sell out or the young man ran out of financial options and his path out of the dairy business is chosen for him by his banker, it still personally bothers me way too much.

However, if Dairyman Smith decides to switch to another younger, faster trimmer with a new chute – LOOK OUT! – I will be out to lunch (so to speak) for a week and a half. My mood will be less than positive (to say the least) and I will always be looking for something sweet to eat.

With milk prices higher than they have been since 2008, many producers are finding they have more money left over each month after paying operating expenses and normal principal and interest payments. Many have paid off or drastically reduced operating debts incurred in 2009. Taking advantage of their increased cash positions to evaluate various options which include paying down debt, these operators are generally prioritizing debt reduction as follows:

What if I showed you a free tool you could implement today that would have the potential to make your farm 21 percent more profitable, without spending a dime?

U.S. farm journalist John Phipps said his business generated more income when he used the tool. The top-shelf farmers in more than six states who were studied by Virginia Tech grad students became 21 percent more profitable with it.

Are you getting your milk quality bonuses frequently? How much money are you leaving on the table every month? How are you using your cow records to help you with your milk quality? With the current milk prices, you need that extra income more than ever.

The incredible turbulence we have faced and continue to face in the dairy industry serves notice for the need for management to go to a new, higher level. Albert Einstein’s admonition holds: “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

I believe that for most dairy farms and agribusinesses, quality assurance is a key to achieving this new, higher level. Quality assurance, or QA, is a term common to business but not so common in agriculture.

I have been asked twice in the last five years, “How do I turn my dairy around? How can I resurrect my farm from near death to a vibrant dairy that people look at and admire?”

What I did was break down these different areas of concern into several different categories.