Blogs

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of blogs Rebecca Shaw is providing about female entrepreneurs and what the dairy industry can learn from them. In her next blog, Shaw will further explore the idea of a red team in the dairy industry.

I hate to sound like that old guy on a bench, drinking free coffee at the hardware store, but remember when things were simpler? The good ol’ days before social media, Uber and Double-Stuf Oreos.

Ask a dairy farmer how things are going, and I bet you’ll get a familiar answer: “We’re still holding on,” which is the polite way of saying “It’s really hard right now. We’re struggling to make ends meet. We don’t know how much longer we can do this, but we’re praying something changes soon.”

A significant proportion of my childhood happened in the silence of a tractor cab. There was a brisk manner in which the morning moved from milking to feeding calves to feeding cows, but the afternoon fieldwork was where the day would start to settle out.

It seems there is a concerted effort today to destroy American heritage. Statues of bygone days are being torn down, mottos are being erased, and values are being demolished. The rights of the offended take precedence over time-worn traditions.

Today we introduce a small change with a big meaning. We have removed “man” from our name plate in order for the second part of our name to be as open-minded as the first. With the removal of that three-letter word, our editors reaffirm their commitment to every dairy producer and all the industry professionals who support them.