Management

Once again in 2009, dairy farmers will be struggling to cope with the downside of milk price volatility, with farm prices down sharply from 2008.

Good farm records are a key component of a good farm management system.

While attending a workshop for developing supervisory skills, a speaker offered the following: “The key to success in business is to help other people be successful in their jobs.”

Buried in red ink and no good news, producers are crying, “Do something! Anything! Just do something!” The cry reminds me of a meeting with producers decades ago in similar bleak economic times.

Land is by far the most significant natural resource used in agriculture. In the U.S., 937 million of our 2.96 billion acres (excluding Alaska) are utilized in one way or another to produce our own food supply and the food we export around the world.

Grant Duerst, 16, knows that when he works around loud noises on his uncle Tom’s dairy farm, he has to use hearing protection. Grant, who regularly performs most tasks on the 500-acre farm, has heard his uncle talk about his own partial hearing loss.