Management

Winter brings severe weather and cold temperatures that create hazards on your dairy. Snow, ice and sleet are unavoidable – but injuries are, so create a winter safety plan to be proactive about your dairy’s safety this winter.

“Succession planning would be considerably less difficult if the long-term stability of the agricultural industry was more predictable. Given the current hurdles, long-term profitability is very uncertain. I do not wish to transfer an operation which has a low chance to succeed,” wrote a farm survey respondent recently.

The dairy industry is changing rapidly. While you might realize the importance of implementing a change on your operation to keep up with the evolving marketplace, how do you influence the people around you to accept the need for that change as well?

Many dairy producers struggle to find words to sum up the last 12 months in the industry. The onset of the pandemic was almost like a violent storm that formed quickly.

A hallmark of 2020 was the degree of unpredictability. How many times in the last 12 months have we felt like saying, “I didn’t see that coming.” As we look forward to having that annus horribilis behind us, it is time to consider what we might expect in the year ahead.

“That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially.”
—Karl Pearson

Monitoring numbers is nothing new for most dairy farmers. Many have had key performance indicators (KPIs) in place for years.