Management

Growing your dairy farm requires a strategic plan, one that positions it for success in the long term. That plan forms the basis for incremental growth, focused on putting numerous small steps together to achieve the desired end result. The key to this step-by-step approach is knowing beforehand what that final goal looks like and developing a strategy to achieve it.

Now more than ever, dairy producers need to focus on the productivity of their farm operations using an inside resource: their employees.

As climate change is at the height of political and socioeconomical conversations, animal agriculture has received blowback. Animal rights and other special interest groups are now using global warming as their platform for slandering agriculture and its allies.

“Nothing I say is going to change the economic outlook of the dairy industry,” John Blanchfield said, as he began his presentation on helping producers shockproof their finances in the current dairy market.

With so many challenges in the dairy industry today, farm managers realize they need to be “better than average” to be in business for the long-term. Running a whole-farm nutrient mass balance (NMB) can help achieve this.

Farming is ever-changing and improvements to perform timely field operations can impact soil health. Larger, road-ready trucks and equipment with higher tire pressures and larger axle loads made to spread manure, plant, spray and harvest quicker can cause severe soil compaction.