Management

It’s been said the world is filled with dreamers and doers. There are those who dream but don’t do and those who do but don’t dream. A rare find is the individual who both dreams and does.

Many principles when managing organic pastures are the same as when managing conventional pastures, albeit with some special considerations.

It’s easy to get off course in the volatile and ever-changing dynamics existing in today’s dairy industry. The 2019 Pennsylvania Dairy Summit program will offer encouragement and guidance to help dairy producers and industry leaders who attend this year’s conference, themed “Follow your compass.”

Editor’s note: The author, an Indiana dairy producer and freelance writer, is exploring resources and methods to help dairy farmers deal with farm stress. Visit Farm Stress: Sources and Resources to find a comprehensive list of programs, helplines, websites, videos and factsheets and other materials.

I was on a farm in Wisconsin in January; it was a father and daughter team. They were far from a team when I first met them. The daughter had just come home to farm and was working her way into the business, but she and her dad bickered over every decision.

We’ve been watching new technologies, especially digital ones, arrive – but things are about to get interesting. Robots are the obvious technology with the potential to disrupt the dairy industry as we know it, but there are many other technologies ready to adopt right now you probably never noticed.