Dairy Producers Share How They Tackle Uncertainties
Over the past two years, dairy producers were forced to adjust to uncertainties that faced them such as rising feed costs, ongoing labor challenges and navigating a pandemic and its ripple effect.
Ken McCarty with McCarty Family Farms says technology can address some of the uncertainty dairies are facing, especially when it comes to water smart technologies on his Kansas dairy, as they are heavily dependent upon irrigation to grow quality and quantity of crops to feed their cows.
“We are trying to be conservationist minded and intelligent about how we utilize that water resource in the face of last year,” Ken shares, referencing 2022’s extreme drought conditions and what is appearing to be another challenging drought year for 2023. “That type of technology can help us mitigate those types of variables. But that being said, there's a lot of variability in just the geopolitical climate impacts milk prices, feed prices, all those sorts of things, that we don't have any control over whatsoever.”
Additionally, McCarty is also focusing on being smart from a financial perspective and paying down debt.
“We're taking on a lot of debt right now, but we pay down debt and try to be smart about how we think through financial decisions to mitigate variables that we have no control over - interest rate, global feed markets, global fuel markets, those sorts of things.”
Ryan Junio with Four J Jerseys concurs with McCarty, stating he is 100% reliant on irrigation on his farm in Pixley, Calif.
“We don't do anything based off the rainfall out here,” he says, adding that this year’s snowpack has been a blessing, although it has brought a lot of heartache with the flooding that his farm personally had to experience. “We've got to build big data sets throughout our land and figure out how to best utilize the water we will have available to us in the coming years and figure out how we can best size our herd to be able to move forward with what landlords will have available to us based off of water availability.”
Junio adds that diving into more drought-tolerant crops and best utilizing winter crops will help California farmers tackle the water scarcity issue and help them feed their cows in the future.
“We'll adapt,” he says. ‘We will figure out a way to keep growing feed the best we can.”
In Wisconsin, Chema Ortiz, herd management specialist for Milk Source in Wisconsin, says like many dairies across the U.S., Milk Source is also faced with uncertainties when it comes to milk prices or feed costs. To help combat the obstacles, they try to put a lot of emphasis on what they can control.
“We are working to reduce labor and become more efficient with guys and our staff,” he says.
To listen to the entire conversation with these three producers talk more about technology, as well as talk about value-added revenue sources, click on https://fjwebinars.com/account/register/dairy-herd-management/167
