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On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019)

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Re: On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019)

#71

Post by lettergram »

DC1350 wrote: post #65
lettergram wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s literally the cost I just paid lol But yes, $500k is about the minimum. Plus ~40 acres. For grass fed beef you can raise probably 20 heads and buy supplementals. You might only make $5-10k up to maybe $30k (buying hay or leasing other land to grow feed) profit initially. BUT it’s not a ton of work, really only feeding the cattle every other day, doing injections on the cattle and cutting / bailing hay 2-3 time…

Couldn’t you feed a family high quality food for a few decades with $500k? This seems like a lot of effort if you aren’t planning on making a profit.

That’s fair, but two posits

(1) you can’t really get high quality food outside a lot of sourcing and effort. As an example, I grow purple green beans that taste better than any green bean I’ve every bought. You may be able to get that particular green bean from a specialty shop, but I’m doing this with 30 different plants on 1-2 acres. I can harvest and eat the plants the same day as well (which has far more nutrition).

(2) I shouldn’t have said no profit, I do have a plan to make it profitable. But that’s not the primary goal, nor would it be my primary job. I’m a software engineer by trade and can work remote easily. Further, I can later sell the farm and equipment. It’s likely I’ll make a profit there as well.

Re: On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019)

#72

Post by valvar »

DC1350 wrote: post #65
lettergram wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s literally the cost I just paid lol But yes, $500k is about the minimum. Plus ~40 acres. For grass fed beef you can raise probably 20 heads and buy supplementals. You might only make $5-10k up to maybe $30k (buying hay or leasing other land to grow feed) profit initially. BUT it’s not a ton of work, really only feeding the cattle every other day, doing injections on the cattle and cutting / bailing hay 2-3 time…

Couldn’t you feed a family high quality food for a few decades with $500k? This seems like a lot of effort if you aren’t planning on making a profit.

That's assuming it's their money to begin with (I'd assume it's a loan). With those numbers it takes about a decade to make it back — perhaps more with capital costs. That doesn't sound bad at all? What were you expecting?

Re: On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019)

#73

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

unfortunately the cow seems out of the barn for reasons other than legislation being missing.

Farmers have not adapted to changes in conditions and they had time to do so. The point of a union should not be to collute to raise prices. The point of a union should be to pool market power and resources to break monopolies in creameries, or pollution.

Any farmer should have seen the writing on the wall to have 1 creamery being their only customer, and develop options immediately. Their lifelihood depended on it!! Farmers can't be kicked out of a coop they own. Too late for that. Also, farmers should have pooled resources and sued to high hell all the pollutants and reported farms using illegal labor. Petition townsfolk to start class action sue pollutants. Hit where it hurts.

The article never talks about that. Only complaints about the law (which incidentally, should have not happened if farmers had been proactive at getting their communities to unite against the pollutants).

Instead of putting bad actors out of business, this article seems to state that small farmers were not successful in petitioning - via legislation - to become bad actors themselves. Unfortunate.

Legislation seems to have gotten small farmers in trouble, legislation will not come to the rescue now. Legislation is for the big guns. They are not that.

Re: On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019)

#74

Post by DC1350 »

voidmain0001 wrote: post #50
urthor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make good cheese in the United States, cheese is really about the recipe (and how much cream was left in the milk). There just is nothing like the culture of cheese production, US foodstuffs are awful quality because the general public buys it up for some unknown reason.

Wait. You just wrote that if America implemented a supply control system that milk prices would increase to $4/g with the implication being that increase in price would be unacceptable. Now you wrote that "US foodstuffs are awful quality because the general public buys it for some unknown reason." You can't have your cake and eat it too. Most likely the public has gotten used to low prices for low quality products. I…

Supply control increases prices without increasing quality. High quality dairy gets even more expensive.

Re: On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019)

#75

Post by nradov »

DC1350 wrote: post #65
lettergram wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s literally the cost I just paid lol But yes, $500k is about the minimum. Plus ~40 acres. For grass fed beef you can raise probably 20 heads and buy supplementals. You might only make $5-10k up to maybe $30k (buying hay or leasing other land to grow feed) profit initially. BUT it’s not a ton of work, really only feeding the cattle every other day, doing injections on the cattle and cutting / bailing hay 2-3 time…

Couldn’t you feed a family high quality food for a few decades with $500k? This seems like a lot of effort if you aren’t planning on making a profit.

That $500K doesn't disappear. In a few decades the farm can be sold and you can get your money back (depending on changes in land prices).

Re: On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019)

#76

Post by gruez »

lettergram wrote: post #59
willismichael wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that you're probably estimating bare minimum costs, but getting started for half a million dollars is actually way more affordable than I imagined you would describe. That's comparable to what some people pay for a middle class suburban home near a lot of the mid-sized metropolitan areas around the United States.

That’s literally the cost I just paid lol But yes, $500k is about the minimum. Plus ~40 acres. For grass fed beef you can raise probably 20 heads and buy supplementals. You might only make $5-10k up to maybe $30k (buying hay or leasing other land to grow feed) profit initially. BUT it’s not a ton of work, really only feeding the cattle every other day, doing injections on the cattle and cutting / bailing hay 2-3 time…

>Another important factor for me, was the protection from inflation. Food prices go up during inflation, so my farm is worth more.

this is a moot point because literally any other thing you invest it (short of maybe government bonds) protect you from inflation.

Re: On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019)

#77

Post by nradov »

joerandom wrote: post #40
ilikerashers wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you classify helping with chores around the house as child exploitation too? As on a farm, kids have chores. They're not working night and day.

Do you have ANY idea how chores on a farm look like? Hint: it's nothing like vacuming or taking dishes out from a dishwasher. It's lots of hard work. Dealing with excrements and dangerous animals (even a cow or pig is dangerous in confined spaces).

Oh please. I took care of a few pigs and cattle as a child, including cleaning up manure. It wasn't that hard and certainly not dangerous.

Re: On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019)

#78

Post by SECProto »

urthor wrote: post #27

On one point the article has made. Canadians are really really unhappy with their milk system, they have some of the highest priced milk in the entire world and they despise it. "probably through a supply management program similar to what Canada has" is a nonstarter for cityfolk. It would mean $4 milk.

Canadian here, very happy with the milk quota system. Despite all the media hoopla, I don't actually know anyone who cares about it. And I live in a city.

Re: On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019)

#79

Post by lettergram »

gruez wrote: post #76
lettergram wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s literally the cost I just paid lol But yes, $500k is about the minimum. Plus ~40 acres. For grass fed beef you can raise probably 20 heads and buy supplementals. You might only make $5-10k up to maybe $30k (buying hay or leasing other land to grow feed) profit initially. BUT it’s not a ton of work, really only feeding the cattle every other day, doing injections on the cattle and cutting / bailing hay 2-3 time…

>Another important factor for me, was the protection from inflation. Food prices go up during inflation, so my farm is worth more. this is a moot point because literally any other thing you invest it (short of maybe government bonds) protect you from inflation.

Not quite. Stocks, gold, Bitcoin, a house you live in (not rent) don’t produce anything (unless your stock has a dividend).

You want something that produces.

Say I buy $300k worth of gold, 10% inflation hits and there’s no change in demand and its now worth $330k.

Say I buy a $300k farm. 10% inflation hits and there’s no change in demand. It’s now worth $330k... but the value of production of said farm is also up 10%.

This makes an opportunity. If I take a loan on my farm in year 1, I can buy a larger farm (say on 3% interest). If inflation hits I can pay down that farm loan at an ever increasing rate. This allows someone to leverage the inflation and debt to make larger purchases.

It protects your INCOME from inflation. Not just your investments.

Re: On the death of my family's dairy farm (2019)

#80

Post by gruez »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #66
urthor wrote: post #27

On one point the article has made. Canadians are really really unhappy with their milk system, they have some of the highest priced milk in the entire world and they despise it. "probably through a supply management program similar to what Canada has" is a nonstarter for cityfolk. It would mean $4 milk.

To my knowledge there are still functional family dairy farms here in Ontario. And the cost of milk, about $4.80 (Canadian) for 4L, and butter (hovering between $3 and $6 per pound - we buy it on special, it stores well in the freezer) is really not an issue even for our family of four. So far so good. I'm glad to pay it if it keeps family farms in business. I grew up on a dairy farm in Germany (in the pre-quota days…

>All in all, you can drive around in Ontario's farm belts and they still look pretty traditionally prosperous. We must be doing something right.

By having laws that force consumers to subsidize the businesses of special interests?

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