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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)

#91

Post by Spooky23 »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #73

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…

Agriculture was the first victim of the red/blue phenomenon. Agricultural and trade policy is all about government supported grain industry. For the dairy farmer, they are stuck between regulatory reform that dramatically increases the supply of milk by creating a national market, while their downstream supply chain partners are allowed to consolidate and form monopolies, because American legal theory is insane.

I live in upstate NY from a former dairy producing region. I’m aware of 5 different dairy processors that were within 30-40 miles of my childhood home. Now there is one larger company.

It’s only getting worse. The push for meat-substitutes will just lead to even more consolidation, and start introducing supply risks down the road. The aquifers that support Midwest grain are being depleted, and climate change will affect the Southern California miracle in the desert. In the meantime, the well-watered, prime farm I worked on as a teen had most of the topsoil stripped and sold, and there is a subdivision with 40-50 houses on it.

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

#92

Post by AlanYx »

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…

It's actually not true that family dairy farms in Ontario are doing well. If you look at actual data (search for "D056 Number of farms with shipments of milk by province"), you'll see that the number of independent farms in Ontario has declined by 29% since 2006. You see the same long term trend in every province.

At one time long ago, the quota system was billed as protecting the family farm, but in practice now it drives the death of family farms, as people with quotas slowly sell out to large producers and new farmers cannot enter the marketplace because of the quota cost wall. Ontario currently is tied with Quebec for the cheapest quotas in the country, but getting started in the industry is still impossible without huge investments beyond the reach of young farmers (e.g., the upfront cost just to buy just the quotas, not the land or the cows, for a small 100 cow venture in Ontario is currently $2.4 million -- compare this with someone else in this thread who managed to get a whole farm up and running in the US, including land and his herd, for around $500k USD).

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

#93

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

nradov wrote: post #75
DC1350 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

But farms across the nation are failing and conglomerating. It just seems like he's investing in horses after the Model T has been released.

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

#94

Post by DC1350 »

valvar wrote: post #72
DC1350 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don’t know. It just seems inefficient to me. Farming is not enjoyable work for most people who do it so the whole plan just reminds me of Marie Antoinette’s peasant role play hobby.

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

#95

Post by nineplay »

I think he's glossing over the obvious. A friend of mine was just reminiscing about growing up in her family's dairy farm.

Every Saturday morning, every Sunday morning, every Christmas you get up to take care of the cows. Feel sick? You've got to get up and take care of the cows. Want to go on vacation? Can't, there's no one you can leave the cows with. It's a hard life - maybe a satisfying life in some ways but there are a lot of sacrifices.

The author points out that only one of his brothers wanted to take over the dairy. He doesn't point out that without that one brother with the insane work ethic the farm would have shut down years ago. It's not a sustainable business model.

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

#96

Post by sologoub »

Fortunately for me, some US producers have managed to create a sustainable business model, while providing great (if old fashioned) product: https://blog.goodeggs.com/blog/straus-family-creamery-pionee...

Straus milk is not cheap at ~$9 per gallon, but we don’t consume a lot and the quality is simply amazing. Still haven’t figured out what it is, but regular cheap US milk makes me incredibly sick to the point that my DR diagnosed me with lactose intolerance, except I noticed when traveling to continental EU, I never got sick even when accidentally eating something with dairy. Turns out I can have milk and milk-based product just fine, but something about the regular US milk was like poison to me. Tried the A2 bandwagon - didn’t work. I can’t now recall how I stumbled on Straus product, but it was life changing and I really hope they continue to survive!

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

#97

Post by selimthegrim »

Spooky23 wrote: post #91
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #73

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…

Agriculture was the first victim of the red/blue phenomenon. Agricultural and trade policy is all about government supported grain industry. For the dairy farmer, they are stuck between regulatory reform that dramatically increases the supply of milk by creating a national market, while their downstream supply chain partners are allowed to consolidate and form monopolies, because American legal theory is insane. I li…

Lina Khan may have been appointed just in time then.

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

#98

Post by belorn »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #52
belorn wrote: post #6

There were a news article this fall about how demand for more ecological produced dairy and meat has gone down while public opinion about ecological produced dairy and meat has gone up. The explanation provided there is that while people increasingly care more about how the dairy and meat is produced, those same people are also reducing their consumption. This seems to be an area where pollution control and stricter…

>>> In addition, human trafficking has become common practice in many cheap labor industries, to the point where the police has stopped investigating because otherwise they would have no resources to spend on areas which are more politically valuable. I'm sorry what.

It was in the local news a year or so back. If they go to any construction site, they will find so many cases that they won't have resources to do any other work related investigations for the rest of the year. As such they decided to stop doing it for the unforeseen future. From the politicians, they mostly want the companies to self regulate. Human trafficking for labor is costly to enforce and is not something which wins votes, and the shortage in low wage workforce has trickle down effects on political goals that they do care about.

The situation is very similar in areas of farming (as the article describes), fishing, foresting, and cleaning.

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

#99

Post by smeyer »

lettergram wrote: post #79
gruez wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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%…

What you're describing isn't specific to farms. If you take out a fixed-rate loan, you'll benefit from increases to inflation (since it makes the inflation-adjusted interest rate lower). This is true whether you use that loan to buy a farm, a house, gold, et cetera.

Other than the loan, it makes sense to work in real dollars (inflation adjusted) not nominal dollars (non-inflation adjusted). In real dollars, you $300k farm doesn't change in value and your income also doesn't change. In real dollars, gold (in your example) also doesn't change.

Gold is a poor and weird investment for a variety of reasons, but it's not like farms are magically better than other asset classes (like regular old stocks).

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

#100

Post by dkersten »

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #81
lettergram wrote: post #49

As someone who’s spent a lot of time in and around farms. I even bought a farm last week! This is an accurate depiction for the vast majority of farms. It’s an industry where you have a high over head cost (want to start raising cattle - $300k land, $50k equipment, $30k housing / barn, $20k fencing, $10k to start a herd - profit in 2-3 years). This scales well. Get some more land, you can keep the equipment running l…

Do you really need a whole farm just to provide nutrition for you family, even if it does have some livestock, or is there more to it than that? I remember reading about some amazing results that can be achieved on very small patches of land, with the right techniques, tools and planning. The official website is light on details, this article is better [2]. [1] https://www.themarketgardener.com/ [2] https://www.resil…

I remember reading something about a square foot or three of tightly packed grow space (using vegetables that complement each other or whatever; I also remember reading about was it tiered gardening?) is enough to feed a person. My mother grows a bunch of vegetables in about ~3 square feet of space and while its not everything she eats (vegetable or otherwise), it does cover a good bit and she always has more of what she grows than she needs.

So if that's true, seems like a decent plot of land should be plenty for feeding a family yet still having some left over, at least for vegetables and maybe eggs.

If you want to keep other livestock (lettergram mentions grass-fed beef), then I guess you do indeed need an actual farm.

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