You never hear someone say they love farming because they love sitting in a meeting room talking about business. They will probably say they’d rather be doing anything else – with animals, crops, machinery, you name it – than sitting in meetings.

To dairy farmers, carbon credits, or offsets, are best known in association with anaerobic digestion. These projects require big farms with significant amounts of manure and plenty of capital, resulting in credits sold to buyers outside of the dairy or even the food and beverage industries.

As the summer months progress, the forage quality for grazing cattle begins to change rapidly for much of the western U.S. Cattle performance is dependent on the consumption of digestible nutrients; thus, forage quality and availability are essential for grazing-based systems.

Here is a five-step system for managing hidden costs. While this example focuses on weed control, the system can be applied across many farming and business management areas.

Cows crave consistency, and it’s imperative that we provide them with a consistent ration, using clean feed mixed properly and delivered at the same time every day.

Over time, the strength and size of unified family assets create a competitive advantage over the farms that fragment their assets with each generation. I don’t believe many people set out to erode family assets, but it often happens by falling into some of these transition planning traps.

According to the USDA’s Land Values 2023 Summary, farm real estate value – a measurement of value for all land and buildings on farms – averaged $4,080 per acre in 2023. This was a 7.4% (about $280) increase from 2022.

Every day, farmers deal with variables out of their control, from weather to mechanical issues to weed pressure. In recent weeks, a new variable has affected many U.S. growers.

The NRCS, the USDA’s primary private lands conservation agency, supports producers by providing one-on-one, personalized assistance to help them address the specific needs of their operations through financial and free technical assistance.

A few months ago, I received a call from a dairyman who was having issues with his somatic cell count (SCC). He asked me to look over his feeding program and see if I saw anything that they might be overlooking or that stood out as a problem that might affect somatic cell, mastitis levels, etc.