Never in my wildest dreams did I picture myself living and working in Chicago as a licensed commodity futures and options broker. The son of a third-generation dairy farmer, I grew up on a farm in Tulare County, California. My background on the farm gives me a very unique perspective on the work I do now. I have seen first-hand the challenges and frustrations producers have when the markets do not move in their favor.

Editor’s note: This article is the final article of a three-part series. Chronic immunosuppressive diseases have a significant economic impact on many areas of a dairy. In the case of persistently infected (PI) cows, they often cull themselves early for a number of health or reproductive reasons, but it’s not unusual to find second-lactation cows that are still milking.

It is no secret that in the last few years consumers have been asking more and more questions about where their food comes from. Unfortunately, most of them have little knowledge of agriculture, or a skewed understanding of it, but desire to learn more.

For many dairy producers, the task of holding a team meeting to increase herd reproduction rates may seem like a great idea in theory, but once the actual planning begins, the questions on logistics appear to outweigh the benefits. Questions of concern may be:

When my brother and I returned to the farm from our off-the-farm experience, we knew that in order to allow the farm to support three families instead of one, we needed to make some changes.

Thomas Henry Ford created a system wherein he paid five times the standard wage to attract the best of the best. The flip side of this policy was that if you didn’t meet his standards, you got fired. Under Jack Welch’s leadership in the ’90s, General Electric fired their bottom 10 percent of performers every year. It created a culture of “Whose head is on the platter this week?”