Of all the changes evident in the workplace of 2020, perhaps the most glaring is that most of us find ourselves surrounded today by an unprecedented five generations of workers.

“Work/life balance” comes up for many young farmers, but it’s time to change our language to “choices we make to manage time” and take action.

Like milk prices, no one can accurately predict the direction of interest rates in the future. That being said, I firmly believe farm loan interest rates will rise (and possibly sooner rather than later), and producers should have a strategy to hedge interest rate risk.

Imagine what the dairy business and agriculture will look like in 30 years. We all recognize that dairy and everything else is changing at unprecedented rates. In this article, I suggest leadership, team building, supervision and interpersonal relationships that will be increasingly important to your personal and dairy business success.

Dairy producers tend to focus on the production side of the business more than financial metrics. And when they do take a look at the financial picture, they tend to consider it in the aggregate. But there’s a better way of getting the full measure of your dairy’s finances: enterprise accounting.

As I write this article, January 2020 Class III futures are $18.15 per hundredweight (cwt), a $1.65 increase since my semester of teaching started in September and well above the annual averages for the last five years (Figure 1).

Imagine this: Your employees, advisors and partners all in the same room, productively discussing issues and finding ways to improve farm profitability.

As dairy businesses continue to grow and evolve, it becomes increasingly important to attract and retain the best people to your management team.

How can we maximize efficiency and improve our dairy businesses by utilizing our current resources? Operational planning is a management approach that builds the framework for what your business will concentrate on to make improvements in the near future.