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Profitable farms dairy a little bit better

An extension educator says the most profitable dairy farms seems to do everything just a little bit better.

“They’re doing 100 things five or 10 percent better.”

Jim Salfer with the University of Minnesota recently analyzed farm’s in Minnesota, Ohio, South Dakota and others that work with the university’s Center for Farm Financial Management.  He tells Brownfield until a few years ago, the most profitable farms were the most productive, but that’s changed.

“It almost seems like high production is a prerequisite and I think part of that is most farms have adopted a lot of the technologies and recommendations while many of the lower producing and unprofitable farms have gone out of business.”

He says there are several trends that make farms highly profitable and it’s not tied to size.

“Those farms just consistently do everything a little bit better and they do it very, very consistently, so they get a good quality forage every single year, they’re somatic cell counts are a little bit lower, but they don’t bounce around.”    

Salfer says the largest farms tend to be in the highest or the lowest profit range while organic and grazing operations can get away with lower milk production because of their small cost to operate.

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