About Making Hay

I get cash rent 44 acres that is in Alfalfa with some grass. At lunch time they pulled in the field with a large 4 wheel drive tractor with a mower on the front about 10 feet wide and about a 15 foot mower on each side on the back. At 2 "O" clock I drove in and the mowing was done. All had been windrowed and a large chopper filling a semi on the go with at least a third of the hay gone.


I see this type of equipment in RC videos bet never actually in the field.

Butterfly mowers, makes for a heck of a mowing rig.

Million dollar equipment to make $17.00 milk

But they gotta make a lotta feed for a lotta cows, resulting in even more surplus milk, so pretty soon its $16 milk, and they add more cows and even bigger machinery, and the dog just keeps chasing its tail. I think we need a quota or base system like we had back in the '70's, so you can make xx lbs. of $24 milk, and the rest is 10 bucks or so.

Or Canada could reduce its 270% tariff, so USA would have a bigger market (LOL). Nothing personal, Bruce, but had to say it. Do producers have a quota in Canada?

I've made a lot of money over the years buying equipment at outfits like that bankruptcy sales.I can't imagine it would be profitable to run equipment like that in small fields and be constantly moving it.

coshoo if Canada reduced it tariff then in a very short time farmers in both countries would be getting paid low prices for milk.

The one thing that I can tell you US farmers do every single time on a commodity, They will produce an excess until that commodity is worthless.

This happens for several reasons:
1) Corporate America does not want high priced commodities at the farm gate. They can not jack them up so high if they have to pay a good price for them.

2) Personal GREED!!! Every farmer think they can produce all they want and still get a high price for it. Supply and demand does not even enter the average farmers mind at the national level.

3) The average US farmer is a darn poor marketer of his crop/commodity. With smaller milk producers among the worse of them. There are cash contracts that can be bought on milk just like grain. You can buy and sell options on milk too. I do not know of a single dairy farmer in my area that uses any of these marketing tools. Just send it to the creamery and take want they pay. I do know of some LARGE dairies that use them. The one is a distant cousin of mine. He has floor under his milk for the next three years and contracts on his major feed ingredients to match. He and his three brothers are milking right at 1500 cows.

The fellow we buy TMR has one of those setups this year. He has the tractor/mower setup and is still using a self propelled JD mower also. The tractor has a gps globe on it, too. From what I can gather, it's a matter of labor shortage as much as anything. (plenty of bodies around, but none of them want to work) Cuts into their welfare benefits, don't you know. No sense of working when NY State pays you $30,000 + to set on yer butt.

Yes we have a supply management system, and dairy producers can only market the amount of milk they hold quota for. Interestingly enough, even though theee are 270% tariffs on dairy products entering Canada, the U.S. gets to fill 5% of the Canadian market tariff free. That?s Zero tariff on 5% of the Canadian market, you never hear about that. Mr T won?t be happy till it?s 100% tariff free. How much does Canada get to send to the States?? That?s right Zero !!