Big shifts in the dairy market in recent years have brought on changes to production, exports, and pricing. Analysts say it has forced the industry to look at things differently.
“Well, we’ve seen a lot of shifts. I mean, we’re always sort of going through consolidation in various forms, but it is something that we’re seeing. You know, people start to position how they make milk and look at efficiencies, especially when you have kind of limitations on your ability to grow milk production. So we don’t, we’re not just in non-stop growth mode because you’ve got a lot of base programs, you’ve got other things in place that are limiting. Production expansion. So we’re forced to look at kind of. New ways of getting benefits from scale and looking at things like dairy on beef cross and all sorts of new ways to sort of improve our efficiency and manage in in these new this new era,” says Ben Laine.
It is not just the dairy market having an impact. Laine says the beef market has played a big role in shaping the dairy industry this year.
It’s been huge. It’s in a position where for those especially that can take advantage of dairy, beef cross. It’s been a big benefit in terms of not only getting that added revenue on on the cap side, but you know those are heiffers that they’re not having to deal with raising at this point. So it helps with the ability to not, you know, when you can’t really grow expansion grow your production. That’s been a big benefit, enabled not to have to hold on to as many heiffers as we might normally have otherwise.”
Laine believes milk prices are looking good next year but says there will still be high costs like interest rates, labor, and expenses.
