Saving America’s Farmers with Randy Roecker
In Episode 13, we cover a topic that is very near and dear to my heart having grown up on a dairy farm, the one that my great-grandfather, grandpa, father and brother all worked. If you didn’t grow up on a farm, you may not be able to relate so maybe this comparison will help:
Photo taken by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Let’s pretend it’s the 1920s. Your entrepreneurial great-grandparents start a company and through decades of blood, sweat, and tears, day in and day out, it grows to be quite successful. When they’re too old to continue, your grandpa buys the company and takes it over. This company is no stranger to your grandpa because from before he can even remember, his own blood, sweat, and tears were poured into the company and will continue to do so to keep it successful. It even makes it through the Great Depression, barely, but it does. Then, when he’s too old to keep working, your dad buys the company from him and the process is repeated and repeated again when he’s too old to keep running it. It’s now the late 1980s/early 1990s and you buy the company from your dad and take it over. You are excited to carry on the family legacy in hopes that someday your kids will take over the farm from you. Like your dad, your grandparents, and your great-grandparents you are no stranger to hard work; up before dawn in bed long after dusk. Your blood, sweat, and tears have gone into this company since before you can remember and will continue to do so every day to keep it successful.
Every day. Now, let’s get back to reality and let me remind you that this company is a family farm. A farm that supplies the milk you drink with every bowl of cereal, the vegetables your kids refuse to eat, the grain for the bread from which you make avocado toast, the whey isolate you mix with your post-workout recovery drink on your way home from the gym, the cheese you put on… let’s be honest, everything.
Like those who’ve gone before you, you experience no breaks because cows don’t milk themselves and they don’t wait for you to be ready. I take that back – maybe a slight break on a rainy day but more often than not that is when you catch up on paying bills or fixing whats broken. But you do it because it’s all you know and it’s what you love doing. Not only that, it’s your families legacy and you take great pride in feeding America. You often think about how proud your great-grandfather, your grandparents would be if he could see you today.
Three generations of farmers
However, unfortunately for you, about the time you bought the your families business, the industry (aka the government) decided that even though your costs of production would increase annually, they weren’t going to increase your costs of goods sold. In simple terms, farmers were paying more and more each year for costs like grain, machinery, seeds, fertilizer but the government didn’t increase milk prices. In turn, you start losing money.
In fact, over the next two decades, you’ll rarely have a profitable year. You try to work harder, you try to work smarter but you realize that it’s not because you haven’t worked your ass off. It’s not because you’re inefficient. It’s because for two decades the dairy industry hasn’t been loyal and it hasn’t increased prices to a level that’s sustainable for a farmer. So, you take out loans again and again hoping for better prices next year. It feels wrong to do but what other options do you have? Sell the farm that’s been in your family for a centur...
