“If I use 100 bags of seed on a field and I change
the way I distribute the seed, I can yield more
without a single extra dollar of input,” said Matt
Wichman, Rosendale’s director of agronomy.
Such tools “are becoming so economically viable
that anybody that’s of a decent scale is adopting
these,” Wichman said.
Technology can mean survival, but it involves
a perilous gamble: Will the machines produce
savings fast enough to cover the debt
they incur?
“The last five years have really been treacherous,”
said Randy Hallett, who has 85 cows in Casco,
Wisconsin, and has spent $33,000 on new
milking equipment. He would invest more if his
operation could afford it. “I broke even, mostly.”
The dairy industry is caught in a vise between
consumer trends and competition. Americans
are buying less milk as changing tastes steer
them to milk substitutes from soy and almonds,
or to entirely different drinks like flavored water.
Two big milk processors, Dean Foods and
Borden Dairy Co., filed for bankruptcy protection
in the past three months, undone by declining
demand and also pressured by big competitors
like Walmart, which opened its own milk
processing plant in 2018.
And then there are milk prices.
After hitting a historic high in 2014 of more than
$26 per 100 pounds on the strength of massive
buying from China, the bottom fell out. When
China stopped its milk-buying spree, there
was already oversupply from both American
and European Union producers, said Mark
Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at
the University of Wisconsin.