Sustainability - What does it mean to you? (Part 1 of 3) I always thought it meant that our farm needs to be economically sustainable. In any business, if the input costs are above the output costs you can not be sustainable. Every farmer struggles with this model on a day to day basis. Farmers are the model for Renew,Reuse, and Recycle. They tend to keep all sorts of parts for equipment in the hope of not buying new. Will and I make decisions on the number of cows we will keep in the herd depending not just on what we can sell as a steak or a roast, but on how many animals the pasture will be able to feed through the warm months and how much feed we will have to store for the cold months. There have been years that we had to purchase more feed than budgeted for or dry summers when the pasture was not able to keep up, and we fed hay to supplement. It takes 18 months to 2 years to see a return on a newborn calf. That is a long time in the world of business. We both wonder when the farm would be profitable enough to let us quit our off farm jobs. That would probably take a different business model to accomplish. So, we thank you, our customers in helping us to be economically sustainable. Next week Environmental Sustainablily.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 11:00:01 +0000
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