5-12 IAN Diversifying in Dairy

 Stock tip of the day…diversify. That’s also a tip for dairymen or anybody in ag for that matter. David Sparks, back with the story in a minute. These are crazy and bad times in the dairy industry. Everone knows that. But I talked to Mike Garner from Webb Brothers Dairy in American Falls and he sounded like a pretty sophisticated guy.

 “We’re not just dairy we have a beef feedlot, prices there last year weren’t very good but now they’re excellent. They’ve just gone up and we farm, we raise quite a few sugar beets, malt barley so we have other cash crops and we farm about 4500 acres beside just the dairy so it enables us to have some cheaper input costs as far as raising our alfalfa and corn sileage but we also do have the cash crops to sell outside of our own use and that’s helped us be diversified. We’ve been partners for 10 years and we’ve watched each facet of our business go up and down. Two years ago sugar was in the tanks and dairy was on top of the world and now it’s the exact opposite. We try to take the peaks and valleys out of our income and try to have it a little more stable.”

Told you. Never put all your money on one horse…too dangerous.