Everybody tells us what to do

[farmerboy]

There was a letter in the WP from a lady who was fed up with a beef specialist's advice and pointers that appeared in Cattlemen. I had read it too and thought, get a life Mr. Beef Specialist, we know more about beef production than you. I have read this guys articles before. Once in Cattlemen, he said that beef farmers have way too much equipment. All you need, says he, is an old pick-up to feed the cows. No wonder the beef farmers don't make money, he says!! This year, during calving when we had about 4 feet of snow on the ground I have often made reference to what this guy said. He should try to feed cows all 300 head on the farm with an old pickup in 4 feet of snow, mud, cold etc. By the way, we have to spread bedding. ( Better get out the pitch forks now. ) Now on the news the Federal Government says, we must diversify. Stop producing grain and get into Cattle. Then they say that the cattle producers made lots of money, high prices. Look at us now. All we need at this time is for more grain farmers to convert to beef, especially with the prices so low. Actually someone should tell Ottawa that right now, cattle prices are in the toilet and its grain farming that is making money, the grain prices haven't been this high for years.

[cowman]

When I read that thing about the old pickup I can remember thinking is this guy for real? Obviously he never had to contend with winter. Probably made a lot of sense from his cozy office, though. Experts!!!
It always amazes me that we have these little "experts" fresh out of school who know everything! The people who actually do the work don't know anything?
I remember one little girl who was an "environmental expert" for an oil company. She was well educated and overseeing some reclamation projects I was working on. Luckily she was teachable and I was able to get her around her more silly ideas. She'll turn out alright in a couple of years! Unfortunately some of these "experts" get caught up in the idea that they know everything and these ones can really screw things up. Their attitude seems to be "I know everything because I took four years of school from even bigger experts"! When in fact the "bigger expert" didn't have a clue either!

[ValueChainFX]

LOL, your thread makes me smile! Many years ago I was fortunate enough to run into a mentor that in my opinion was a for real expert. He never called himself that and always said that the definition of an Expert is that EX = a factor unknown and a SPURT is a drip under pressure. and even though I know some of these guys have worked hard to get that title of EXPERT I have never forgotten the words.

He also told me that the real expert is the one that pays the price for whatever choices they have made! What one may call the consequence of your choices.

Through the years the project and programs I have worked on have always come back to that question do the people you are trying to serve have a choice or are you (as in me) trying to force something that is "GOOD FOR THEM" down their throat.

I would rather stand by people that are free to make choices and learn with them as we develop ways to improve our industry then a hundred experts that learned from the same text book!!

In saying that I also have to say a person then must realize the old "SWSWSW" quote! This means some will ... some won't ... so what! In other words when people have choices they should not be taken as a shot at me personally it is their choice and their consequence!

[smcgrath76]

Interesting thread. I was at the Beef Improvement Federation meetings last week and an ag economist from South Dakota presented on the work they have been doing with producers and their SPA data (Standardised Performance Analysis). He made some very good points about income and returns that we often forget.
Net income is gross income - costs. For easy math, if you make $100 per cow (probably not this year) and have 50 cows your net income should be $5000. If you want to make $50000 then you would either need 500 cows or you would have to make $1000 per cow (not likely to happen but that's the math), or you would try to seek a balance somewhere in the middle.
The point he made is that net income does not reflect the true profitability of the operation. The producers he worked with were looking at Return on Assets (ROA) as a measure of financial return. Basically we can make $50,000 and have $500,000 invested or we can make $50,000 and have $2,000,000 invested. The first scenario is definitely a more positive investment. Investors try to seek out companies that can generate good returns from a limited investment. He made the point that some of his producers are generating a return on assets of 10% or greater, which is pretty close to what the US economy as a whole has been doing (maybe not of late).
He also made the point that this is not easy to do and requires both production and marketing skills. As well, he said there was every type of management scenario under the sun. Some producers with high investment still returned a good ROA, but they were able to target high value markets.
I do not have a good handle on the number of producers that would keep good records (production and financial) to be able to perform this analysis, but ROA seems to be a question that surfaces in this forum fairly regularly, often disguised as the question "Why am I doing this when I could put my money in a savings account and earn a better living?"
Generating ROA in a sustainable manner is definitely a challenge and a difficult job, even for applied experts (read farm manager).