Affordability Remains a Dairy Strength

Nov 19, 2024

Regardless of how one feels about the November elections, one thing that voters said loud and clear was that they don’t like inflation. As data shows, that’s yet another reason to like dairy.

A look at Consumer Price Index data going back to the 2008 financial crisis shows that, compared to overall costs, and particularly to other food and beverages, dairy remains relatively affordable, and is becoming even more so over time. Dairy product prices this fall are roughly the same as they were two years ago, even as overall prices and food and beverage prices are both more than 6 percent higher.

This stability isn’t unusual. Dairy prices rose only 12 percent for the entire decade of the 2010s, helping household budget planning and easing price pressures felt more keenly in other areas of the economy.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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