DAIRY GRAZING FINANCES IN 4 GREAT LAKES STATES 2000

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate possible outcomes and problems of merging farm data sets from multiple states in order to build a statistically sound body of financial information that will help individual farmers analyze their own situations. This paper is in support of a grant titled "Regional/Multi-State Interpretation of Small Farm Financial Data" recently funded by USDA - IFAFS - Farm Efficiency and Profitability. Financial data sets came from dairy farms using management intensive grazing (MIG) strategies during 2000. They included 1 farm from Indiana, 11 farms from Michigan, 8 farms from Ohio and 13 farms from Wisconsin. Finpack and RankEm 2 were used to process the data from all farms, because the Finpack software had been used to collect the farm level data. Definitions and formulas are not given in this paper as they can be found in Finpack users' guides and manuals. The averages for all 33 farms are given in Tables 1 through 10. Calculations were made using only current market values from the balance sheets because many farms did not supply cost basis information. The averages for farms with less than 80 milk cows are given in Tables 11 through 20. Averages for farms with over 80 cows are in Tables 21 through 30. The size ranges in the two groups were picked so about equal numbers of farms would be in each group. Cows per group, average milk production levels, and milk prices received are in Table 31 on the last page. Similar financial data on dairy graziers in New York can be found in Intensive Grazing Farms, New York, 2000, a Dairy Farm Business Summary by George Conneman et al, E.B. 2001-13, Sept. 2001, 46 pp. It is available from Cornell's Department of Applied Economics and Management