North Harbor Dairy Uses Profit Team for Informed Decision-making
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
Improving farm operations is a constant theme at North Harbor Dairy in Sackets Harbor, NY. Increasingly, the Robbins family is using a Dairy Profit Team to guide them through goal setting and decision-making.
The Robbinses are a fifth-generation dairy farm family. Today, Ron and Nancy, and their son Brian, milk 670 cows and farm 4,500 acres, growing the farm’s forages, as well as corn, soybeans, wheat and other cash crops. They operate Old MacDonald Has a Farm, where they sell their own fresh produce, and introduce visitors to a menagerie of livestock, farm tours, education, and entertainment.
In 2007, North Harbor Dairy started a Dairy Profit Team, inspired in part by a pilot program by the nonprofit New York Farm Viability Institute (NYFVI) to launch profit teams on farms in a two counties through start-up mini-grants. Ron Robbins, who is a board director at the Institute, started his team without grant funds. He assembled a team of advisors, including Cargill reps, Cooperative Extension educators, a veterinarian, Farm Credit staff, the Robbins family, and the farm’s herd manager.
“I’d been thinking about a dairy profit team for awhile. The Farm Viability project put some structure to the concept, and made it easier for us to embrace a team,” Robbins said. “We saw it as an opportunity to improve farm performance and communication among the family and employees.”
Based on the success of the NYFVI pilot program, the New York Center for Dairy Excellence launched a statewide dairy profit team program in the summer of 2009, funding 45 new teams. Today, there are more than 75 dairy profit teams coordinated through the Farm Viability Institute and Center for Dairy Excellence. In addition, the Institute recently started profit teams on cash crop farms.
A profit team brings together advisors who offer suggestions and critique of farm performance. The group sets goals. The farm owners are ultimate decision makers, but have the advantage of weighing options from multiple perspectives.
North Harbor Dairy’s profit team meets monthly, gathered around the kitchen table.
“People speak honestly, we can take it,” Robbins laughed. “And give it back if we need to.”
Meetings begin with a tour of the barns, where team members evaluate progress on farm goals – animal health, crowding, bedding quality, employee cooperation, and so on.
Each meeting has an agenda put together by farm management and the team facilitator. The trained facilitator, in this case, Farm Credit’s Mark Mapstone, leads the meeting and takes notes.
Cargill-generated monthly records for farm reproduction rates, milk and component production, feed intake, and more, help frame much of the meeting discussion.
North Harbor started working with Cargill 10 years ago, and relies on the feed company for ration balancing, supplements, and calf grain.
Farm growth has been an ongoing focus for North Harbor’s profit team. The farm grew from a milking herd of 500 in 2008, and anticipates reaching 750 milking head to maximize capacity in the milking parlor.
“We had to get better at what we were doing to be able to afford to grow,” Robbins said.
Accomplishments to date credited to the team include greater emphasis on employee training, and putting in place protocols for breeding, calving, forage harvest and storage, and more.
Milk production shot ahead from an average 73 lb/cow/day in 2007 to 88.5 lb/cow/day in 2009.
In 2010, goals at North Harbor include maintaining herd performance, improving forage quality, and managing through difficult financial times. They are debating building a heifer facility.
“The profit team gives everyone involved more confidence that we are on top of things. We are proactive, rather than reactive. We have confidence, even during the financial struggle of the past year, that we will be okay at the end of the day,” Robbins said.
Each meeting ends by setting the date for the next meeting.
“We’ve found skipping a meeting doesn’t work for us. The things we were supposed to do before the meeting get put off,” Nancy Robbins said. “The profit team makes us accountable in front of everyone else.”
###
