MEASURING PRODUCTIVITY: PER ROBOT, PER COW, TOTAL MILK SOLD

For the past month, I have been visiting with farmers to learn what successful robotic dairies have in common. First, we had to answer, “What is a successful robotic dairy?” Predictably, most of the dairies I visited said they measured success in terms of net profit. When I followed up by asking what drives net profit, most of them cited high milk production. There are exceptions, like production quotas, specialty markets, and least cost production models. There is a point of diminishing returns, when an extra dollar spent to produce more milk does not return a dollar’s worth of increased production. Those that maximize profit with high milk production measure it in terms of total milk sold, milk per robot, or milk per cow.

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