The economics of forage and concentrate rations for East Tennessee grade A herds with high production records

The grade A milk industry has steadily developed into one of the major agricultural industries in Tennessee today. The volume of Grade A milk sold under Federal order increased 51 per cent between 1956 and 1963. Yet, along with this increase in milk production, the number of grade A milk producers has declined. The decline in the number of producers is due to the advancement of technology in dairying which has caused greater milk production per cow, larger herd sizes and a tremendous increase in capital investment. These factors have forced many small producers out of production. For years dairy farmers have used their own experiences and opinions as the primary basis for making important decisions, but with the recent advances in dairying technology, more scientific methods are needed. The most prevalent decisions concern machinery ownership and the most economical rations to feed under a given set of conditions. These decisions have become increasingly difficult to make in recent years. Dairy operations have become increasingly complicated with labor-saving devices and machinery whose costs tend to be dynamic in nature. They are dynamic because of the uncertainty of the many alternative uses they have and the dependence they have upon the availability of complementary resources affecting the extent of their use. If the complementary resources were unrestricted and the exact opportunity cost of all the existing alternatives were known, then the costs of these advancements in technology would be more predictable and static rather than dynamic. Yet, these conditions are virtually impossible to obtain and, therefore, this makes the situation a dynamic one. In regard to milk supply, technological improvements tend to make grade A dairying more stable because of the added certainty they give to production. This added certainty is due to the replacement of human controls with mechanical controls and the presence of scientific knowledge in the operation of the dairies.