DairyVoice Podcast
DairyVoice Podcast
The Importance of Dairy Farm Preparation for Weather Risks
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In this episode of DairyVoice, host Kate Ziehm of Morning Ag Clips talks with Gary Lezak, Founder and CEO at Weather 20/20, Jordan Wollenberg of Agri-Service Agency and Dairy Farmer Justin Ohlde of Ohlde Family Farms in north central Kansas. They discuss risk management as it pertains to the weather and how we prepare our dairy farms, how to minimize these risk factors, and several new products to help. The podcast covers everything from minimizing milk loss due to weather events to weather intelligence to open risk windows, so farmers can plan accordingly.
You're listening to Dairy Voice by Dairy Business News, a podcast exclusively for the dairy industry.
SPEAKER_09One of our sponsors of the Dairy Voice Podcast is National DHIA. NDHIA ensures information accuracy and represents their members' interests. They are the direct voice for the dairy information industry. To find out more, go to DHIA.org.
SPEAKER_06Hey there. After you've finished enjoying this podcast, might I recommend you join me, Tim Hammerich, and our guests on Clarity at Work from Zoetis. We'll be talking genetics and their place on the dairy. You've got a seat at the table as we discuss innovations, what's next for the industry, and more.
SPEAKER_04Morning Ad Clips and Dairy Business work hand in hand to serve the agricultural community and today's dairy farmer and the industry that supports them. Morning Ad Clips, a daily email and website platform, provides the quick one-two on what's going on in both local and national agriculture. Today we have an exciting show for you with three special guests who I will introduce to you as we get rolling. I want to set the stage for what we are going to be discussing today: risk management as it pertains to the weather and how we prepare our dairy farms. It's hard to believe as I sit here today in upstate New York at a midday temperature of 17 degrees that I will ever see green grass and 90 degrees again. But we will. It's coming. I want to make sure you're prepared so that we can minimize the amount of milk loss you suffer in your bulk tank during the heat of the summer. Last year, the Northeast experienced an extremely hot and dry summer on the heels of a very wet, wet spring. It's all we talked about as it pertained to crop management, water management, cow management. My question is could we have been more prepared? And that's what we're going to discuss today. From the surface, you're thinking that this is going to be an episode about signs of heat stress and weather patterns, risk management, and insurance products. It is a little bit. And yes, you will learn some things along the way or be reminded of them. But really, it's going to be how we use knowledge for power and how that power will give you peace of mind as you manage your dairy. The big question, and this is what I'm going to pose to my guests today, is how do we minimize these risk factors?
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SPEAKER_04I would like to introduce to you our first guest today, Gary Lezak, a weatherman from Weather 2020. Gary, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_10Thank you, Kate. Thank you very, very much. It's great to be here. And we're going to talk about risk windows and weather, weather risk, and how we can predict these things weeks, months in advance, up to close to a year in advance to help the dairy farmer uh prepare.
SPEAKER_04So, Gary, tell us a little bit about your background and how you go about predicting the weather.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, I founded Weather 2020. I'm a meteorologist with the University of Oklahoma. Founded Weather 2020 about 15 years ago, like 2020 vision, we can see the future. And so I discovered about 40 years ago the LRC. It was named by our bloggers 20 years ago after I started making these accurate long-range predictions and they came through over and over again. So they named it the LRC, the LESAC recurring cycle. It's a long-range weather prediction method that is based on the idea that the atmosphere establishes a unique weather pattern every fall. So the pattern that just brought you your 17 degrees today, and this relentless winter that's over and over again. The reason it's so relentless is because the pattern that's set up last October and November began cycling and has been cycling ever since. The good news is the days are getting longer. Spring is coming, and you're going to get the spring and summer versions of that pattern. What does that mean? And that's what we do at Weather 2020. We are forecasting weather risk, you know, forecasting risk that will help industries like agriculture, dairy, and commodities make better operational financial decisions. So we predict when there will be a heat wave this summer, for example. And we can go over that forecast later. How will that impact the dairy farm, which we can talk to our expert here in a few minutes? Will it be a wet spring, a dry spring, or will it be a wet spring ending ending up in a hot summer? These are the things that we predict at Weather 2020.
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SPEAKER_04First question is let's go back history-wise. Did you accurately predict the summer that we had last year?
SPEAKER_10Yes. I would say yes is the first answer. Okay. How are the specifics? You know, how were we accurate week by week? I wouldn't say we're accurate day by day. When you look at which weeks will be wet, which weeks will be dry, that's where our accuracy gets up to 60% and higher. When will there be severe weather? A severe thunderstorm that's going to produce hail that could impact cattle and crops. Those predictions are actually near 90% accurate. I'm predicting the window, the week that's going to be really severe, and the weeks that are going to be drier and not so severe. So there's an accuracy. Do we specifically predict the weather for New England perfectly last year? Perfect is certainly what we would strive to be, but we're predicting the future. So 60% accuracy is good when you're predicting something that is 30 days, 60 days, 100 days into the future. So yes, we were able to do that.
SPEAKER_04Tell me a little bit about how the tool that you've put together for predicting the weather has impacted specifically dairy farms, because that's our audience today. Have you worked with any and done that?
SPEAKER_10Yeah, we have hundreds of farmers that are now using our weather tool, which is a dashboard that allows you to narrow down to your county where your farm is at and get a forecast from now through September. So through planting, growing and harvest seasons ahead, you'll have a forecast. Uh week by week, it's really good. And we've had quite a few farmers. A couple of years ago, one of them up in South Dakota planted early because our prediction on our tool showed that it would be a wet spring. And so they got their crops in early, and their neighbors did not get them planted early. They didn't have that tool. And then it was a little too wet to get out in the field. They planted late. And farmer A, B, and C, that are our customers, actually had bumper crops compared to their the people that got their crops in later. So there's a lot of testimonials like that that we have. And we are that's what that's what we do basically.
SPEAKER_04Because I I tend to be scientifically oriented, tell us a little bit, Gary, about about weather patterns, about how the atmosphere sets up. Why is it every fall that it sets up for the next year?
SPEAKER_10There may be some astronomical reasons, and I'm sure there is some astronomical reasons to why the pattern is cycling and regularly. In astronomy, you have the earth rotates on its axis once every 24 hours, a perfect 24-hour cycle. The Earth rotates around the sun once every 365 days, roughly, and that's a what a 365-day cycle. And at the equator, you have equal day and night, 12 hours each. And so you have these perfect cycles at the equator, and then these quarter cycles and half cycles. So astronomists are so great at predicting, not the weather, but at predicting astronomy, they know when an eclipse is going to be, down to the second, 100 years from now. Weather, similarly, is cycling. And what I discovered is that the weather pattern is cycling regularly. Right around a dozen days after the sun sets at the North Pole, around September 22nd, 23rd every year, around October 5th, 6th, or 7th, we've identified as a day one of each year's pattern. So it's probably not a coincidence. I can't prove that it's because the sun set at the North Pole, but astronomical reasons, ocean temperatures, land ocean differences in temperatures, something happens in the fall where the pattern sets up. And the pattern we're in now was identified for California to be wet, for example, this winter, and they're getting hit by a big storm, a whole series of storms as we're talking. And then the Northeast, the relentless winter, the cold outbreaks, and then the snowstorms that have been hitting are on schedule. And that same pattern is going to continue through spring and summer. But it sets up in the fall, a cycle develops. Last year was about six weeks long. This year actually is much longer. This the tides for the longest cycle I've ever monitored. It's 11 weeks long. But that entire pattern repeats over and over again and allows us for our tool to show the forecast, and then for us to provide weather intelligence to open up these risk windows of the cattle might have heat stress and other impacting weather conditions.
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SPEAKER_04So now, Gary, some of those larger weather related incidents, like the really large storms, the the the wind that comes through, when you see these weather patterns and how they shift and how they're setting up for the year, can you actually look at a year and say, wow, I think this is going to be a doozy for this area?
SPEAKER_10Yes. For example, last year was roughly a six-week cycle. So severe thunderstorms last year, not this past Christmas season, but two Christmases ago, there was there were over 100 tornadoes that occurred in a big outbreak on December 28th. Winter outbreaks are not extremely rare. They do happen. When that happened, you line up that with six weeks later, and then six weeks later after that, and six weeks later after that, and you can predict, and we did predict, when that part of the pattern would return. March 14th, 15th, 16th, about six weeks later, major deadly tornado outbreak. Six weeks later, severe weather happened again in the similar regions. So we're making these predictions. Severe weather is just an example of when the worst of the weather is going to happen. And then it happens. So instead of having one day or three days to prepare, you will have three weeks, six weeks, maybe even up to three or six months to prepare.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So with that, we're going to shift to our dairy farmer and get his take on all of this. I'd like to introduce to you guys Justin Oldy. He's a dairy farmer from north central Kansas. Justin, welcome to the episode today.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_04You're welcome. Tell us a little bit about your operations so that the audience can orient themselves on what you're managing every day.
SPEAKER_02We've actually got a couple different sites here in north central Kansas. You know, I grew up on the farm milking 50 cows, 80 cows. You know, my grandpa started like a lot of Midwest farms. You know, now we're milking about 4,400 cows on three sites in northern Kansas, and there's actually one in southeast Nebraska. Farm, raised heifers, and so yeah, it's probably a typical, typical Midwest farm. Just been growing.
SPEAKER_04So now, do you grow your crops or do you buy?
SPEAKER_02We grow about it's about 50-50.
SPEAKER_04So tell us a little bit about your experience with really bad weather and your dairy herd and some times in your past in which the weather really impacted the bottom line.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's farming, so you're always always playing a water water. Yeah, I mean, there'd be multiple times. I mean, we've had late hailstorms come through and designated a corn crop that was almost done. We've uh had that happen in the springtime. We've had, you know, late freezes, we've had, yeah, it's too wet to get on the field. You know, 2019 was just a crazy year before we're trying to get anything done because it was so wet. A little bit of everything here in Kansas.
SPEAKER_04Just to familiarize ourselves, I was able to have a conversation with Dan Coolott, a veterinarian with DFA and agri services recently. But we were talking a little bit about the effect that heat has on dairy cattle and what it means, like where's the cow's happy spot temperature-wise, which is affected by the humidity. But pretty much it's that 55 degree zone, plus or minus 10 degrees, depending on what the humidity is and what the conditions are that the cow is living in for housing and just patterns on the dairy farm. Dan mentioned to me, which I thought was very interesting, is that making it part of the entire team to consider how do we make sure that we can get as close to 55 degrees in terms of an environment that our cows are in every day, and making it a team goal, which I thought was great, making it, you know, we get caught up in the day-to-day management aspects of our dairy farms, milking, managing employees, managing barns. But I thought it was interesting that he brought that goal to the surface for the team on dairy farms to consider and what things can be done to ensure that cows are in that environment on a more regular basis, knowing that these weather patterns hit depending on where the dairy farm is located in the US, north, south, east, west. There was one thing that he said, and I'll ask you, Justin, if you have one on your farm. But he said one of the most important tools that he uses is an is an ananometer. Do you have one, Justin?
SPEAKER_02I have a tool that measures wind, and that's about all I have.
SPEAKER_04And that's it. Well, I must say, for those of you who do or don't have an ananometer and what it is, Dan was he loves that tool because it measures wind, temperature, humidity, and in many factors, uh, the amount of light that your cows are exposed to. He uses it as a tool and he encourages dairy farmers to use it every day so they get an idea on patterns. And then he said, use those patterns to help your farm business make management decisions to consider how we get those cows to that 55 degrees as consistently and regularly as possible. And I I thought that was a great message because again, going back to the beginning of this today, it's about knowledge is power. Gary, you speak to the ananometer because you're the weather guy. But talk to us a little bit about some of the tools that you can give a dairy farmer to help manage those things.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, the the anemometer does measure wind, and then there's other instruments that are included. So when you see an anemometer, you'll see the wind vane, it'll tell you what direction it's going, and those little cups spinning around. That's the anemometer measuring the wind speed and direction. And then the other tools that measure the humidity and the rel the temperature and and the amount of light coming in. I haven't measured that myself yet, but that's just part of the weather instruments that are also included that might be attached to the anemometer. So, but yeah, it's it's great. I mean, I grew up in Southern California, always fascinated by weather. And the first thing I got was this weather instrument my dad got me when I was really very in excited and interested about the weather. So it's very important to have because you want to know what direction the wind is coming from and and different conditions. You know, I haven't thought about the different conditions inside and outside of the barn. I'm sure that Justin can talk to that, but it's all important. The more information you have, the data that you have on your farm is important.
SPEAKER_04So, Justin, talk to us a little bit because I know that you tune in to the weather and Gary and what he has to say about the patterns. What are some changes that you've been able to implement on your farm with what he says? And has it helped?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think it just goes back to preparations, uh, planning, you know, because obviously he hasn't figured out how to uh actually control the weather yet. Some of the things that we've done on the cattle side is you know, you always need to be ready for summertime, but it's like, hey, we might be a little bit delayed this year, a little bit early. Make sure you got the fans going, the sprinklers going, all those types of things. To feed cows to help with the summer heat and you know, for those things to work ultimately. I mean, depending on the product, it's like you want them in so many days before it gets hot. Well, they're also kind of expensive, so you don't want to just sit there and feed it for two months before you have to do it, right? So it's like with with some of the tools, it's just like, hey, there's gonna be heat throughout. Heat spells, like a warm-up about this time. So it's like, okay, well, now I can go if you need two weeks or whatever the parameters are on your product. It's like, okay, I'm gonna you know start feeding this at this point in time to maximize the value out of it and minimize the cost. Flies coming on, you know, that's another big thing. It's like there's some some preventative things you can do for flies. It's like, okay, if you have a better idea of when you're coming, I mean it helps with the timing on the dairy side significantly. The the other part is you know, production. It's like, okay, it's gonna be uh somewhat of a hot year or cooler year, or whatever the case might be. So you gotta have a little bit of plan on the production side on the cows. All of our cows are in free stalls, cross fence, and and so forth. That we have minimizable other, but still it's like legume levels and pump outs and some different things like that. It's like, hey, that might be a short window this year to get this done. Let's make sure that we're really on it at this point in time. You know, and then as far as buying feed, growing feed, you know, he alluded to earlier about well, when do you want to plant? When is there is there gonna be a lake freeze this year? Is there gonna be a wet spring or a dry spring? A lot of those different tools that you can use to make different decisions. Or it's like, hey, it's it might be a short crop this year, so I need to talk to some neighbors who can get another couple fields of corn, you know, make sure I got enough silage. So it's good information, and people can definitely use it depending on their situation.
SPEAKER_04Gary, in a conversation that we had earlier when we were thinking about putting this out there, you mentioned that farmers will get the weather 2020 tools, and it will take them time to actually activate, activate that knowledge into helping out their operation. Tell us a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, as soon as you trust that our forecasts are going to be accurate three weeks, six weeks, or three months in advance, then you can put in your plan and not wait and react. You're proactive. Can we anticipate the timing of those risk windows early enough to prepare? That's a big question. And with long-range cycle forecasting, producers can plan cooling strategies, feed adjustments, water management, you know, which weeks are going to be wet, which weeks are gonna be dry ahead of time. In the year that our farmers have, and these are hundreds of farmers now that have been following us, about six months to a year later, they're like, oh my gosh, this actually is verifying accurate enough so they can start planning and planting that bumper crop while your neighbors don't. So there's definitely advantages to know and to help out with problems that could come up.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I think it's interesting that you said once once farmers start to trust that weather forecast is when they can actually mobilize into action.
SPEAKER_10Right. And I think Justin, Justin will agree that he knows it's gonna get hot this summer. Okay, we all know that's gonna happen. But could there be an impacting heat wave? Right now, we've identified one for centered around the first week of August, will be a five-day heat wave or a 15-day heat wave. The part of the pattern that produces that heat wave that we have in our forecast now for near the end of July and the first half of August, that part of the pattern will cycle through in May. So when it cycles through in May, we're gonna monitor it closely. It'll heat up, possibly dry out. What we call an omega block might form in the pattern. And when that happens, it'll increase our confidence. We're already 75% confidence in this heat wave that's gonna develop. And how can you prepare for that now? Yes, you know it's going to get hot, but there may be some materials, extra materials you can have on hand and ready to go.
SPEAKER_04Instead of the tail wagging the dog, it's the dog wagging the tail. I like to refer to it. I'd like to pivot and introduce to our audience Jordan Wallen, who comes to us from Agri Services Insurance Agency. She's going to talk a little bit about risk management. Insurance is something that many of us lament at times when we write the premium, but we have it because it's a tool for risk management. And I wanted to bring Jordan on today just to talk to us a little bit about how dairy farmers are managing severe weather patterns and its effect on the their farms and how insurances may be able to help.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, well, thank you for having me, Kate. I appreciate uh the opportunity to come and speak with you today. And as you said, insurance can be not a fun thing. I get that very much in dealing with it day to day. I know it's not everybody's favorite topic, or they probably don't love when the insurance guy shows up at their their house or farm. So I get it, trust me. But yeah, like you said, we in the insurance world, we're trying to manage our risk and what the the risks out there can do to our operations. And in as it relates to heat and weather, we've partnered with a a very cool new company, Air Parametric, that has rolled out what they call the milkshake program, which is a heat stress insurance coverage. And as I'm sure Justin could speak to very easily, when there are extended periods of heat, especially heat paired with humidity, that can have a negative effect on on dairy cows. It can hurt production, it can hurt components loss. You can just rack up bills for extra things. As Justin talked about, you know, the types of medicine they may be given to their cows in advance of a heat wave can be expensive, as he mentioned. So this program, the the milkshake program, can help recoup some of those costs in the event of what the the milkshake team calls a triggering heat event. So it's it's a new product, it's very focused on on these heat stress incidents.
SPEAKER_04Tell me a little bit about what is a triggering event.
SPEAKER_07Yep. So a triggering event is what is considered a hit a triggering event, can be a number of different days. It can be either a seven-day event, a five-day event, or a three-day event. And those are all based with the THI number, which is a temperature humidity index. And that THI number is different for every farm. It can it's based on the location of your farm, and that is measured within five to ten miles of your farm. This program offers three or four different THI trigger numbers, which again is just a combination of heat and humidity. It's not exactly like the fields-like temperature, but same kind of idea. If you find yourself hitting that THI trigger number for either a 7, 5, or three-day rolling average, that is considered a triggering event.
SPEAKER_04So, how does a dairy farmer benefit from hitting those events? Is it measured in what normal milk production typically is in a day and what that loss is? How is that made up?
SPEAKER_07Yep. So the the coverage amount is made up by taking a rough estimate of the number of cows you have, working that backwards to figure out what a roughly a week's worth of revenue is, and you can insure up to half of that. You can insure down to lower amounts if you'd like, but they can go up as as high as half.
SPEAKER_04And so it depends it varies on if you drop 10 pounds in milk on average per cow.
SPEAKER_07That's the that's another very nice thing about this product is in the event of a triggering heat event, the claims process is very simple. I'm sure everyone out there has had a claim on a car or their house or you know, dairy farmers on a multitude of different things where you've had to provide documentation and values and depreciation. With the milkshake program, there is none of that. There is simply you experienced a triggering heat event. Did you experience any loss? And that can be, like I said, loss in production, loss of components, extra cost related to keeping the cows cool. If that is the case, you check yes. The full coverage amount listed on your policy for either whether it was a seven-day, five-dent, or three-day event, and those coverages all vary a little bit, would then be sent to you. So it it's a very simple claims process as well.
SPEAKER_04Interesting. It's such a new and interesting concept. Justin, walk us through a little bit heat events at your farm. How many days does it usually take before you're seeing a difference in what the cows are making for milk?
SPEAKER_02Varies upon a lot of factors. Early on in the summertime, you know, the the cows can hold on a lot better than later. You know, you get a couple days over, you know, especially get over 90. Honestly, you get to upgrade is with the high humidity. Cows struggle a lot with that. The thing that really gets us in the summertime is is the overnight count.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, if we can get below 60 degrees, you know, 65 summers in there, cows can hold on to a lot. When you start getting over 70, or you you get these nasty spells when you can't get under 80 degrees at night, cows don't last very long. I mean, they just they got no reprieve from the heat. It's it's it's very rough on them.
SPEAKER_04And I know how I feel when the temperature doesn't drop at night. I'm not an air conditioner kind of person. So outside doesn't get down into the 60s, you can bet the next day I'm feeling tired and and sluggish. So I can't imagine pumping out that much milk that our dairy cows produce today and keeping that up during those times of high temperatures. Just in just because I'm always interested, how much does your water intake increase?
SPEAKER_0230 to 50 percent.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's significant.
SPEAKER_04And making sure you've got plenty of water. I know that last year we struggled with that with our hot summer, just making sure the wells were running at full capacity all the time and able to keep up with the water intake. Jordan, this product, it's based off of milk loss, but also increased costs of keeping milk production up during those periods of time.
SPEAKER_07Correct. So as Justin just said, with the the 30 to 50 percent increase in in water usage, that can lead to higher bills. So that right there is a one and that's in the check yes column for increased costs or loss that would that would be covered by this program.
SPEAKER_04And if we can look into a crystal ball and get a good sense of what's coming towards us in the future during the seasons that are so impactful for dairy farmers in particular, which is spring, summer, and fall, I can imagine that would be a great way to prepare. But it sounds like with what you have going on with the milkshake product, it's also another layer of preparation. And I'm sure our listeners are thinking, oh, but what's the premium associated with that? Any thoughts on that, Jordan, that you want to make us feel a little better about?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, well, first off, the premiums can be very affordable. Just running a couple, and then the other nice thing is the quotes can be done in a matter of minutes. This isn't, again, you when you think about as a dairy farmer working on insurance quotes, it's a long process, requires a lot of information. Not the case with the milkshake program. It's how many cows do you milk and what's the address you're at? And I can turn a quote around in a couple of minutes. And so again, with the with the pricing, you're looking, you know, take a thousand cow dairy, you're looking at a low-end price option. And again, this is an estimate because it's all it's all very individualized based on where in the country you are, but you're looking down to the thousand to you know fifteen hundred dollar range for the least expensive option. And now there are anywhere from you know 10 to 15 options per farm. So you can increase that premium to to cover a more likely event, but the least expensive premium can be as low as you know, a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars for a thousand cow dairy. In the scope of things, and that's uh that's coverage that runs from May to October, and that's uh that covers the the whole summer season for you.
SPEAKER_04May to October. And is that a premium that you pay through the whole year, or you just pay during those months?
SPEAKER_07You can stretch it out to pay it over those months, but you there are different payment options that we can work with.
SPEAKER_04Thank you for that. I know insurance is something that is a challenge because we pay money every month. What I find is that we never want to have to use our insurance because that is usually a crisis situation, an unforeseen situation. You can bet that on any given day there is some farm that is experiencing an unexpected loss, and how great it is that that premium money that you've been paying into is helping that farm get back on its feet. Thank you for making us aware of that product, Jordan. So I just want to bring it back around. We've talked about the weather, we've talked about its effect on milk production in our dairy cows, and we've talked about how we can help reduce risk during these weather patterns that seem relentless on our dairy cows and milk production goes down. I just want to end today. I want to give each of you just a moment your take home that you hope the listener gets from this conversation today. If there's just one thing that you want to impart on them, what would it be? Gary, I'll start with you.
SPEAKER_10Well, first of all, Jordan, interesting topic with your milkshake product. I think it's fascinating. And I would like to know, just ask you a question about if this past summer, a year ago, we would have said there's three or four three and five-day stretches of where they might want to get the insurance in your milkshake shake product. This summer we're expecting that major heat wave that could be a couple of seven-day long periods. So we it's probably good news for your business that we can say that there's a bigger risk. But that's my takeaway right now is just marrying what Weather 2020 is doing with a client, a potential partner like Jordan with this milkshake product on predicting those windows. We have the ability to predict those three-day and five-day and seven-day risks, and with enough accuracy that can maybe prepare the the end user, the farmer, the dairy farmer, to get the right coverage.
SPEAKER_04You learned something today, Gary. That's good. But also just to bring it back around, just you know, having an understanding of where the weather patterns are going to be settling for the year does help a dairy farmer make decisions.
SPEAKER_10The weather pattern is cycling. We're going to go into spring and summer. We're learning a lot more as every week goes by. We already know what the weather pattern is going to look like at each location around the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere, which is a different cycling pattern down there in Brazil and Argentina. But we already know what the pattern is going to look like. But what does that mean? When were these risk windows uh appear? And that's what we're predicting. And we'll learn in the next few weeks, we'll be able to have all those risks out there. One of our products that you can learn about Weather 2020 and really gain confidence in the cycling pattern, it's weather2020.substack.com. That's weather2020.substack.com. It's less than a dollar a day, and you can join there and and learn in the next year how valuable this information is for you.
SPEAKER_04Justin, what would you like to share with your compadres, dairy farmers?
SPEAKER_02Dairy, and like a lot of things, just continually more um competitive is the right word, but you're not there's always you're always trying to out outproduce things because there's always less and less, it seems like per animal, per unit out there. It's just the way, the way of the world. So yeah, I think you're always looking for things that can give you an advantage, some ways to plan, some ways to different ways to think about how you uh run and manage your operation, you know, different water products for different insurance products, or or whatever that may be.
SPEAKER_04Jordan, you're up. What what would you like to say as as the person who has an interesting product to bring to the market as a way to manage some some risk?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I think my main takeaway is just the information is a good thing. And the more information you can soak up and the information you can get from Gary, and when you're a farmer and like in Justin's position, you guys know best what happens on your farm. But if you can pair that with information from people like Gary, people like myself, with new insurance products or just the existing insurance products, work with the teams you have and and just use all the information you can. I learned some things today, so I mean it just stacking more and more information on top of each other can only help you make better, more informed decisions. So as as far as I'm concerned, please use us as a tool. You know, if we can provide you with any more information to help you guys make the best decision for your operation, that's that's our goal. If you'd like to learn more about the milkshake heat stress insurance coverage, you can go to milkshakeins.com. That's M I L K S H A K-E-I I-N S dot com.
SPEAKER_04Thank you. We're gonna bring it back around to risk management today. The thing that I got out of our conversation is that the more you can do to prepare yourself and your dairy business, the better off you will be and you will feel. You will have clarity and your team will too. And with that clarity on how to manage during these severe weather patterns that could possibly come our way comes a peace of mind. You will feel on top of things and as ready as possible for the situations that Mother Nature may throw at you. Knowledge is power. Make sure you do something with it to set yourself and your dairy business up for success. I want to thank you to our guests, Gary, Justin, and Jordan. And thank you to our audience for tuning in and making this one of the most respected industry podcasts since 2019. If you enjoyed today's conversation and do believe that knowledge is power, be sure to subscribe to your morning ag clips to gain the latest local and national ag news, insights, ag stories, and all the ag in between. This episode is brought to you by Dairy Voice and the Morning Ag Clips. And remember, if you aren't subscribed, go to morningagclips.com to get your state specific edition today. And please feel free to reach out if you have any comments or questions pertaining to today's podcast or agriculture and communications in general. I love connecting with readers and listeners alike. Have a great day.