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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E_K_S who wrote (60588)	3/22/2018 2:35:51 PM
From: robert b furman	Respond to of 78774

Hi E_K_S, I live 7 miles south of Manitowoc County. Manitowoc County is huge in Dairy production. There are actually more cows in the county than humans. I also live down the road by about a mile from a dairy operation where all they do is raise calves for a very large dairy farm in Sheboygan County. The Drake Farms - they milk 3 times a day over 3,000 cows. With age and illness they need 8-10 new cows every day. Bottom line is - if you want to see if the herd size is reducing the better indicator is what these calve farmers will pay at auction for young female calves. If it is low - then the herd is being reduced by attrition. Be sure not to watch the price of young bull calves their milk production is historically low. <smile> Price os milk has been hurting local dairy farmers. That being said the cost of corn and hay has been cheap for the last several years - so production inputs are down in feed fuel and fertilizer. Land has been going up but at a slower pace from 5 years ago. Bob

To: E_K_S who wrote (60588)	3/22/2018 6:47:13 PM
From: Spekulatius	Respond to of 78774

I believe sanctions to US AG products are quite likely, if the POTUS continues on his path to increase tariffs. The countermove will try to hit US in Trump voting base and I think AG products (Beef, corn etc) would be a very likely target. I don’t think milk is widely exported (to weighty and spoils easily), so it may not matter for DF. I think private label is here to stay, the retailer have a huge incentive to give them shelf space, be sure they can stack margins from manufacturing with retail margins and by definition, marketing expenses are close to zero. Even worse, Amazon goes down the private label route and I am guessing that they will increase the push by Whole Foods to get more into private label as well. We know already that AMZN puts pressure on margins wherever they do business in.