I read a few years back in stock talk an experienced dairyman talking about how the market signals continually suggested that he expand his herd, not huge but methodically from 100 or 200 up to 400 or 600 cows, as that is how the overhead cost structure worked out to spread costs across all milkers, before the market had finally changed so dramatically that even at that size it wasn’t working compared to 2-10k cows.

Here I have seen retailers change their methods.  A couple three 50’ NH3 bars and dual 1000-gal tanks or bigger instead of 20 different rental bars.  1 or 2 liquid sidedress rental bars.  Regionally dispatched dry and UAN fertilizer via semi trailer from a railway terminal instead of bobtail tenders and little mix centers everywhere.  A yellow or green sprayer switching between a dry fert box and a liquid rig, and a second sprayer so there is one corn and one bean machine.  One TerraGator for lime and dry spreading, and they team up with a couple sister plants and put 2 or 3 TerraGators on lime at the same time to keep the guy in the loader moving the whole time, instead of a bunch of floaters and pickup sprayers at each plant.  Semi tenders instead of 1000 gallon trailers.  GIS mapping and planning and work orders batched into computerized hot loads instead of one guy with a grubby pencil and a scale and a graduated cylinder dumping chemicals into a mixing cone.

There is a lot of overhead expense in the various retail channels, and when they make moves to address that, we hear comments on here.  Retailer mergers with less competition, plant and elevator closures, slower and more expensive service from farther away, wait times.  Less field staff coming from farther away.  Zoom meetings and webinars instead of free hats and steak dinners. 

I think the market seems to also be suggesting that grain commodity operators figure out their overhead and land costs.  Many of us seem to have missed the 2024 and 2025 forward marketing boat, the dash to spend the input and machinery cash occurred for many already for the 2024 season, locking in many costs, and locked in CapEx loan payments could prove challenging if the bite came out of the wrong sized apple.  Timing is everything.