Economics & Milking Niels Achten works at LIBA as a business economics adviser for the dairy industry. He specializes in responding to economic issues, setting strategic plans, discussing and drawing up economic accounts and business plans. In addition, he has great interest in the relationship between cattle nutrition and economy. This stems from his studies. Niels received his bachelor’s degree at the Catholic University of Leuven; subsequently he received a master’s degree in business economics and cattle nutrition at Wageningen University. He completed his studies with an investigation into the economic optimum production per cow in the post-quota era and the effect of silage resources on milk production. His practical knowledge stems from the family dairy farm with other crops as a sideline.
Jan Hulsen grew up on a farm with dairy cattle and pigs. He studied veterinary medicine and has a great interest in communication. After three years working as a farm vet, he turned his attention to knowledge transfer and consultancy, and developed his talents in the fields of journalism, marketing, communication and business science. With his company Vetvice, Jan developed the CowSignals® concept and wrote the successful CowSignals series of books. Vetvice is active in more than 30 countries with lectures and training in the field of cow signals. Vetvice focuses on dairy farm management. A combination of care for both animals and humans and productivity are central themes. Vetvice advises and trains livestock farmers in the fields of barn design, organization of labour and animal disease preventive management.
‘The first practical economics book for
Economics & Milking Niels Achten - Jan Hulsen
About the authors
dairy farmers – with a low dry matter content’ ’If you cannot measure it, you can’t manage it.’ Economics is more important than ever on a dairy farm. A successful dairy farmer manages his business’s economic indicators and can use them to run the business and make choices. Economics & Milking helps you to pick up your business’s economic indicators quickly, to interpret them and take appropriate action. You will gain insight and become a better and smarter entrepreneur. The important part of economic management is the art of decision-making. Economics & Milking explains which approaches you should use for decisionmaking. Shall I build the new barn? Can I grow without land? How do I get maximum dry matter yield from my land? At what price can I buy in feed? When should I sell a cow? Economics & Milking will show you, in a practical way, how to optimize the economic management of your dairy farm. It teaches you the basics of economic thinking, trading and working on a dairy farm with neat down-toearth questions and examples taken from practice.
Economics & Milking is a publication in the Cow Signals® series. Cow Signals® presents practical knowledge about animal-focused dairy cattle management.
www.roodbont.com
www.vetvice.com
www.cowsignals.com
Every business must make profit The production factors: labour, land, capital and production rights determine the starting principles of the dairy farm. What you do with them is management; therefore, management determines both how much profit you make with the production factors and the return on invested capital, labour, land and production rights. Optimizing management includes making the right choices and improving constantly. This book, Economics & Milking, gives insight into management and offers tools for improving your business’s profits.
T H D IG TE R C Y P TE O O C R P
Management Production rights - YZ XX - 60
Land
A practical guide to a profitable dairy farm
www.liba.be
Economics & Milking
Labour
Capital
Niels Achten Jan Hulsen