From Moo to You!

There is an old joke in agriculture, “How do you make a million dollars in agriculture?” “You start with $5 million!” George Shetler was like a lot of small farmers. He was going broke slowly, painfully slowly. In the 20 year period from 1974 to 1994 almost 400 farms/week went bankrupt. And Shetler would have probably gone down that path if he hadn’t made a shift from commodity production to niche marketing.

Shetler was a dairy farmer, 25 miles from Traverse City, MI, who milked 40 cows. He was a small fry in an industry that was dominated by giants. To survive he had to do something radically different.

In 1995 he surveyed local food retailers to see if there was a market for his grass fed milk. He wrote out a one page business plan which included one infamous line: “Pray!!” He built a micro creamery out of used equipment and started delivering his own milk.

Today he has 38 cows and sells 1,300 gallons of milk and dairy products twice a week to 50 stores in the region. His delivery truck has a set of Texas longhorns bolted to the roof of the cab, which is painted as you would expect in a black-and-white Holstein pattern. The slogan on the side of the truck is “From Moo to You.”

Today he has seven employees and has grown revenues by over four times. Two of his oldest sons have moved back to the farm. Instead of throwing in the towel George Shetler goal now is, “to have something here for the grandkids.”

Shetler is a great example of the path that more farmers should be going down. Unless you can constantly be a low cost producer of commodity products, in the long term commodity production is extremely difficult. By developing niches like Shetler, a farmer can differentiate their product and develop a brandable product that commands higher prices and better margins.