Profitability for Dairies

This study challenges claims that grazing is cheaper than feeding:

"The ERS-USDA data are inconsistent with conclusions highlighted in an article [link added]
appearing in the summer 2006 issue of The College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
Quarterly. The article, which discusses a report authored by Tom Kriegl and Ruth
McNair (K&M) entitled, “Pastures of Plenty”, states that managed grazing techniques, such as rotational grazing, result in lower costs of production per hundredweight for dairies. These conclusions are based on farm-level records data for the years of 2001 and 2002, while the ERS-USDA data in Table 1 are for 2000. These differences in the years when the analyses were performed could explain why there are some differences in the ways the costs for grazing operations compare to the costs of production for conventional dairy farms.
The major difference between the costs reported by ERS-USDA and those underlying the conclusions of the other study relates to labor. The ERS-USDA data include measures of labor costs but the other analysis of grazing dairies presents neither estimates of labor costs nor measures of the quantities of labor used on dairies. This lack of labor information in the K&M study is important because it means this study gives no evidence of whether in fact grazing results in lower total costs of production. In contrast, the ERSUSDA dairy data gives a more complete accounting of the costs of conventional and grass-based dairy systems which includes labor costs."

Apparently, I grew up on a continuous grazing dairy farm--i.e., the cows were on pasture all the time the grass was growing (though we did turn them into the hay fields after harvesting hay). A rotational grazing plan divides the pasture into paddocks and moves the cows among paddocks every 3 days. In the Wisconsin study, they had to get 30 percent of forage by this. (A reminder that cows in northern states must be fed hay and grain a good part of the year. Nothing like coming from 0 degrees into the barn.

I may have stumbled into a duel between rival economists (regression analyses at 10 paces) but it's a reminder of the complexity of an economic analysis.