The problem that I addressed is the hard time that many 4-H and FFA members and/or their parents seem to struggle through as they feed the livestock that these students show. The issues that people battle seem to be high costs, either too few or too many options and rations that are incomplete requiring several feeds to be fed daily.
The way that I propose ending this issue is to simply develop new feeds. When I was in high school, one of my agriculture education teachers worked with another teacher to develop their own hog feeds. Once they had the ingredients and amounts that they wanted to be in it, they took it to several feed mills until they found one that was willing to produce it. For the next several years, the feed that we all fed our hogs was this 'homemade' blend from a local feed mill that was significantly less expensive (about $13-15 per bag, depending on the price of the ingredients, versus $20-25 per bag). There were two issues that came about with this; eventually, the mill started charging more and more per bag either due to how popular the feed was becoming or due to ingredients becoming even more expensive, and the hogs were consistently a little bit worse than their littermates that were receiving the name brand show feeds. As a result, most people stopped using the feed mill and simply continued purchasing the name brand products again.
In order to battle this problem, I propose pairing with a feed mill and working to agree upon a maximum price that they will charge for a new feed. From there, the product can be sold through schools. I know several middle and high schools that, rather than students purchasing feed on their own and bringing it to the school, have a feed plan where the advisor purchases all of the feed with the department's money and the students have to essentially pay the school back for that feed. By contacting local teachers and getting them to try either hog or cattle feed for one show season at a lower price, the feed mill would get more business and the students would be able to turn a higher profit margin on their animals for the year. Doing this would be a win-win scenario. After that season is up, the schools would be likely to return to a similar agreement the following year if they felt that the feed was good enough to continue buying, and any students that have animals at home are likely to begin purchasing the feed as well if they see how much lower the cost per bag is.
Hi Taeler,
ReplyDeleteI really like your idea, and it makes sense especially on a local level where locally made feed can be easily transported to consumers. I also think it would be a good idea to provide a service that pairs local feed manufacturers with those looking to buy feed, so that a quota can be set for the amount of customers needed for that mill for a set price. This would allow customers options for feed, and allow the makers to open themselves up to more customers through a third party.