Operating a Farm

Yes, I run a farm. I enjoyed running a farm. It was by far the most interesting thing a person can do. But you see, my farm is rather special. The cows in my farm do not belong to me.

I loaned the cows from this group of cattle ranches, and in return, I will give them part of the milk of which I have obtained from them. Well, the amount of milk I obtained, part of it goes to them, the rest of right, I sell it away to the market where only fellow farmers and myself have access to.

And even though I do the milking of the cow, what I did to the cow- was that I loaned the singular cow further to other smaller wanna-be farmers that are looking to use the milk for other products like cheese and cake. Well, I am a farmer by nature, and I don't really engage in these type of activities.

Well, you might think that what I did was illegal- well it is not true. You see, I go to the monthly meetings at the Cow Farmers Association and report whom I loaned my cows to and how many dies as a result. As a result, and on top of paying a monthly membership fee, the association helps to guarantee up to a certain amount of cows, they will subsidize should anything happen.

So nowadays, we began to open many cow sourcing centres of which to procure my cows. But the market is bad. There are too many cows in the market because the government decided to give steroid enhancers to the calf-birthing cows resulting in large quantities of cows giving birth and at the same time, there are lesser small time farmers looking to loan our cows as well. Well business is really tough.

The good thing is that since we have so many cows, the chances of we running out of cows is very low and the rate at which it dies is therefore only a small percentage of our population- as statistics shows that cows are healthier when they are put in large numbers.

Recently, the price of cheese, cakes and other dairy products is falling- and at the same time, transportation cost is rising. To make matters a little worse, the government have decided to promote a campaign for cow retention- in order words, milk your own cows and make your own products- making business even more difficult for my cow partners.

Therefore, some of my cow partners are finding it hard to make ends meet. And if they can't pay me back the milk, I can't pay it back to those whom loaned me the cows in the first place.

Well some of my fellow colleagues in the Cow Farmers Association have come up with an ingenious idea, why not sell the cow that we have to other areas who needs it more than I do. In order words, even though we loaned the cows, but our milking rate is very low, so why not sell the cow wholesale to other places [ I heard that country X is running out of cows so we can sell it to them and to make back the difference here]- get the funds and buy milk from our market and give it back to the cow loaners in the first place. And when the cow loaners wants it back, we can recall from them asap as well.

And some of my colleagues decided to set up a cow Trading operations. In order words, while we loaned the cows to our local small-time farmers- scrutinizing them- and at the same time, what we do is that we will see a larger portion to these external buyers and use the difference to return the milk back to the cow loaners. This arrangement is perfect because happens is that the cow loaners are happy with the interest, the the external buyers are happy and I am happy because I make even more than just taking difference paying them and keeping it for myself.

And in time to come, what colleagues did was- seeing the profitability of the operations began to use this method more than more often; meaning that more cows was apportioned for selling than for milking.

Things got even profitable when I can use one cow as a collateral for the milk of ten cows- just so long as one year later, I am able to produce the milk for them to use and of course so long as the price keeps going up, I can sell it even before one year is up. Brilliant eh. And I don't even need to do any milking or buying. I just need to call the desk that's all.

And eventually, the trading desk was calling the shots as they could use the cows to get ten times more cow and since they are very aware of the seasonality of the cows and the conditions of which to buy and sell, they were making a large portion of my farm's revenue.

But I thought that was big problem. What if one day, the cow loaners decide to recall the cows together or suddenly the cows that we loaned to dies or that all those future milking revenue doesn't materialize, and so I suggested to separate the cow leasing business from the trading desk. This is to ensure that good cows are not given away for a quick profit and only those extra cows left can be used for buying and selling, and the rest kept in case, the cow loaners wants them back.

Then suddenly, the mad cow disease struck. The government gave us growth steroids and chemically induced milk to pay the loaners first- hopefully, we can get by- otherwise everyone will have nothing to eat and live. Let's just hope against hope that we can pull through then.