2020 has definitely been a volatile year and for many, it is a year of lessons learned.
The Weber Family Dairy reopened in Michigan five years ago and operator James Weber also chairs the National Young Cooperators Program. He says that it is important to participate in risk management programs because you never know what the future may hold.
According to Weber, “One of the things is that nobody saw COVID coming. Even when we had early whisperings of it over in Wuhan, we really didn’t know what it was going to become. I was one of the more foolish people who, back in 2019, decided I’m going to take a chance and not pay the fee for the Dairy Margin Coverage program, and I opted out of that and that was a big mistake financially not participating in that. So, a huge lesson learned. Sadly, it came at a large financial cost, but that’s how these things typically go.”
Taking their experience into account, Weber says that a lot of life’s lessons cannot be learned through a classroom but rather through living them out.