Creeping across the pasture land. Got dirt on
the boots and a working hand. From the milk house
home to the auction call. These are the folks
standing strong and tall. Yeah, this is... Welcome
back to the Bullvine Podcast, the place where
we get real stories from the people shaping the
dairy industry. It's good to be back. Today.
Today, we're sharing a story that, honestly,
it just stopped me in my tracks. We usually sit
here and we talk about the gains, right? We talk
about genetic progress. We talk about yield increases,
all the latest tech that's going to squeeze another
margin point out of the operation. Right. We
focus on the wins. Out. On the forward motion.
Exactly. But today. Today we're talking about
a loss, and I don't mean a bad harvest or a drop
in the milk check. No, this is different. This
is a missed opportunity, so massive, so astronomical,
that it actually has a specific dollar sign attached
to it. And it is not a number we usually see
in this industry. Not even close. When we looked
at the sources for this deep dive, the number
that jumped out wasn't in the millions. It was
in the billions. Twenty? Two. Billion. It's a
number that's hard to even wrap your head around.
It really is. And I want to set the stage here
because this isn't just about money. It's about
people. This topic, it hits close to home. It
does. You know, we spend so much time on this
show talking about the cows, the crops, the iron.
But this conversation, this is the kind that
makes you look at your own kitchen table. It
makes you look at who is sitting there, who is
talking, and maybe more importantly, who isn't
talking. It makes you wonder if you're making
a mistake right now, today, that you won't even
realize for another 20 years. We're digging into
what the researchers call the succession gap.
But that sounds a bit academic, doesn't it? It
does. It sounds like a textbook chapter. What
we're really talking about is a story about who
we think are farmers and who we actually train
to be owners. Right. And to understand the stakes,
we have to start with the $22 billion woman.
The woman who should have been a dairy farmer.
Her name is Diane Hendricks. Now, if you follow
business news at all, you might know her. She
is currently the richest self -made woman in
America. Richest self -made? She's worth over
$20 billion. She owns a company called ABC Supply.
Which? for anyone who hasn't built a barn lately,
is the largest roofing and siding distributor
in North America. It's massive. Yeah, if you've
put a roof on a house or a shed in the last 10
years, there's a really good chance Diane Hendricks
moved those shingles for you. So she is a titan.
Logistics, supply chain, massive workforce management.
She's a genius at cost control. But here is the
hook. Here is the part that just keeps me up
at night. Diane Hendricks grew up on a dairy
farm in Osseo, Wisconsin. Population 1 ,800.
You can't get more heartland dairy than that.
Exactly. She was one of nine daughters. A classic,
chaotic, wonderful Wisconsin farm family. Nine
daughters. Wow. And when you read her interviews,
she doesn't sound bitter about the lifestyle.
She speaks really warmly about it. She loved
the cows, the chickens, the dogs, the cats. She
loved the land. But she isn't in dairy today.
She's in roofing. Because despite... Growing
up on that farm, despite living that life every
single day, she wasn't allowed to milk the cows.
She wasn't allowed to drive the tractors. And
that right there, that is the critical constraint.
That's the whole story in a nutshell. For the
result, she took that legendary dairy farm work
ethic, which we all know is real. I mean, it
is the best business school in the world. Oh,
absolutely. And she applied it to roofing instead.
She built an empire, but she didn't build it
in agriculture. And that raises a massive question
for everyone listening. How many other Diane
Hendricks types are currently sitting in farmhouses
right now? That's the question, isn't it? It
is. How many young women are sitting there, you
know, incredibly capable, brilliant with numbers,
disciplined, gritty, maybe even better at reading
a cow than their brothers. But they're being
quietly. maybe even unintentionally pushed out
of the industry. It's haunting. And before we
go further, I want to be really clear. We are
not just talking about fairness here. This is
not just a social justice conversation. No, this
is cold, hard economics. This is about business
retention. Exactly. Dairy taught Diane Hendricks
the discipline. It taught her the cost control.
It gave her that foundation. And then the industry
essentially watched that return on investment
walk straight out the lane and down the road
to a completely different sector. If you are
a business owner and every single farmer listening
is a business owner, you have to ask yourself,
can I afford to let my best talent walk away
just because of tradition? It's a huge question.
Let's go back to the beginning of her story,
though, because I think it's important to understand
the nuance here. OK. I think it's easy to paint
the father. in this story as the villain. You
know, the mean old patriarch who just didn't
think girls were good enough. The stereotype.
But looking at the source material, that doesn't
really seem to be the case, does it? No. And
I think that's where the farmer translator moment
comes in. We have to translate what was actually
happening in Oseo in the 1950s and 60s. Right.
Diane's father had a strict rule. Leave the heavy
stuff to your brother. Leave the heavy stuff
to your brother. That's a direct quote. It is.
Now, to a modern ear, that sounds discriminatory.
It sounds like he's saying you're weak or you're
not capable. It does. But knowing that generation
and knowing the brutal reality of farming back
then, I honestly don't think it was coming from
malice. I think it was coming from love. Love.
How do you get that? Protection. He looked at
the grind. He looked at the manure, the frozen
fingers in a Wisconsin winter, the back -breaking
labor of lifting milk cans day in and day out.
And he said, I don't want my little girls to
have to suffer through this. He thought he was
giving them a gift. He thought he was protecting
them by keeping them out of the barn. That is
a tragic kind of irony. It is because the unintended
consequence is that by protecting them from the
grind, he was actually excluding them from the
future. He was raising them as labor or maybe
help, but not as leadership. Not as owners. Not
as owners. He was training a helper, not a successor.
And Diane felt that. At 10 years old. 10. She
made a promise to herself. She watched her parents
working themselves to the bone and she said,
I don't want to be a farmer and I don't want
to marry a farmer. Oof. That hits hard. At 10
years old. It does. And when you really probe
the emotion behind that decision, it wasn't that
she hated the work. It wasn't that she hated
the farm. It was that the farm signaled she didn't
belong in the driver's seat. The farm was a place
where she was always going to be second string.
And if you aren't allowed to play the game, Why
would you want to stay in the stadium? You wouldn't.
Exactly. If you're never given the ball, eventually
you stop showing up to practice. She went and
found a game where she could be the captain.
And she won that game to the tune of $22 billion.
She certainly did. But I'm going to play devil's
advocate here for a second. Go for it. Because
I know there are people listening on their tractors
right now thinking, okay, that's one story. That's
one woman who became a billionaire. But generally
speaking, maybe daughters just don't want to
farm. Maybe it's biology. Maybe it's just...
The supply side argument. Yeah. I'd love to pass
the farm to my daughter, but, you know, she wants
to be a nurse. I hear it all the time. So is
it true? Well, this is where we shift from storytelling
to the hard data. And the data, it's pretty sobering.
We have research here from Iowa State University,
Keeney Lou, Wending Zhang, and their team. They
did the 2019 Iowa farm transfer survey. And they
basically anticipated that exact objection. So
they controlled for wanting it. They controlled
for experience. They looked at kids who were
actually there on the farm doing the work, showing
up every day. Okay. So let's look at the numbers.
What did they find? They looked at farms that
have already named a successor. So the decision
is made. The ink is dry. Right. First, the headline
number. 57 % chose a son. 57. Okay. Only 8 %
chose a daughter. 57 to 8. That's a chasm. That's
not a gap. It's a chasm. But here's the part
that completely dismantles the she doesn't want
it argument. The researchers dug deeper and looked
at the probability of being chosen based on actual
hands -on experience. Okay, so this is where
it gets interesting. This is where it gets infuriating.
A daughter with agricultural experience, so she
is there, she knows the farm, she's put in the
hours, she can do the work, has a 20 .7 % chance
of being chosen as the successor. One in five.
Even if she's qualified and present. One in five.
Now let's look at the sons. A son without agricultural
experience, maybe he's been off at college, maybe
he's been working in the city, has shown zero
interest. What do you think his odds are? Well,
logically, if we're running a business, an inexperienced
candidate should have a lower chance than an
experienced one. So, I don't know, 10%, maybe
15? Wait, 36 .3 %? Wait, say that again. 36 .3%.
Let me process that. A son who does not know
the daily operation has nearly double the chance
of inheriting the farm compared to a daughter
who does. Right. Wow. And if you look at a son
with experience, his odds jump to 65 .2%. That
is... That actually makes me angry. Same parents,
same cows, same parlor, almost triple the odds
for an inexperienced son compared to an experienced
daughter. It's indefensible from a business perspective.
It should make you angry. It forces us to look
in the mirror. It means we are not running a
meritocracy. We like to say we are. We like to
say, I hire the best person for the job. But
these numbers say we are hiring the gender, not
the resume. The authors of the study, they point
explicitly to cultural norms of gender roles.
It's hard to admit. It's uncomfortable. But we
often train one kid like an owner, and we train
the other like a helper. So how does this happen?
Because I refuse to believe that farmers are
sitting down at the kitchen table with a spreadsheet
and saying, well, she's a girl, so check that
box. She's out. It's not that explicit, is it?
No, it's almost never a formal meeting. It's
what you could call the messy middle. It happens
in the silence. It happens in the assumptions.
We call it the thousand small choices. Walk me
through that. What does that look like? Okay,
picture a Saturday morning on the farm. You're
14 years old. The stock trailer needs to be backed
up to the chute. Who does dad throw the keys
to? The son, usually. Right. Who gets pulled
into the meeting with the banker when the operating
line of credit is being renewed? A son. Who is
sitting there listening to the nutritionist talk
about ration balancing and ingredient costs while
the daughters may be inside helping mom with
lunch or out washing the bulk tank. She's doing
chores. He's getting briefed. Exactly. And then
there's the language we use. It's so subtle.
Who hears the question, so what are your plans
for the farm? Versus the statement. You can do
anything you want with your life. That's a huge
difference. What are your plans implies you are
staying. What are we going to do? Whereas you
can do anything implies go find your success
somewhere else. We support you. Precisely. It's
a push out the door disguised as encouragement.
The Iowa researchers actually identified four
specific forces. Let's call them the four forces
that drive this exclusion. And again, these are
practical realities, not malicious plots. Okay,
let's untack them. What's the first one? The
first is what they call the better farm, better
son effect. Okay, what does that mean? The research
shows that stronger farms, farms with more equity,
more land, a higher dollar value, are significantly
more likely to pick sons. Why would that be?
You'd think a more sophisticated, more valuable
business would want the absolute best CEO, regardless
of gender. You would think. But it's actually
about risk aversion. When you have a massive
asset, a multimillion dollar legacy that took
generations to build, the conservative instinct
kicks in. Parents default to the traditional
model to protect that asset. It's a heuristic.
It's a mental shortcut. If we give it to the
son, that's the standard path. It feels safe.
If we give it to the daughter. That feels like
a deviation. That feels like a risk. So the more
successful the farm, the harder the glass ceiling
is to break. That's depressing. It is. The second
force is one I know every farmer listening struggles
with, or at least thinks about. It's the surname
concern. Oh, the mailbox? Yeah. The name on the
mailbox. The mailbox. It's the worry about giving
the farm away from our name. If a daughter marries,
traditionally she changes her name. Parents worry
the farm leaves the family name, that the legacy
is broken. But legally, that's just nonsense.
Completely. Modern LLCs, corporations, trusts,
the legal entity doesn't care what your last
name is. The milk check clears the same way.
Right. But the emotional barrier, that's concrete.
The ego of the previous generation wants to see
their name on the side of the truck for another
30 years. It's vanity over viability. In many
cases, yeah. That's what it boils down to. What's
the third force? This one's called sibling competition
asymmetry. That sounds like a mouthful. Break
that down. It basically means the playing field
is tilted from the start. In families with only
sons, nine out of ten times, a son gets the farm.
It's almost automatic. Okay. But if there's a
mix, if there are sons and daughters, the daughter's
odds of being chosen just drop off a cliff. So
she's not just competing, she's competing against
the default. Exactly. She isn't just proving
she is capable. She has to prove she is significantly
more capable than the default option, who is
her brother. She has to be twice as good to get
half the consideration. That's a good way to
put it. And the fourth force might be the most
heartbreaking. They call it the validation gap.
Explain that one. Sons often just assume they're
the heir. They grow up thinking this will be
mine one day. It's an unspoken entitlement. It's
in the heir. Right. daughters on the other hand
they need to be explicitly told they need to
actually hear the words you could run this place
and if they don't hear those words they assume
they can't they assume they aren't wanted in
that role they read the silence as a rejection
that is that's heavy but you know i want to pause
here and flip the coin for a second okay because
you mentioned something in the pre -show that
really stuck with me you said this whole system
it actually hurts the sons too It absolutely
does. We focus so much on the daughters being
left out, but we forget about the sons being
trapped. Trapped? How so? Well, think about it.
When you limit the successor pool to just the
sons, those boys don't always feel chosen. They
feel drafted. Like it's military conscription.
That's a powerful word. Drafted. Imagine stepping
into a multi -million dollar asset. Knowing your
name is on that debt note. Knowing the legacy
of three generations is squarely on your shoulders.
And feeling like you never actually had a choice
in the matter. You were just the only boy. Or
the oldest boy. That is a crushing, crushing
burden. I've seen that. The burnout. The resentment
that builds up over the years. It leads to farms
failing, not because of bad cows or bad weather,
but because the person running it never actually
wanted the job. They just felt obligated to take
it. Right. By widening the pool to include daughters,
you are actually liberating the sons to choose
freely as well. You want a successor who wants
it, not one who feels sentenced to it. So we
have the problem. We have the data. We have the
emotional toll on both sides of the gender line.
But we aren't here just to admire the problem.
Right. We want to fix it. How do we stop the
next Diane Hendricks from walking away? It comes
down to one fundamental shift. And if you're
listening to this while you're scraping the barn,
turn up the volume. This is the key. Okay. You
have to understand the difference between chores
and decisions. Break that down. Chores versus
decisions. You touched on it earlier. Diane Hendricks
might have done chores. She might have fed calves,
swept the alley, washed the pipeline. That is
helping. That is labor. It's a task. It's a task.
To create a successor, you have to hand over
responsibility. You have to hand over decisions,
real ones, with real consequences. So go feed
the calves is a chore. Right. Go feed the calves
is a task. A robot can do a task. An employee
can do a task. A decision is, here's our calf
mortality rate. It's too high. Here's our feed
budget for the next quarter. I want you to figure
out why we are losing calves and tell me what
we need to change. That's a completely different
level of engagement. That is ownership. That
is a problem to solve, not just a job to do.
I love that framing. But let's get specific because
ownership can sound a little vague. Give me a
real world example. Let's talk about genetics.
That's usually dad's domain, right? He sits with
the AI rep, drinks coffee, flips through the
sire directory, picks the bowls. Exactly. And
usually, if the daughter is involved at all,
she's doing the data entry. She's the secretary
putting the registrations into the computer.
So how do we change that? You hand her the proofs.
You give her the budget. And you say, we need
to lower our somatic cell count and boost our
protein components to hit the new premium on
the milk check. I want you to pick the mating
sires for the next 50 heifers. And then you leave
the room. And this is the hard part. You leave
the room. You let her wrestle with the tradeoffs.
Net merit versus TPI. Calving ease versus frame
size. She has to weigh those variables. What
if she messes up? That's the most important part.
If she picks a bull, you wouldn't have chosen.
You have to let her use it. You have to let her
make the mistake. That's scary. That's real money
on the line. It is. But think about the ROI on
that mistake. If she picks a bull and two years
later those heifers hit the parlor and they have
bad udders or they're hard to breed, she learns
a lesson that no lecture could ever teach her.
She owns that failure. But if they hit the parlor
and they are out milking your best cows, She
owns that success. That is how you build a Diane
Hendricks. That's how you build an owner. It's
about moving from how do I do this to why are
we doing this? That's it. Exactly. Let's look
at another area. Financials. We see it all the
time. Dad decides to build a new heifer barn
and the kids just show up to pour concrete. They
are labor. They just do the work. They don't
see the planning. Instead, try this. Throw the
project at your daughter. We have $200 ,000 for
a retrofit. I want you to get three quotes on
ventilation. I want you to model the energy usage
of the variable speed fans versus the standard
ones. I want you to calculate the payback period.
Wow. And then I want you to come present your
recommendation to me and the banker. You're putting
her in the hot seat. You're treating her like
a partner. You are validating her intellect.
You are saying, I trust your brain, not just
your back. No, I have to bring up the elephant
in the room. I know where you're going with this.
Because every time I have this conversation with
older farmers, they eventually say, Yeah, but
Sarah, farming is physical. It's still hard work.
My daughter weighs 120 pounds. She can't throw
hay bales like her brother. She can't wrestle
a 1 ,500 -pound cow. And 20, 30 years ago, that
argument had some weight. It did. Farming was
incredibly physical. It was brute force. But
today... Today, that argument is dead. And you
know who killed it? The robots. Technology. Technology.
Robotics are the great equalizer. We saw a 2016
Swedish study that showed farmers using robotic
milking systems reported significantly fewer
shoulder and back issues. Why? The machine is
doing the heavy lifting. The robot is doing the
heavy lifting. The robot is doing the repetitive
strain work three times a day, every day. So
the job itself changes from muscle to management.
Exactly. Right. Robots don't care about gender.
They don't care how much you can bench press.
They care about data management. They care about
consistency. They care about attention to detail.
We've covered this at the Bullvine before. The
robotic systems that push the most milk per worker
are the ones where the management is absolutely
dialed in. Right. It's about reading the graphs
on the computer. It's about noticing that Cal
412 is ruminating 10 % less today and figuring
out why. It's about preventative maintenance
schedules. And frankly, those are skills where
daughters often excel just as much, if not more,
than sons. We have a great example of this from
a Dairy Farmers of Canada profile. Alicia, a
farmer from Saskatchewan. Yes, Alicia is a perfect
example. She manages the robots and all the herd
data. Her husband focuses on the crops and the
field work. She isn't a helper on the dairy side.
She is the expert on the most critical asset
on the farm, the cows and the milking system.
She is an equal partner. An equal partner. Because
the technology allowed her to leverage her brain
over her brawn. And looking internationally,
we have Connie Lind from Denmark. That's another
great story. Connie is fantastic. She didn't
wait around for the home farm. She realized she
might not get picked, so she went out and bought
her own farm. She became the Young Farmer of
the Year. Wow. She wasn't a helper. She was in
charge. And eventually, she went on to manage
a massive investor -owned operation. She proved
that competence has absolutely nothing to do
with gender. I think that is so important. Sometimes
you have to build your own door if the one at
home is locked. But for the parents listening,
you don't want your daughter to have to go build
her own door at ABC Supply or at another farm
down the road. You want that talent at home.
You need that talent at home. Which brings us
to the ripple effect. Why does this matter for
the industry at large right now? The economic
reality is harsh. We all know it. The USDA census
from 2017 to 2022 shows a 39 % drop in U .S.
farms with milk sales. 39%. Nearly 16 ,000 dairies
gone. Just vanished in five years. Consolidation
is accelerating. The herds are getting bigger.
The margins are getting tighter and tighter.
And in that environment, you cannot afford to
have mediocre management. You cannot afford to
have someone running the show who doesn't want
to be there. You need the absolute best possible
person in that driver's seat. And yet. We see
a bright spot in the data. Female producers are
up 26%. Yeah. They now make up 36 % of all producers
in the U .S. So women are stepping up, despite
all the barriers we've been talking about. They
are. They are. And Farm Credit Canada and FAO
data suggests that closing this gender gap fully,
utilizing this incredible talent pool, adds billions
and billions of dollars to the economic output.
It's not small change. From a pure risk management
perspective. This is how I explain it to bankers
and consultants. If you limit your successor
pool to just your sons, you are fundamentally
increasing your business risk. It's that simple.
How so? You have fewer options. You have less
flexibility. If your chosen son decides halfway
through his 20s that he wants to be a graphic
designer in the city, or if he gets injured,
or if he's just not good at management. You are
stuck. You're in a terrible position. You have
put all your eggs in one basket. Whereas if you've
developed your daughters as well. You have a
bench. You have depth. You have depth. You can
pick the best athlete for the position. Legacy
decisions based on the surname on the mailbox
are a gamble on the farm's survival. Prioritizing
the competence of the manager is an investment
in that survival. That is a powerful way to frame
it. It's not about feelings. It's about survival.
And there's one more layer here. The grandchildren
factor. Tell me about that. You change the pattern
now, and you change what the next generation
sees as possible. If your grandkids grow up seeing
Aunt Sarah running the robots and making the
financial calls with the banker, they have a
completely different worldview than if they only
see Uncle Mike doing it. It normalizes it. It
normalizes it. You aren't just fixing this one
transition. You are setting the stage for the
next 50 years of your farm's success. That is
the long game. Farming is always, always about
the long game. All right. We have covered a lot
of ground. We've talked about the billionaire
roofer, the depressing data, the subtle ways
exclusion happens, and the high -tech solutions.
But I want to bring this right down to the ground
level. Let's do it. Imagine someone is listening
to this on their tractor right now. The engine
is humming. They're thinking about their own
kids, their own family. What is the one thing
from the story they should sit with? What is
the practical takeaway? I would give them a little
piece of homework. I'd call it the decision test.
The decision test. Okay. Yes. And it's based
on that core idea. You don't create successors
with chores. You create them with decisions.
Right. So here is the immediate homework. Tonight,
when you get in the house, take a notepad, a
real piece of paper, and write down each of your
children's names. Okay. Every child. Every single
one. And next to their name, write down what
they own. not what they help with, not helps
with harvest or feeds the calves. What decisions
are theirs and theirs alone to make? What part
of the business do they truly own? And if that
list is blank next to your daughter's name, if
a daughter's list is just labor and paperwork
and not spending real money or choosing genetics
or managing people, then you have to look at
that paper and admit the truth to yourself. You
aren't training a successor. You are training
a very loyal employee. That is a hard look in
the mirror. It is. But once you see it, You can
start to fix it. And the second part of the homework
is the conversation. You have to have the validation
talk. What does that sound like? What are the
words? It sounds like this. Yeah. You could run
this place if you wanted to. Just that simple.
Just that simple. Say it out loud. Tell your
daughter explicitly, even if she's 25 and working
as a nurse in the city, even if she is 15 and
still in high school, you have the capability
to run this business. And then just be quiet
and see what happens. Watch her eyes. You might
be shocked to find that she has been waiting
her entire life to hear someone give her permission
to even dream about it. That is powerful advice.
It's about opening a door that she might not
even know is there for her. Exactly. We started
with Diane Hendricks. She built a $22 billion
empire because she had an ownership mindset.
She did. And she proved that a dairy farm upbringing
is the best business school in the world. It
teaches you grit, cost control, everything. It
really is. But don't let that mindset walk off
your farm just because of tradition. Don't let
the next $20 billion CEO leave your laneway because
she wasn't allowed to drive the tractor. Keep
that talent home. Use it. Your farm's future
will be better for it. That is a challenge worth
taking. That's another story from the Bullvine
Podcast. These are the people building the future
of dairy. And remember, the future looks different
than the past. And that's a very good thing.
Find more at www .thebullvine .com. Subscribe
so you don't miss the next profile. We'll see
you next time. Stay safe out there.