Ag Lenders Learn About ND’s Expanding Livestock Industry

At this year’s Outlook Conference for Agricultural Lenders, NDSU Extension Livestock Development Specialist Jon Biermacher spoke about the future of the livestock industry in North Dakota. “Riverview Dairy is opening two dairy farms in the state soon. The one that’s proposed for Hillsboro is huge. It’s 25,000 cows, all under confinement. The other one’s half (at Abercrombie) with 12,500 cows.” The new dairy operations will provide plenty of opportunities for farmers in the state. “We did a little work to try to calculate the value of feed they would need for both sites. Some quick calculations put it somewhere between $75 (million) and $100 million in feed, depending on what prices are each year. So that’s a lot of feed.”