Is there Such thing As a Happy Medium in the Agriculture Industry?

Farming/ranching is a job that requires the market economy to be stable for it to become a successful bussiness. Also do many other jobs. A very important issue that has been intriguing my mind these past couple of days is that cattle prices are low, and feed prices are high. Is this good? Is this bad? Or does this put us at a happy medium? I have discussed this with my social studies teacher who is also a farmer, one of the joys of going to a small rural school you can relate everything you learn to life out on the farm. I've also talked to my dad about it, in fact from these valuable sources I learnt alot about what are some factors affecting cattle prices, and grain prices.

Recently we just had an election, and the majority Conservative party was elected. This being that Canada is now ruled by a majority government the Canadian dollar is certain to go up. For many Canadians this would be a good thing, not for us fellow beef ranchers. One of our main buyers of our beef are Americans with the Candian dollar rising this does not set them up for interest in buying our Candian Beef at all. In fact right now the Canadian dollar is higher than the American and also our cattle market price has went down. It is not looking to good for those who are trying to sell fat steers on market right now.

This early Spring mother nature gave us alot of rain, so much rain that it delayed our seeding season by quite a stretch. Tractors were stuck everywhere and no one could get there crop in to have a nice long growing season. Shorter growing season does not mean as much product. This meaning grain prices are going to sky rocket. For fellow grain farmers it's looking like a mighty good year for you to make some dollars on what crop you were able to get in during this wet spring.

Now for the real question! Is there such thing as a happy medium in the Agriculture industry? For my familys farm there just might be. Us raising both cattle and grain we bring in income from both sides of farm. When cattle prices are not good we have the crop to back us up, when the crop gets hailed I can hear my dad saying in the back of my mind "thank god for cows"! But I can't help but wonder what other farms do in situations like this. Not all farms raise both grain and cattle, meaning that they are dependant on one source for all of their income. All I can say from my sixteen years of experience watching my dad look at the sky and wonder when the next hail storm is coming, or raving about getting a good price for our calves in fall is that farming or ranching is no smooth ride. There's a lot of bumps in the road things that affect it like the dollar, government, and weather. But no one ever said it was an easy job now did they.