[Newfie]

A new report says Newfoundland and Labrador will have a tough time managing escalating demands for health care in the coming decades, especially as its workforce is expected to shrink gradually.

Colin Busby, a senior policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute and one of the authors of the report on managing health care, said people should not assume that the change will happen slowly, like a glacier.​

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundl ... -1.2895657

Not really new, but also related to Peak Oil. NL has done pretty well of late due to Grand Banks oil development and remittances from the oil patch.

That all will run out some day.

Someone is looking ahead. But I doubt that anything of significance I'll be done.

[careinke]

Related to your topic, but not your post. I heard on a podcast the other day that the average age of a US farmer is now 66.

[Newfie]

Related to your topic, but not your post. I heard on a podcast the other day that the average age of a US farmer is now 66.

I think I've heard similar. Can't imagine ever wanting to be a dairy farmer. Talk about unrelenting slavery.

[Pops]

Farming is just a business and an inherited one at that so it isn't surprising that dad still owns the farm and continues to until he croaks. For that matter, 75% of all business owners in the US are over 45.

http://www.networksolutions.com/smallbu ... usinesses/

On topic though, there really are only 2 ways to go with medicine, society based and wealth based, either access is a "right" like the courts and rule of law or a basic education or it is a privilege like buying stuff. At some point all societies will have to decided what level of medicine they can afford, if the old saw about 80% of medical costs go to the last months of life is true, there will need to be a decision on how much can be spent.

Death Panels basically.

[dinopello]

Related to your topic, but not your post. I heard on a podcast the other day that the average age of a US farmer is now 66.

I think I've heard similar. Can't imagine ever wanting to be a dairy farmer. Talk about unrelenting slavery.

It's funny to be hearing that now for me. I was just at a neighbors house over the new year and their kids wanted to be dairy farmers!

It seemed kind of random, but they and many in this neighborhood have their dairy delivered from South Maintain Creamery

A common thing for people with kids is to take them to tours of the creamery and their's had gone in the Fall

It kind of gives you a little hope for the future, that kind of thing. Just a little (don't want the get carried away with hope)/

[Pops]

You know why cows have a long face donnca?

They get their teats squeezed twice a day but only get bred once a year.

[Newfie]

Don't cha know?

I was gonna make a comment about having a hundred princess wives, but decided to be PC. Glad to see I'm not the only one so inclined.

Wanna be a dairy farmer? Go deer hunting. Wake up O dark early and make coffe while dreading stepping out into the freezing cold night air. Then hear a sound and understand it's the farmer running his spreader. Oh F#%^k! Get back in, eat some grub, get some Jack, and see the milk truck coming up the road. Ooooohhhhh F%%%^^^***kkk!!!

The poor guys is younger than me, walks with a curve in his back, goes around with a stool belted to his ass so he can sit and work on teats and stuff.

[dinopello]

This girl is my view of a milker

I don't think even really small commercial dairies do hand milking, they use those auto teat suckers.

When my friends kids (around 7 or 8 years old) said they wanted to be dairy farmers, my guess is they were enamored with the cute animals and the free ice cream, and really at the time didn't feel it appropriate to crush their little dreams with the reality of the back-breaking labor.

As far as getting up early though - cry me a river.

[Newfie]

Yeah, he uses millers. They got to be put on, and off, and the teats require some attending to. It's no a "hands off" operation.

And it's not " getting up early". It's early, cold, rain, snow, blizzard, whatever. They may get a few hours off in the middle of the day, if nothing is broken. Only to do it again. 365, no rest. Relentless.

[Pops]

It's a lifestyle.

But just like all ag, increasingly Dairymen are just production managers. No one milks a thousand head by themselves. Back in the day, nearly every farm had a few head and set out a can or two each morning and a few folks milked 100 head, but those days are long long gone. There are still some small herds but they are barely hanging on with the gyrations of the fuel, feed & milk markets, lots have been put out of business since '05.

[Shaved Monkey]

Re; Aging population
We get told to work longer and save more money in our superannuation so we can retire with an income of 100k a year.
Its a constant barrage of advertising and spruiking in the media from the superannuation industry, business,governments and financial advisers.
I imagine their fantasy is you die working and cost the tax payer nothing or you live your final years spending money like a drunken sailor and stimulate the economy.....lol
Most people are still retiring early and using their superannuation as a lump sum to pay off their mortgage,buying a car or caravan/camper-van to see Australia or going on a long overseas holiday and then going on the government pension.

You can work until you die, trying to save enough money to live on, before you die or you can implement the lifestyle and infrastructure, so you don't need a lot of money and retire early.
I picked the later.

[Newfie]

It's a lifestyle.

But just like all ag, increasingly Dairymen are just production managers. No one milks a thousand head by themselves. Back in the day, nearly every farm had a few head and set out a can or two each morning and a few folks milked 100 head, but those days are long long gone. There are still some small herds but they are barely hanging on with the gyrations of the fuel, feed & milk markets, lots have been put out of business since '05.

This guy is milking about 50. That's prett common in upstate PA. No big operations. But lots of small scale operations.

[Newfie]

Shaved,

Yes, I'm too old to retire early, but even though we did pretty well for a couple starting over mid life, we are still cautious about money.

Some years ago I went part time, learned to live on the smaller paycheck so I could have time off work. I took a few month sabbatical and went sailing. I haven't adjusted back to work life yet, doubt I ever will.

Looking forward to retirement and getting back to my roots, living cheap. I grew up poor, I like having money better, but I like living best of all.

You may like a book called Voyaging on a small Income, by Anne Hill. Not for the sailing, but for the cheap living.

[Pops]

This guy is milking about 50. That's prett common in upstate PA. No big operations. But lots of small scale operations.

I think I read somewhere that 30% of dairies milk 30 head or less. They contribute less than 1% of total production.

[Newfie]

Interesting, ther must be some big operations out there somewhere.

OK, found this bit on wiki. Works out to a 65 head average for PA.

United States
In the United States, the top six dairy states are, in order by total milk production; California,[42] Wisconsin, Idaho, New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.[43] Dairy farming is also an important industry in Florida, Minnesota, Ohio and Vermont.[44] There are 65,000 dairy farms in the United States.[45]

Pennsylvania has 8,500 farms with 555,000 dairy cows. Milk produced in Pennsylvania yields an annual revenue of about US$1.5 billion.[46]

Milk prices collapsed in 2009. Senator Bernie Sanders accused Dean Foods of controlling 40% of the country's milk market. He has requested the United States Department of Justice to pursue an anti-trust investigation.[47] Dean Foods says it buys 15% of the country's raw milk.[48] In 2011, a federal judge approved a settlement of $30 million to 9,000 farmers in the Northeast.[49]

Herd size in the US varies between 1,200 on the West Coast and Southwest, where large farms are commonplace, to roughly 50 in the Midwest and Northeast, where land-base is a significant limiting factor to herd size. The average herd size in the U.S. is about one hundred cows per farm.

[Newfie]

From our front banner today.

http://peakoil.com/consumption/declinin ... owth-by-40

[Newfie]

And another voice from our banner.....maybe everything will be OK, we are still going to grow our population. Africa is coming through for us.

http://news.sciencemag.org/economics/20 ... tinue-rise

And of course, the numbers are just projections, Bongaarts says. “It could very well be that we could have epidemics, or wars, or unrest that creates massive mortality. But to be honest, it would require something of a huge magnitude to alter this trajectory.”

[evilgenius]

Farming is just a business and an inherited one at that so it isn't surprising that dad still owns the farm and continues to until he croaks. For that matter, 75% of all business owners in the US are over 45.

http://www.networksolutions.com/smallbu ... usinesses/

On topic though, there really are only 2 ways to go with medicine, society based and wealth based, either access is a "right" like the courts and rule of law or a basic education or it is a privilege like buying stuff. At some point all societies will have to decided what level of medicine they can afford, if the old saw about 80% of medical costs go to the last months of life is true, there will need to be a decision on how much can be spent.

Death Panels basically.

Yeah, but what's the matter with death panels with dignity? The reason I say that is that, if you push continually toward always doing good, you will find that while you can't always, you can enough to turn the tide. Over time you should see support for advances which might not have ever come under a more authoritarian and taciturn system. Something to think about, anyway.