The cost per cow would be prohibitive. A.I. helps the beginning producer to breed their small herd to the great bulls of the breed at a small cost. A.I. is for the producer serious about rapid breed quality advancement. If you are under eleven, you probably have enough time left to do things the slow way. If you are 52 like me, we better spin-out and get with a serious program now.
Breed associations can, by policy, make breed improvement easy or hard.
They can make the cost low for new breeders or make the entry fee high, eliminating some. Let's look at breed association policy as related to A.I. sire certification. The largest cattle breed in the USA is Black Angus. The bull must have a blood type on record. These breeds represent more semen sales than all the other breeds combined.