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Saturday, December 25, 2004

Environment - Dairy farms (and CAFOs) in the midwest

AGRICULTURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Wisconsin dairy feels squeeze - 'Cheeseheads' find it hard to compete with big factory farm operations out West. That is the headline to a lengthy story this week in the Chicago Tribune about the decline of mid-size dairy farms. Some quotes:

Wisconsin has lost nearly four dairy farms a day in recent years. Almost a third of Wisconsin's dairy farmers shut down from 1997 through 2002, with the number dropping from 24,065 to 16,866.

The Deitelhoff farm also is part of another endangered group: midsize farms.

According to the most recent Census of Agriculture, published every five years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and released last summer, the number of tiny farms and very large farms is growing. But midsize farms are on the wane.

In traditional dairy states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and New York, the farms remain relatively small compared to those out West. As a result, the nexus of America's dairy industry is shifting to such places as New Mexico and Idaho with cheap land and fewer people to complain about the smells wafting from a 5,000-cow dairy farm.

Wisconsin still leads the nation in the number of dairy farms, though California is No. 1 in milk production. Wisconsin is clinging to the title of the nation's top cheesemaker, with California closing in fast. Wisconsin residents so identify with the dairy industry that they refer to themselves as "cheeseheads" and voted overwhelmingly that the quarter honoring the state include a dairy cow and a hunk of cheese.

While the number of farms plummeted in Wisconsin, the total number of milk cows declined by only 9 percent, indicating that dairy farms are getting bigger. But Wisconsin still lags far behind emerging dairy states in the West. In 2002, for instance, Wisconsin's dairy farms averaged 74 cows; that same year, New Mexico dairy farms had an average of 836 cows.

To combat the trend, state officials created a program to encourage dairy farmers to expand or to find a niche such as organic, and the state is emphasizing the quality of Wisconsin's dairy products over its Western rivals. But some argue that the state isn't doing nearly enough.

"Wisconsin and Minnesota basically have these invisible signs saying `No Large Dairies Need Apply,'" said Mary Ledman, a dairy industry analyst who grew up on a 50-cow dairy farm in Wisconsin. Noting that other states such as South Dakota and Iowa are welcoming large-scale dairies, she said, "You don't see that kind of welcome wagon in the Upper Midwest, and as a result, we are exporting our dairy industry elsewhere."

Ledman said opponents of large-scale dairies are ignoring the reality of the business. Traditional small dairy farms like the one she grew up on are so inefficient and antiquated that they can't compete; as a result, she said, most children of dairy farmers have found work elsewhere.

"Minnesota and Wisconsin need to decide whether they want a dairy industry," she added. "And if they do, they have to realize that it's not going to look like their daddy's dairy industry." * * *

But Tony Ends, a vegetable farmer in southern Wisconsin, said the state should focus on distinguishing the quality of its dairy products because it doesn't have the space, weather or resources to compete with Western states to produce the cheapest milk. The big dairies, he said, simply create a glut of milk that is driving down the price.

"The price of milk is what is driving farmers out of business," said Ends, who along with his neighbors is fighting to close a mega-dairy in his neighborhood because of health, environmental and animal-welfare concerns. "Wisconsin will never outproduce California. What Wisconsin needs to do is distinguish itself with specialty cheese and quality."

Just north of the Illinois border, in the tiny town of Brodhead, Dan and Mary Monson represent the new face of Wisconsin dairy farms. They operate a dairy that is as much factory as farm, a meticulous, high-tech operation with 1,500 cows and 20 full-time employees. Those with experience at milking start at $2,000 a month for a 54-hour work week. * * *

The cows at Spring Grove Dairy spend their days in long metal barns on concrete floors with fresh sawdust and shredded tires as bedding. A computer keeps close tabs on how much milk each cow is producing via a computer chip around each animal's neck.

The manure is regularly flushed out of the barns into clay-lined lagoons behind the barns, and the liquid manure is later injected into the soil of surrounding farmland as fertilizer.

While Monson said his "ag neighbors" have been supportive, he acknowledged that some others have griped about the smell. But he points out that his family, which includes four children, lives on the property, and he argues that his farm has done more good than harm to the community. * * *

Overall, the Agriculture Department's five-year census provides a much bleaker picture of what is happening on American farms than a November USDA report that trumpeted record farm incomes for the second year in a row. But even an author of a farm income report said recent high prices for everything from soybeans to milk will give farmers only a temporary "breather" from the pressures of consolidation.

"It's not going to change the outcome in the long run," said Roger Strickland, a USDA analyst, adding that the high prices eventually will come down. "It might slow it down a little. The thing that is driving consolidation is cost efficiency. The smaller guys are dropping out because they can't compete."

Some argue that what is happening in agriculture is little different from what is happening elsewhere in the U.S. economy, with midsize groceries and hardware stores being replaced by mega-stores such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot.

"The general picture is just that the economies of scale keep increasing," said Bruce Gardner, an agricultural economist at the University of Maryland. "The size of a farm that makes the most sense is larger than it used to be."

Technological advances and changes to the structure of farms have driven the changes, Gardner said. As an example, he cited the advent of "contract" farming in which farmers raise pigs on contract for a meatpacking company rather than owning the animals themselves. The result has been larger hog farms and fewer hog farmers, a 37 percent drop from 1997 to 2002, according to the census.

But others contend that consolidation all along the food chain, from seed companies to meatpackers, has hurt the ability of midsize farmers to compete. In the pork business, for instance, it's easier and cheaper for a meatpacker to contract all its hogs from one huge farm rather than buy them from 10 smaller farms.

The critics also argue that U.S. farm subsidies favor industrial agriculture at the expense of smaller farms.

"The fix was in to concentrate agriculture," said Tom Lyson, a professor of development sociology at Cornell University, who said the loss of midsize farms devastates rural communities. "It's the Wal-Marting of agriculture."

An Indiana blog I read regularly, bigeastern, from North Judson attorney Marty Lucas, contained a thoughtful entry this week, written from the viewpoint of a small town Indiana attorney, that I believe is relevant here. I'm going to reproduce it in full below because it appears there is no way to link to individual entries in Marty's blog:
CAFOs - 'the smell of money'? I attended a continuing legal education program in Indianapolis on Monday -- topic: Zoning and Land Use. A good program, put on by NBI, but the pervasively pro-development viewpoint of the legal profession always troubles me. One of the speakers (and a good one too) made a comment that I found particularly telling on the subject of CAFOs.

The speaker described the odor emanating from these facilities as the smell of money and commented that people living in rural areas should expect to smell that smell, and shouldn't complain that it interferes with 'having a cookout'. I have a couple of major problems with this point of view:

(1) It's condescending, even exploitative, to rural people. The person making such a comment almost invariably lives in an 'exclusive' (meaning expensive) suburb, and there is no way they would tolerate the 'smell of money' at their own home; and,
(2) CAFOs aren't an established fixture of the rural landscape, they are a new concept, so the point that we ought to expect to smell them in rural areas is factually inaccurate.
While it's true that an old-fashioned hog or horse barn would sometimes create a strong odor (mostly in spring, right after the thaw), this would be a seasonal, and generally short lived event. I grew up on a cattle farm; cattle in reasonable numbers roaming about in a field simply do not smell bad. I always found them kind of handsome looking out there, and reasonably clean creatures too given half a chance.

We've been having cookouts, going fishing, and taking walks out here in the country for generations. Yes, at times there is a little smell of 'nature's fertilizer', but typically from a manure wagon not a 200,000 gallon pit. I want to be able to plan a cookout with guests, go for a hike, or simply open my window without smelling the wastes of 50,000 hogs.

What gives the CAFO owner the right to trash his neighbors' property, and ruin their quality of life? Perhaps it is the 'smell of money' for the CAFO owner, but until they start sending me a check adequate to compensate for my loss, then it's the smell of lost money to me and the rest of the neighborhood. People choose to live in the country so they can breath fresh, sweet air, and drink pure water, and get together for a nice cookout on a fine summer day. Here's an idea -- put your CAFO in the 'burbs and you can smell the money and shop at Wal-Mart at the same time!

If CAFOs are coming, then the odor and manure disposal issues have got to be solved. Simply driving into town in a BMW and telling me that I should learn to like it doesn't work. You want to run a business, it's on you to do so without hurting others, even 'rubes' that live out in the sticks.

Oh, and just once, I'd like a CLE to include an attorney that isn't a tassle-loafer wearin' lap-dog for corporate interests. Just for variety.

"CAFOs" are concentrated animal feeding operations. If you type "CAFO" in the search box in the right column, you will retrieve links to a number of other, related ILB entries.

As reported in a quote from the ILB entry Dec. 23rd about the newly-appointed IDEM Commissioner, "[Thomas] Easterly will have to address widespread problems with bacterial pollution in waterways, from septic systems, wastewater treatment plants and livestock operations."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 25, 2004 09:12 AM
Posted to Environment