Traditonal Farmer

Let me tell you and everybody else that I'm not posting this link to start anything or to be adversarial. It's just that when I came across it,you were the first one I thought of. It's a gray day,my dairy herd has been gone for fifteen years and one month. When I read the article on a day like this,despite having sold them in my own time and with no regrets,I had a pretty heavy heart when I read it. If it was happening today with my beef cows the way it's happening with these guys selling their dairy herds today,yes,I'd be taking it just as hard.
The article doesn't mention it until a ways in,but the person who wrote it was speaking of his organic herd. I'm posting it to tell you that in a way,you're right about the mega operations,but sadly,they're taking the organic market too and putting the small guys out who thought they'd found a safe place in ag. I'm as sorry as you are for what the "economy of scale" has done for your niche too.

It's an interesting,although sad read.
Link

That is an interesting read. I remember as a child in the late 40's my Uncle had about 20 milk cows. We never had to get them, they just showed up at the gate at milking time. I would walk out, open the gate and climb up on it to get on a cow to ride back to the barn. The cows didn't care at all. During milking I would rub them with a curry comb and pull ticks. Ellis

I agree with you,the organic folks already have the Mega organic operations named,Industrial Organic.The hard core organic folks don't like them.The really successful organic operations I know of are direct selling to consumers or are forming small coops to process their dairy products.They are doing what dairies did when I was a kid develop local customers for their brand.But all farming these days is suffering from a huge surplus of commodities which
is directly opposite of what the standard 'We're all going to starve....' stuff.In my opinion farming is mostly going to divide into two basic groups the huge operations with thousands of acres and thousands of whatever animals like chickens and hogs now and the small direct to consumers operations which in my area has a huge customer base at their door step but not in really rural areas where customers are few and far between.Small operators with cattle like myself are already getting less because of the lack of buyers at local markets and I can't see it ever getting any better only worse.But here is the 800 lb Gorilla in the room no one seems to be figuring in these days is that the Federal Gov't for all intents and purposes is flat broke and many things they throw money at these day is going to run out.What you think will get cut first Social Security that involves millions and millions of voters or Federal
crop insurance that will involve only a few thousand voters? No gov't money going to farming would really change things how it would all pan out is anyone's guess.In farming just like
everything else there are no guarantees.

couple of farmers retired this fall around me, sold out and rented out. One was dairy, other was crops.

Both younger than me.

Just had enough. Grass is greener elsewhere.

Kinda sad. They both were doing it for several decades, but far from retirement.

Would be hard to look at ag as the future if I were in my 20s.

Seems to get a big push into Ag every couple of decades.

When the plow and reaper replaced arm strength hoeing and scythe swinging.

When the tractor replaced the horse. And the hybrid corn replaced the open pollinated.

Maybe when the 4wd big machines came along about the same time herbicides came along.

The latest round is technology, managing many acres under one umbrella and sort of being able to keep on top of it. Add in the cheap labor of the current import labor force (trying not to be political).

Each step let?s fewer people control more land and more management, a smaller circle of real players in the farm game.

If organic is profitable, there will be those that scam the system, as that one deal we just read about; and the big players will try to manage into a large farm operation with higher profits for their mega acres as well. If we somehow want to feed the folks living in downtown Chicago and LA and NYC then really organic would have to go big time. Selling some freezer beef and turnips out the end of my driveway doesn?t serve very many people or reach very far?

It will be interesting what comes next.

Most other businesses have gone through the same. Sears and Montgomery Wards pushed out little stores.

Now Sears and Montgomery wArds are pushed out. The grocery stores have merged into maybe 2 large names controlling nearly every store out there?

Auto makers are down to 3, and they are rapidly shutting down actual car making going to pickups and suv stuff only.

Ag dealerships are going down to about 40-50 actual dealer groups across the country no more local dealers, and I would be surprised if we keep 4 big Ag companies in the country. (And I?m counting Kubota as one.) wonder which will merge in the next 10 years.

Poultry and hogs merged up to a closed loop years ago.

Dairy is currently consolidating into a vertical closed loop.

Beef and crops are left to go. Sooner or later?

Paul

You know more about it than I do,but are the small processing co-ops competing for shelf space at the stores? I'd think the grocers would be giving preference to the large processors who's conventional products they stock already. Seems to me too,and maybe I'm wrong,that if a consumer can stop at Wal Mart on their way home from work and buy something labeled Orgainc,that they wouldn't spend hours walking around a farmers market to stock up.

Never say never, but I never buy anything labeled Organic.

Dad had 16 cows when I took it over in 1971. I added another 12 in 1975 when a neighbor with a factory job decided he didn't want to go to the barn all winter another year. I ended up with a 44 stanchion barn. I would have kept it up if the boys had wanted to. I would have even done whatever I had to to help them expand,but the older boy had his own passion and the younger boy said he saw how rough it was for us some years when he was growing up and that wasn't how he wanted to spend his life.
I don't miss milking cows,but I miss working with Dad and the boys and I miss how the whole neighborhood was engaged in the same enterprise. Kinda like tractor collecting I guess,when we say it's not about the tractors,it's about the people who do it.

Randy, My best friend from high school quit dairy farming in 94 the same year I did. They had a dairy of distinction or was it extinction! He works feeding animals at a large dairy in the finger lakes. Picture is the new truck he feeds cows with cost more than a quarter million dollars. I went by his old farmstead recently and the barn has fallen in that is sad.

A very good read. Growing up the youngest of 8 on a 36 cow dairy in the gravel hills of central Mn. A lot of what he reflected on struck home with me. Pa quit Smithing in town and bought the farm in ?58. His ability to fix and make do also allowed him to improve and update. The farm was 248 acres of half crop and half pasture as the hills fell off to the meadow with a mile off lakeshore. The faces and names of the herd are still remembered along with a small herd of pigs we used to give basket balls to and watch them team up in their games. The barn got a parlor, a new crib, new granary, new silo (took down the wooden one), new barn roof, house updates and an ever improving line of machinery. All that and 8 kids manning the fork handles. The farm was paid off in ?81 and looking back now I think the smile on his face told the tale of things to come. He was president of the creamery when it closed and went to Mid-Am. The town was changing in those ways described in the article with feedmills, implement shops, and hardware stores all feeling the pinch. We farmed dairy until ?87 when I graduated and Ma and Pa were retirement age. They kept on with some beef and crops until Pa?s death in ?94 the whole time being steward of the land. That farm is still a pastured beef farm because of the rolling land, but the neighborhood is vastly changed with herds gone and missing fence lines giving way to crop acres. The pasture woods are dotted with new houses and the changing face of rural America.

I was just thinking the other day about a place east of town. Hands down going away the largest dairy around here in the 50s and 60. He was a WW 2 vet who came home and farmed,so the kids,and there were a lot of them,were around my age. I remember the kids coming to school with notes saying they didn't get their homework done because they didn't have time after their chores. Two of the youngest boys would drive trucks around the farm when they were so small that one would stand in the seat and steer and the other would sit on the floor and work the pedals.

All that hard labor and sacrifice for all those years and now the place has been sold outside the family and is growing corn and soybeans. The roofs are blowing off the barns,the Harvestor and grain bins stand empty,the house is standing,but it's rented out. It just makes a person feel bad to think about all those years that so many members of a family worked so hard,and now it's all for what?

Just better hope your neighbors don't start growing corn. I had one to the west of me and had to spend an extra $75 an acre to control the weeds in my field because did not control his. The last year they tried organic they ended up dishing the crop under in the fall do to all the weeds and no ears. They ended up quitting the dairy and are just grain farming the normal way again.

Randy, exactly, Too many farms are gone around here and they won't be back. Marginal land so it gets turned into house lots.

The major dairy states with their infrastructure will continue business as usual.

A good number of small markets in my area that sell small label meat,dairy,jams,jellys,homemade pies,cakes, bread etc mostly run by Mennonites.One near me does a tremendous business for its size,now nothing close to Walmart for sure but they do well and probably have a higher profit margin than any large grocery store.I heard the owner said when he built this store and moved from the old one he was afraid he was building a store too big.Now he wishes he of built one 2X as big.But like I've said in the past this area has lots of well off people that have a lot of disposable
income,so in a very rural area where there are mostly minimum wage jobs probably wouldn't work.

In my county the farmer growing GMO crops and using chemicals would be the one to get run out first(LOL)

The very big dairies might but even they will have challenges. The last processing plant within the NYC limits closed its doors a few years ago and that is a harbinger of things to come in terms of demand. Dairy was viable in NY State because of the demand from cities such as NYC, Buffalo, Rochester, and down the line but consumption habits have definitely shifted away from mass consumption of fluid milk. The truth is we only need a fraction of the production when glimpsing 10, 20, or more years down the road. A lot of the soil is marginal in a lot of locations so grain corn-soybeans is not a viable substitute for forage crops of which also helps with water driven soil erosion prevention. The last time I was deep in the Southern Tier of NY there were well over a dozen dairies that either got sold or closed but the buildings are either not used and in decline or they have been bulldozed versus being viable farms when I was going to college back in the 1980's and driving past them. Would not surprise me the next time I am down by Hornell, NY that a few of the 3-500 cow dairies are now sitting idle. Further, that the ground and buildings on some are sitting unused.

I?m a stones throw between Chabani and the two local Hood plants, my market is very secure. The NYC plants have been closing one by one, Elmhurst being the last one around 18 month ago.

I had read that too Randy and if I had enough sense I would have posted it. I remember when Dad and Mom sold the dairy herd in 1966. I remember Mom crying. I was 11 but it was something you don't forget. The guy did an excellent job of explaining how things are.

Very sad the way things are going now days. Who would have thought when we were young and working our tails off eating out of the garden raising chickens, pigs and cows. That we had it so much better than today, when if it doesn't come out of a restaurant or a microwave they won't eat it.
I can remember working for some old Germans for summer sausage sandwiches and soda. Sometimes a beer or homemade wine at the end of the day LOL

my dairy herd has been gone since February. I am feeding and breeding the heifers that came from our cows until they are bagging, and then selling them. I have been here since 1980, but most of the herd traces back to my and my brother's 4-H animals from the '60s. I was a little sad to see them go, but ready to accept that it was time to slow down. one of my bigger regrets is the loss of business for all the service people and businesses that I helped support with the cows. I'm using enough of my farm to feed the heifers and have fields for a plow day in the spring for our tractor club.
there were 7 farms shipping milk in about 6 miles along the river when we came here in 1980. We were the last to go. the rest of the 7 farms' land is used now by either a big dairy, or a corn/soybean farmer.

Thats happening across the border as well. Here in Ontario, the smaller beef and pig farms exist only in the Amish community...even hobby or part time farmers have given them up. Smaller dairy farms...less than 50 cows...are loosing numbers fast, but some are still hanging on...for now. Dairy policy has kept them going, but that too is changing. Our small town once had several feed stores, 6 machinery dealers couple of welding and repair shops...now main street has more antique or second hand shops and you can't buy a bag of feed anywhere....and the current residents have moved from urban centres to here where their government cheque lasts longer.
Ben

Very interesting article Mr Goodman wrote and how he hit the nail on the head. I to sold my dairy heard 18 years ago when the kids got older. I remember the auction of dairy cattle and part of me went down the road to. I have friends who got on the organic milk market and went though the waiting period to be organic,changed the whole way they farm with no chemicals and were happy and made money. Now they to are feeling the money crunch with the large organic dairy farms not doing the same to be certified as they were. Are they bitter? You bet they are and I side with them. Farming is constantly changing and always has. I really wonder some times if it is for the best. The farm numbers and families are going down and so are the small villages and towns that supported them. The theme of get big or get out is with everything from cars to stores to churches to schools to restaurants to farms. I really wonder sometime if it is for the best. Thanks for letting me vent, that article I just read was so true but it hurt.

The laments of crybaby losers tell their story more effectively than they might wish, such people accept no responsibility for the havoc caused by their lifelong advocacy of and votes for government intervention in all aspects of their lives and businesses, then they whine and moan when that intervention proves destructive, as it always does. Complaining and bleating about cheats, unlevel playing fields, government programs which favor others more than themselves and competition are all sure tells that another dupe has reaped as they sowed.

When I was in high school, I worked for two brothers who had about 60 cows that they milked twice a day, four at a time. I thought they had a pretty good life at the time (mid 60's) but they took the first buy-out and never looked back. Both are still living and are about 90 years old. I talked to one of them recently, and he said the buy-out was the best decision they ever made.

We?re soon getting out too,the facts are the facts. We are too small and in efficient to be sustainable more than a couple more years. We could use a new barn and full time help but we?re too small and don?t have the cost of production figures to make it work. It?s my own fault and I might as well man up and admit it. No point in crying over it. Not much different than a multi generational corner store that can?t stay in business because there?s a Walmart up the street that sells everything they do for less then they?re able to buy their stock.