7 ms·

My own family's dairy farm with 60 head of milking cows is currently set to go bust in the springtime. There's always been a steady drip of family dairy farms g

My own family's dairy farm with 60 head of milking cows is currently set to go bust in the springtime. There's always been a steady drip of family dairy farms going bust but the pace has really picked up over the last few years with milk prices being so low. Meanwhile there's a CAFO less than a mile down the road from them with over 5,000 head of milking cows that continues to grow and gobble up all the farmland in the area. They've had multiple manure spills, one of which ran down the hill onto my parents' land, into the creek that runs through their land and killed all the water life (that one they got a small fine from the EPA for). They have literal manure lagoons that they don't know what to do with. Right now they're getting permits to put in pipelines to move it around. I always wanted to move back near my folks but I worry about the drinking water quality due to this CAFO, with the probable high nitrates from spills and the high capacity wells sucking out all the drinking water. I shudder to think of what would happen if the planned manure pipeline burst somewhere and a large amount of manure seeped out underground before being noticed. edit: I'm currently writing a blog post about this that I will post here next week; there is a lot of interesting tidbits to the story including the failure of farmer and dairy cooperatives. There is another post on the front page right now about Costco's vertical integration with chicken farms; well Wal-Mart is doing the same thing with dairy.[1] edit2: A commenter had asked why my folks didn't go organic but deleted the comment before I could reply. We have some family friends who did that (organic crops as well), and it worked for a time, but the CAFOs have caught up on that as well.[2] Their story is very similar to this gentleman's: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/dairy-farming-is-dying-after-40-years-im-out/2018/12/21/79cd63e4-0314-11e9-b6a9-0aa5c2fcc9e4_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/dairy-farming-is-dyin... [1]: https://www.dairyherd.com/walmart https://www.dairyherd.com/walmart [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-your-organic-milk-may-not-be-organic/2017/05/01/708ce5bc-ed76-11e6-9662-6eedf1627882_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-your-org...

onetimemanytime 8y ago
Sorry to hear about the farm. Can you talk a little about the financial aspects...cost, milk price etc of your small farm? Do larger farms make a little on each cow but multiplied by 5000 ends up being a decent sum? I guess buying tractors, building sheds etc might be more cost effective with larger farms--spread over more. Also pricing power.
- kickout 8y ago
  Not OP, but work in Agriculture. Margins are so thin, you either need crazy scale (5000+ head/acres) or crazy specialization (think organic). Without scale, one bad year and your out of business.
- waffle_ss 8y ago
  Thanks. I had asked my folks about that as well because it didn't make sense to me they could just "make it up in volume." They didn't know the secret sauce, but said they are able to negotiate better prices with the creameries due to their volume, and they use their own milk hauling trucks. It's also an open secret all their regular farmworkers are illegal aliens (i.e. cheap labor). With their volume I believe they're also able to pay better rates for other contracted work like feed harvesting, fertilization, etc. as well. But I don't fully comprehend it myself.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    > all their regular farmworkers are illegal aliens How do they keep an arm's length away from that hot potato? Contracted through a temp worker agency?
    - waffle_ss 8y ago
      No, it's more of a don't-ask don't-tell policy. Workers provide fake social security numbers that the CAFO is under no obligation to thoroughly vet. The workers with fake SSNs will never be able to collect their benefits on those wages, either - they end up in the IRS's suspense file. I know this because I married the daughter of the (Mexican) guy who started the Mexican immigrant labor pipeline at that CAFO, when they first were starting to get big and transitioning to large milking parlors.
      - dbcurtis 8y ago
        > Workers provide fake social security numbers that the CAFO is under no obligation to thoroughly vet. AFAIK unless something has changed in the past few years, it is worse than that. It is illegal for employers to challenge documention that is at surface level in order. Source: a friend that is a resturant owner told me that if a dishwasher applied for a job using suspicious but superficially consistent documents with all the blanks filled in, he could be penalized for asking for further proof. He knew he had illegals working for him, but had a file drawer full of correct documentation in case the INS came calling.
apacheCamel 8y ago
It is sad to see all the ramifications of these large operations. Between environmental and economical impacts of the area around them, how do we let these get so big? I wonder how many other families are being hurt by the CAFO near your family's farm. I feel for the people who are just trying to run a sustainable business with these huge farms constantly looming in the background.
- waffle_ss 8y ago
  > how do we let these get so big? My understanding is there was a big change in policy during Nixon's administration, when agribusiness lobbyist Earl "Rusty" Butz became USDA secretary.[1] His mottos were "get big or get out" and "plant fence row to fence row." [1]: https://grist.org/article/the-butz-stops-here/ https://grist.org/article/the-butz-stops-here/
- cpursley 8y ago
  > how do we let these get so big Farm subsidies (artificially cheap grains for feeding cattle) and the inheritance tax (children are forced to sell the land after parents die due to tax obligations)
  - kickout 8y ago
    Disagree BTW. Subsidies are an easy target. Affect very little to the bottom lines I've been privy to (managing input price is biggest factor IMO). Subsidies are an artifact of scale--optics look bad when a big operation is getting 100K USD when they farm 10k acres
    - gyrgtyn 8y ago
      Is corn not an input?
    - kickout 8y ago
      In dairy farms yes. Was trying to generalize.
  - woodruffw 8y ago
feistypharit 8y ago
Wow, my uncle in the same boat. He actually now rents land back to the large farmers and is making more than when he was farming it himself. The new farm is massive, similar number of cattle, methane collectors, manure pipelines...but the owners are far away and the people doing it are just your rural farmhands doing the work because they like it and it's. All that's available. The owners are making $$$$. Modern farming is a mess from head to toe, been in the making for 40 years.
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  One of the benefits of living in a semi-rural area btw is that you can easily participate in changing this situation. During the Spring, Summer, and Fall months I can go and pick up fruits and veggies from a local grower -- just show up on their property during regular business hours, go and pick it yourself if you feel like or just pick up one of the boxes they've prearranged. I can get meat from a good local ranch too. I don't think there's any nearby dairy though. Mega-agribusiness is one of the consequences of increasing urban living. To support really large, dense cities, everything has to be scaled way up. A dairy farm is no longer producing for the 100,000 people in a 20 mile radius, it's producing for millions, and the waste it creates scales up too. In an ideal world, these mega-producers would be less harmful to the environment than the equivalent number of small producers, because there would be some benefit from economies of scale. But in this world, the mega-producers largely see regulation and environmental caretaking to be cost centers and they pursue the cheapest solutions, which usually involve hiding the problem or paying somebody off or buying themselves some legislation. Smaller producers meanwhile have a harder time getting away with that.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    ...economies of scale. The other thing is local carrying capacity. A small herd might not have anything done to the manure, and through the wonders of bacteria and fungi not harm local streams at all. Once the operation is big enough to more closely resemble a Kansas feedlot, that shit's toxic waste.
  - Johnny555 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
zepearl 8y ago
>>Their story is very similar to this gentleman's: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/dairy-farming-is-dyin.. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/dairy-farming-is-dyin.... If I understood correctly the (last) parts of the article mentioning "organic" (here in Switzerland we call it "Bio"), you miss something like this... The livestock must be adapted to the agricultural area, location and climatic conditions. Livestock may not exceed 2.5 DGVE per hectare of utilized agricultural area in the valley area. At higher altitudes and in unfavorable site conditions, animal stocking must be reduced. ...in your rules/legislation, or am I wrong? (that's an extract from the BioSwiss regulation https://www.bio-suisse.ch/media/VundH/Regelwerk/2019/DE/rl_2019_1.1_d_teil_ii__30.11.2018.pdf https://www.bio-suisse.ch/media/VundH/Regelwerk/2019/DE/rl_2... , at the end of chapter 4.1) EDIT: and additionally (chapter 4.2): Basically, the feeding of the animals takes place with in-house bud food. Conversion feed from own Production may be used up to a maximum of 60 percent of the ration (conversion farms: up to 100 percent). Supplied feeds serve only to supplement the company's own feed basis and are as possible organically grown. Young mammals must be nourished on the basis of unaltered milk, preferably breastmilk become. All mammals are to be fed with unchanged milk for a minimum period. The Minimum period depends on the species. The feed components must be left natural and the techniques of feed preparation used should be as much as possible be close to nature and energy-saving. Feed must not contain traces of genetically modified organisms or derived products of genetically modified organisms that are proportionately above the statutory limits.
- typeformer 8y ago
  No, organic regs in the US are not at all equivalent with Swiss Bio regs.
vitaflo 8y ago
> I always wanted to move back near my folks but I worry about the drinking water quality due to this CAFO, with the probable high nitrates from spills and the high capacity wells sucking out all the drinking water. Same. Always wanted to move back to into country farms where I grew up with a small hobby farm, but these mega farms are causing real headaches in that area. 15 miles south of where I grew up, one of them has contaminated most of the wells in a very large radius around the farm and surrounding community. My parents don't have this problem, but it's obvious all of the local farms are being consolidated (and have been for years). Difficult to buy property when you don't know the result of the impact of these mega farms until later.
scruple 8y ago
The thing that has always been terrifying to me about those CAFOs are the fact that there can be 5,000 head of dairy cattle and you'd _literally_ never know it unless you were told.
rdlecler1 8y ago
Would you be interested in publishing this on AgFunderNews? A lot of your target audience will be there. Ping me and I’ll connect you with the editor.
sizzle 8y ago
Any thoughts on the feasibility of vertical farming in the future?

onetimemanytime 8y ago

Sorry to hear about the farm. Can you talk a little about the financial aspects...cost, milk price etc of your small farm? Do larger farms make a little on each cow but multiplied by 5000 ends up being a decent sum? I guess buying tractors, building sheds etc might be more cost effective with larger farms--spread over more. Also pricing power.

kickout 8y ago
Not OP, but work in Agriculture. Margins are so thin, you either need crazy scale (5000+ head/acres) or crazy specialization (think organic). Without scale, one bad year and your out of business.
waffle_ss 8y ago
Thanks. I had asked my folks about that as well because it didn't make sense to me they could just "make it up in volume." They didn't know the secret sauce, but said they are able to negotiate better prices with the creameries due to their volume, and they use their own milk hauling trucks. It's also an open secret all their regular farmworkers are illegal aliens (i.e. cheap labor). With their volume I believe they're also able to pay better rates for other contracted work like feed harvesting, fertilization, etc. as well. But I don't fully comprehend it myself.
- ams6110 8y ago
  > all their regular farmworkers are illegal aliens How do they keep an arm's length away from that hot potato? Contracted through a temp worker agency?
  - waffle_ss 8y ago
    No, it's more of a don't-ask don't-tell policy. Workers provide fake social security numbers that the CAFO is under no obligation to thoroughly vet. The workers with fake SSNs will never be able to collect their benefits on those wages, either - they end up in the IRS's suspense file. I know this because I married the daughter of the (Mexican) guy who started the Mexican immigrant labor pipeline at that CAFO, when they first were starting to get big and transitioning to large milking parlors.
    - dbcurtis 8y ago
      > Workers provide fake social security numbers that the CAFO is under no obligation to thoroughly vet. AFAIK unless something has changed in the past few years, it is worse than that. It is illegal for employers to challenge documention that is at surface level in order. Source: a friend that is a resturant owner told me that if a dishwasher applied for a job using suspicious but superficially consistent documents with all the blanks filled in, he could be penalized for asking for further proof. He knew he had illegals working for him, but had a file drawer full of correct documentation in case the INS came calling.

apacheCamel 8y ago

It is sad to see all the ramifications of these large operations. Between environmental and economical impacts of the area around them, how do we let these get so big? I wonder how many other families are being hurt by the CAFO near your family's farm. I feel for the people who are just trying to run a sustainable business with these huge farms constantly looming in the background.

waffle_ss 8y ago
> how do we let these get so big? My understanding is there was a big change in policy during Nixon's administration, when agribusiness lobbyist Earl "Rusty" Butz became USDA secretary.[1] His mottos were "get big or get out" and "plant fence row to fence row." [1]: https://grist.org/article/the-butz-stops-here/ https://grist.org/article/the-butz-stops-here/
cpursley 8y ago
> how do we let these get so big Farm subsidies (artificially cheap grains for feeding cattle) and the inheritance tax (children are forced to sell the land after parents die due to tax obligations)
- kickout 8y ago
  Disagree BTW. Subsidies are an easy target. Affect very little to the bottom lines I've been privy to (managing input price is biggest factor IMO). Subsidies are an artifact of scale--optics look bad when a big operation is getting 100K USD when they farm 10k acres
  - gyrgtyn 8y ago
    Is corn not an input?
  - kickout 8y ago
    In dairy farms yes. Was trying to generalize.
- woodruffw 8y ago

feistypharit 8y ago

Wow, my uncle in the same boat. He actually now rents land back to the large farmers and is making more than when he was farming it himself. The new farm is massive, similar number of cattle, methane collectors, manure pipelines...but the owners are far away and the people doing it are just your rural farmhands doing the work because they like it and it's. All that's available. The owners are making $$$$. Modern farming is a mess from head to toe, been in the making for 40 years.

thaumaturgy 8y ago
One of the benefits of living in a semi-rural area btw is that you can easily participate in changing this situation. During the Spring, Summer, and Fall months I can go and pick up fruits and veggies from a local grower -- just show up on their property during regular business hours, go and pick it yourself if you feel like or just pick up one of the boxes they've prearranged. I can get meat from a good local ranch too. I don't think there's any nearby dairy though. Mega-agribusiness is one of the consequences of increasing urban living. To support really large, dense cities, everything has to be scaled way up. A dairy farm is no longer producing for the 100,000 people in a 20 mile radius, it's producing for millions, and the waste it creates scales up too. In an ideal world, these mega-producers would be less harmful to the environment than the equivalent number of small producers, because there would be some benefit from economies of scale. But in this world, the mega-producers largely see regulation and environmental caretaking to be cost centers and they pursue the cheapest solutions, which usually involve hiding the problem or paying somebody off or buying themselves some legislation. Smaller producers meanwhile have a harder time getting away with that.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  ...economies of scale. The other thing is local carrying capacity. A small herd might not have anything done to the manure, and through the wonders of bacteria and fungi not harm local streams at all. Once the operation is big enough to more closely resemble a Kansas feedlot, that shit's toxic waste.
- Johnny555 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

zepearl 8y ago

>>Their story is very similar to this gentleman's: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/dairy-farming-is-dyin.. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/dairy-farming-is-dyin.... If I understood correctly the (last) parts of the article mentioning "organic" (here in Switzerland we call it "Bio"), you miss something like this... The livestock must be adapted to the agricultural area, location and climatic conditions. Livestock may not exceed 2.5 DGVE per hectare of utilized agricultural area in the valley area. At higher altitudes and in unfavorable site conditions, animal stocking must be reduced. ...in your rules/legislation, or am I wrong? (that's an extract from the BioSwiss regulation https://www.bio-suisse.ch/media/VundH/Regelwerk/2019/DE/rl_2019_1.1_d_teil_ii__30.11.2018.pdf https://www.bio-suisse.ch/media/VundH/Regelwerk/2019/DE/rl_2... , at the end of chapter 4.1) EDIT: and additionally (chapter 4.2): Basically, the feeding of the animals takes place with in-house bud food. Conversion feed from own Production may be used up to a maximum of 60 percent of the ration (conversion farms: up to 100 percent). Supplied feeds serve only to supplement the company's own feed basis and are as possible organically grown. Young mammals must be nourished on the basis of unaltered milk, preferably breastmilk become. All mammals are to be fed with unchanged milk for a minimum period. The Minimum period depends on the species. The feed components must be left natural and the techniques of feed preparation used should be as much as possible be close to nature and energy-saving. Feed must not contain traces of genetically modified organisms or derived products of genetically modified organisms that are proportionately above the statutory limits.

typeformer 8y ago
No, organic regs in the US are not at all equivalent with Swiss Bio regs.

vitaflo 8y ago

> I always wanted to move back near my folks but I worry about the drinking water quality due to this CAFO, with the probable high nitrates from spills and the high capacity wells sucking out all the drinking water. Same. Always wanted to move back to into country farms where I grew up with a small hobby farm, but these mega farms are causing real headaches in that area. 15 miles south of where I grew up, one of them has contaminated most of the wells in a very large radius around the farm and surrounding community. My parents don't have this problem, but it's obvious all of the local farms are being consolidated (and have been for years). Difficult to buy property when you don't know the result of the impact of these mega farms until later.

scruple 8y ago

The thing that has always been terrifying to me about those CAFOs are the fact that there can be 5,000 head of dairy cattle and you'd _literally_ never know it unless you were told.

rdlecler1 8y ago

Would you be interested in publishing this on AgFunderNews? A lot of your target audience will be there. Ping me and I’ll connect you with the editor.

sizzle 8y ago

Any thoughts on the feasibility of vertical farming in the future?