The
calls begin before dawn. Some farmers phone just after they have finished
milking. Other wait until their midday meal. I have received calls as late
as midnight.
Initially, their tone is cautious. Most have never called an environmental group before, especially one with the tough reputation of the Sierra Club. The first calls last a half hour or more. Sometimes, at the end, they cry.
The callers are small family dairy farmers (there are 832 in Maryland) who face bankruptcy because of a dramatic, sustained, and manipulated fall in the farm gate price for milk. They call the Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club because there is a virtual silence among mainstream farm organizations about what is happening to dairy farmers. They call because the crisis they face is an environmental crisis as well.
In the next ten months, fundamental land use decisions about the future
of rural Maryland will be made by default, by bankruptcy court, and by
giant agribusiness corporations unless we do something NOW! What happens
to dairy farmers concerns all of us. Their impending demise will have a
profound effect on our water quality, on the safety of our food, and on
our ability to stop sprawl.
Not just another crisis
It is an emergency. This is not just another farm crisis. It is the “end game” of independent, family farm agriculture.
In hog and poultry production, a handful of giant corporations have gained control of production through vertical integration, monopoly control of markets, abusive contracts with farmers, and introduction of animal factory production. This corporate campaign for control of our food supply has the active support of the federal government and many state governments.
These corporations make tremendous profits from food production. Note that the largest US food corporation, Phillip Morris, has expanded into food from cigarettes because the profit margins are similar or even better.
The high retail and packing house profit margins come at the expense of the small family farmer and the environment. Profit is literally “stolen” from small farmers and the environment (See the review of Stolen Harvest on the Back Cover.)
In Maryland’s poultry industry, contract farmers must work one or two outside jobs to “support their poultry habit,” as they say, joking among themselves. Contract poultry growers have not had a raise in the price they are paid per bird for almost two decades. During that same period, the consumer price of chicken has doubled.
In the hog industry, small producers have virtually been forced out
of business by corporate manipulated farm hog prices that sank to 1932
levels last year. Note that the price consumers paid for pork products
didn’t sink to 1932 levels. In fact, consumer prices stayed virtually unchanged,
enriching the giant integrated hog corporations like Smithfield and Premium
Standard Farms. This windfall profit was used to subsidize hog factories
while small, independent producers went bankrupt.
Dairy farmers are next
The rationalization of agriculture -- the destruction of small producers in favor of large, industrial operations -- has moved to dairy farming. In December, 1999, farm gate milk prices fell to below 1978 levels -- a time when milk cost consumers $1.20 gallon.
This drop was no accident nor an expected cyclical price swing. The rapid expansion of giant dairy animal factories in the deserts of California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington and Idaho has produced a huge new supply of cheese. This cheese, in turn, has depressed the price paid to all farmers for their milk due to the peculiar nature of milk pricing.
Milk is a highly perishable commodity. Prior to the passage of the 1937 Milk Marketing Act, dairy farmers were mercilessly exploited by processors who would refuse to pick up milk from a farmer until he agreed to a lower and lower price.
The Act reformed this situation by creating a federal system of regional prices for milk products--called Milk Marketing Orders--tied to the price of cheese, the principle storable milk product. Today, milk prices nationwide are based on the price of cheese traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (about 5% of total US cheese production). This situation allows large industrial cheese producers to manipulate national milk prices by dumping relatively small quantities of cheese in Chicago.
The industry seeks to cover this manipulation by claiming the low prices
are the result of an oversupply of milk. The truth is the United States
has a milk shortage. Over 2 billion pounds cheese and dry milk products
were imported last year from New Zealand and Australia. A surplus does
exist in certain kinds of cheese production created by the building of
large dairy factory operations in the far West.
The future is bleak
Right now, the farm gate price for Class I milk--fresh fluid milk--is approximately $5 below the total economic cost of production as estimated by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Today, for every hundred pounds of milk a farmer produces he loses $5. USDA estimates the farm gate price for milk will remain at these low levels at least until November.
To make matters even worse, agricultural banks and financial institutions are refusing to extend small dairy farmers additional credit during this crisis. Large dairy factory operations are relatively insulated from this price drop by hefty premiums paid to them by milk processors and by the ready availability of credit for large operations.
If you perceive a pattern emerging here, you are right. We believe that
the implicit goal of this crisis is to drive a large number of small dairy
farmers in Maryland and throughout the mid-Atlantic states out of business.
Environmental consequences
This planned and purposeful extinction of small family dairy farms in Maryland and other mid-Atlantic states has profound environmental consequences.
Faced with impending bankruptcy, small family dairy farmers have only three options.
They can milk a much larger number of cows. The industry advocates that small farmers expand their operations to 500 to 2000 cows, creating a dairy factory operation in the process. A number of Maryland dairy farmers are doing this right now.
A bankrupt farmer can get into the industrial hog business. In Frederick County, Rodney Harbaugh’s decision to supplement income from his 30 dairy cows with a contract 5,000 hog finishing operation created an environmental crisis that led to the county’s moratorium on such facilities. Purina Mills, the leading hog corporation in our area, runs ads in regional dairy publications pushing the hog factory alternative to failing dairy farmers.
Finally, a small dairy farmer can sell out to a housing or mall developer.
Agricultural land in Maryland’s intense rural-urban interface is worth
a great deal more as a sprawl development. The Rash Farm controversy in
Carroll County (see the story on Page 16) dramatizes the dangers from this
situation.
We must stand with farmers
What happens to Maryland’s dairy farmers affects everyone in Maryland. This is not simply an agricultural crisis. The Maryland Chapter’s Water, Food and Farm Campaign has actively reached out to hundreds of dairy farmers in the last two months.
On January 17th, we held a press conference in front of the Maryland Farm Bureau’s headquarters in Annapolis with farmers from four states sounding the alarm. The new Sierra Club/dairy farmer joint effort made headline news around the country. Creating public awareness is the first step.
If you are interested in helping with this fight to save our family
dairy farmers, please contact Chris Bedford at 301-779-1000 or email <cbedford@erols.com>.
Write Chris Bedford, Water, Food & Farm Campaign, #5104 42nd Avenue,
Hyattsville, Maryland 20781-2013. q
This is April Donnon, age 4. She is the middle daughter of George and Debbie Donnon, a dairy farming family that live outside Rising Sun, Maryland near the Pennsylvania border. April helps her dad milk the family dairyherd--about 75 cows--whenever she can. In the picture, April is milking a cow named “April.” All of the Donnon’s cows have names. In fact, many of the cows come into the milking parlor when called by name. This kind of personal connection with animals does not happen in factory operations where numbers, crowding, and production pressures transform farming into impersonal factory work.