Mission probable

I talk to a lot of people, not because my job really involves talking to people. It mostly involves yelling at cows, “Please get your lazy butts up and walk to the barn for milking,” and then, again, yelling at them to “Please get up and go out to the pasture and eat.”

I just enjoy talking to people and will start a conversation with just about anyone, including the lady handing out food samples at KwikTrip and the guy next to me on a plane. Often, dairy farming ends up being what people want to talk about with me. So few people are dairy farmers now, but many people grew up with family members involved in the industry, and they have fond memories of visiting their farm or working on one themselves.

I personally think the loss of many of those dairy farms around this country people fondly remember from growing up is a tragedy. According to an article I read in Dairy Herd Management a few months ago, we’ve lost over 70% of our dairy farms since 2000. Milk production is up 38% despite the loss of almost 60,000 farms, but our country’s available milk and cheese isn’t the problem I’m worried about.

Farms produce more than food; they also produce people. Maybe it’s my personal bias from growing up on a farm, but I’ve found there’s a substantial difference between people who grew up on a farm or worked in agriculture as a youth and those who didn’t in their technical skills, physical abilities, work ethic and knowledge of the natural world. Agriculture, especially livestock farming, requires such a varied set of skills to be successful that anyone working on a farm can’t help but master or at least become proficient in at least a few of them. I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that as the number of farms has fallen precipitously, our country has experienced a shortfall of people with the skills and work ethic to make it in trade careers.

There are so many reasons for the consolidation of dairy into fewer farms. Once a problem has been created, many people want to spend all their time trying to explain how it happened but not fix it. At this point, how it happened is not useful to debate. We’re in a considerable hole and still digging. What needs to happen is to figure out solutions to not only quit losing farms but grow the number.

One big obstacle to growing the number of farms in this country is the constant narrative told to every young person: It is impossible to start a farm. It’s so common for farmers to tell young people not to get into farming because it’s impossible to make any money. The old joke is that the best way to have a million dollars by farming is to start with two million. We need to make it Mission Probable for young people to not only take over existing farms but to start new ones. So much small- to mid-sized dairy infrastructure in this country is outdated or straight-up derelict. This means there will need to be more new facilities built, as there are not enough move-in-ready options.

Our family has always started new ventures small and grown them. If you fail small, you learn big and lose small. This is an option that is advertised as having been taken from young folks to get into dairying. Many milk buyers won’t even consider adding small dairies to their routes and drop them as soon as markets sour if they do. The opportunity for young people to start micro dairies with on-farm processing is huge, and the risk if you pencil in the investment needed to start out isn’t that great compared to buying a 100-plus cow dairy operation from someone who’s retiring. This kind of start into dairying needs to be encouraged.

Another thing that could really help beginning farmers is if we normalized the idea of growing out of a farm and moving to a new one. It seems deeply entrenched in farm culture that the same family farms the same land for generations, but does that make sense? It doesn’t make sense to me for a 20-year-old just starting out to jump right to running a 1,000-plus head herd, or for an 80-year-old to still be doing that instead of retiring after a life of hard work.

I don’t have any sure ways of reversing the decline in farms, but keep in mind that, when talking to young people interested in dairy farming, nothing is impossible — except milking an almond. Starting a dairy and growing it can and should look much different for someone just starting than for someone four generations into a business. Until next time, keep living the dream and help pass it on to others.

Tim Zweber farms with his wife, Emily, their three children and his parents, Jon and Lisa, near Elko, Minnesota.