I think an honest discussion of controversial issues of our current dairy industry is in order. Local opinions, pro and con, have been published in “The Journal” concerning the herd expansion of Ridge Breeze Dairy as well as other townships regulating activities of larger dairies.

Local opposition, specifically GROWW (GrassRoots Organizing Western Wisconsin) imply large farms are reducing the number of small farms. This is a myth, widely believed by the uninformed. Good old USA has “lost” farms for decades. Statistics reveal a lost of farms at a steady annual rate of 2.3-8% depending on the type of farm.

How any farm survives and prospers boils down to management. Large farms exit the industry along with smaller farms. Milk is a commodity along with corn, soybeans, as well as crude oil, iron ore, etc. Commodities compete with others in their industries in a capitalistic environment (a “dog eat dog world, the survival of the fittest”). Large farms take advantage of technologies, to be more efficient (more productive with lower costs) to remain competitive. Milk production averages of 30,000 pounds per cow per year are common today to be competitive within the dairy industry.

American dairy farms are the most productive in the world, keeping food affordable, made in the USA (a goal of current and past administrations). If we had only small farms, food would be much more expensive and there would be plenty of food insecurity due to not enough farms and the lower output of smaller farms. Imports of food, made more expensive by our tariff environment, may offset lack of national production, but any country’s goal is for food security, to not depend on other “friendly and non-friendly” countries to make up for a lack of national production.

Small farms compete with other farms by often “acting outside of the box,” such as working part/full-time off the farm to subsidize their marginally profitable farm, or take on more profitable marketing (farmers markets, on farm processing of cheeses, bottled milk, yogurts, etc.), agri-tourism (corn mazes, pick your own, etc.), taking on field operations of other farms (doing custom planting and harvesting for farms besides their own), or often lowering farm input costs by the use of older, smaller, even obsolete machinery they repair themselves.

Another issue that environmentalists “beat their drums” to rally others is that large farms are polluters. Cows eat, drink, produce milk, meat and manure whether on large or small farms. The often “rallying cry” of 80 million gallons of manure needs to be taken into perspective. Larger cities process human “manure” in much large quantities than our larger farms. Eight million gallons (which GROWW touts as a significant amount of manure) is minimal compared to human waste/biosolids that is produced and needs to be dealt with in our towns and cities.

I have complete confidence that larger farms (confined animal farm operations – CAFOs) handle manure with responsible practices. Manure is a valuable crop fertilizer, just ask any organic farmer. CAFOs would not be given permits, nor financed, if they could not demonstrate business practices that protect the land, air and water resources. Yes, one can point to the small number of “bad actors” of any industry (such as “Big Oil”) that have polluted the environment, but they are not the “norm” of their industries.

The public doesn’t realize that 6,500 cow herds are “small” compared to eastern Wisconsin, dairy belt herds along South Dakota’s I-29 corridor, Idaho’s dairy belt of the Jerome region, long established dairies of California’s Tulare region, Indiana’s Fair Oaks complex, Kansas’s newer dairies, west Texas or Arizona, all of which have herd sizes of 10,000 to 50,000 cows.

Overly restrictive regulation of farms, in other words not allowing new technologies, would impose higher food costs. The Not In My Backyard mindset would not care to give up their tech or cell phones, computers, medical advances, green, lush lawns, faster, more powerful cars, etc. so on what grounds is it valid to impose limits on farm tech? As a nation we have to realize “there is no free lunch” and we cannot have it both ways. Whether large farms, solar energy farms, new nuclear plants, wind turbine farms, all can exist somewhere.

Not to brag, but to educate and inform, I’ve “been there, done that” as I operated a 50-60 cow herd as a family farmer in the 1970s and retired with a herd of 320 cows in the 2020s. We will always have small farms competing with larger dairies, but the historical trends will continue of fewer total number of farms and herd sizes increasing. This trend also occurs in other industries as well (Amazon, newspapers, health, finance, etc.). Think it’s called progress.