Minutes for the 1999 Annual Meeting of the NE-177 Technical Committee, Oct. 22-23, College Station, Texas

Attending: Patricia Dyk (KY), Jeremy Foltz (CT), Gilbert Gillespie (NY), Douglas Jackson-Smith (WI), Jennifer McAdam (UT/ID), Wm. Alex Mcintosh (TX), Marci Ostrem (WI), Tony Shelton (Adminstrative Advisor), Stewart Smith (ME), and Henry Tyrrell (USDA/CSREES)

State Reports:

Utah by Jennifer McAdam: because of lack of funds little was accomplished on a project in the past year.

Texas by Alex Macintosh: is ready to go to the field soon with a mail-out questionnaire. The main issues are what to ask, how to ask it, and who to survey. The previous project he surveyed dairy farmers in 10 counties. He has selected Erath County, which has shown growth to the 1980s. Since then there has been a loss of dairy farmers from a peak of 250 to 189 now. Part of this is because of threatened regulations (especially from a Waco area Senator) that have led to an informal moratorium on growth. Dairying is very important in the county, as indicated by a and the annual Dairy-fest and the presence of a plastic cow in the town square.

Connecticut by Jeremy Foltz: Connecticut now has 245 dairy farms. He is looking into collaboration with animal scientists on management intensive rotational grazing. A major problem of the dairy industry in Connecticut is the availability of profitable off-farm opportunities in the context of low dairy profitability. Major issues are how much our farmers willing to forego development opportunities and how much does the rest of the population value farmland? The state of Connecticut is interested in saving farms.

Kentucky by Tricia Dyk: Kentucky’s survey is in the field with 120 questionnaires mailed out. Despite using the Dillman approach, they have only 50 responses and half of these were out of business. 55 to 60 percent of Kentucky dairy farms have 50 cows or less. Given the low response rate they are going to try to get the interviews by phone, but may need to go to face-to-face interviews. Kentucky dairy farms tend to have low production per cow. Tobacco is more profitable than dairying.

Wisconsin by Douglas Jackson-Smith and Marci Ostrem: Doug and Brad Barham are still working on data gathered in earlier years of the project and have three categories of work. The first category is on-farm data analysis in which they are working with a specialist focusing on various detailed questions, such as she expenses per cow and other information presented at the Rural Sociology Society meeting. The second category is allies in data from the phone survey conducted in February of 1999. The third category is focus groups on the extension needs of Wisconsin dairy farms. Does the University of Wisconsin Extension have a bad rap among farmers.

They have concerns that arguing that dairying is next for industrialization makes it a potentially self-fulfilling prophecy because that shapes the actions of agribusiness people, lenders and financial advisers, professionals (like AI technicians, and nutrition consultants), and community people (such as nonagricultural businesspeople, professionals, and school staff). The research findings on the topic are not always consistent with that thesis. Moreover the data on this topic are hard to analyze. What we need to do is to analyze why structural change is occurring every also made to put a face to the stories.

From their state – wide survey of Wisconsin dairy farmers they have analyzed data on recent dairy entrants. The new entrants looked like other farmers but they may grow in the future. Most don’t buy their family farms. They also have a forthcoming publication on grazing. Low capital approaches to dairying are popular in Wisconsin.

Minnesota by Margo Rudstrom: she and Wynne Wright have funding for a onetime mail survey of a dairy dependent community –Stearns County. They have a draft questionnaire that started with the Cornell baseline survey instrument. Questions added to that questionnaire include whether or that are expanded whether factors such as regulations or labor was a problem, and if they expanded, was its in or out of the county, on-farm or elsewhere. They also plan to add questions about the dairy options pilot plan in which the county participated (see the USDA AM S WebSite for the list of counties). This was a USDA funded project that 88 percent of costs of milk futures markets fees. The USDA was trying to build a milk futures market but currently there are too few participants and thus, the market was too volatile. Their projected time for mailing their questionnaire to all dairy farms in the county is the end of November or early December.

They chose Stearns County because a business retention and expansion (BR&E) study of 70 farms was previously conducted there and this study included some information on local expenditures. The county has about 1100 dairy farms of which 503 have between 20 and 49 cows, 488 have between 50 at 99 cows (the size of the largest decline), and the rest have more than 100 cows (the category with the greatest expansion). On the east the county borders St. Cloud, a city of about 60,000 people, with mainly retail and manufacturing businesses. The county has a dairy advisory council which has some political influence with lenders, agribusiness people, and dairy farmers. They are now working to get the council’s blessing. Questions in which they are interested include: what is geographical expansion? What cow/people density is exceptional (to permit expansion)? How does a healthy nonfarm economy affect acceptance of farm loss?

New York by Gil Gillespie: the dairy community studied in this project – Ontario County –has had steady growth in the size of its dairy farms. This New York community differs from what has been reported for Wisconsin in that the size of the dairy farms is larger. Also the feed dealers seem to be larger and more regional. Preliminary data from the 1998 survey have been examined.

Maine by Stewart Smith: Stew conducted a mail survey in late 1998. The area in which he conducted the survey includes 16 townships in one trade area (this was mostly in two counties, but did get into a third). His questionnaire that he mailed to 105 farms on the extension list contained 112 questions. This area is characterized by high education levels. Only 105 farms on the list, 100 questionnaires were delivered and 41 responses were received after one telephone follow-up. Twenty-nine of these were currently operating dairy farms. Nine were still farming but no longer dairying. Two had never operated dairy farm. Those who had left dairying did so because of a lack of income. The size of the dairy farms range from 31 cows to 1200 cows. Fourteen practiced rotation grazing and 6 used rbST. He also asked about where they purchased their inputs, noting that an infrastructure for alternative systems may not be established. His farms fell into two groups: farms that wanted to be smaller (these tended to use grazing and comprised about two-thirds of the farms); and farms that wanted to expand.

Discussion of Future Project Activities Under Objective 1

For objective 1, “determine the inter-relationships among and relative importance of social, economic, technological and political environments, regional conditions, in entrepreneurial strategies affecting restructuring of the dairy industry in different dairy localities,” we discussed where we wanted to be by 8/2001, outlining the different data collection efforts needed for the project, noting what had been accomplished so far, and getting information about what the respective states could do. We also discussed whether we could characterize farms in the same way from our data. Data that might be used for such purposes includes: number of lactating and dry cows, rolling herd average, total pounds of milk shipped, other livestock (in animal units), total acres operated, land tenure (including owned and rented), acres of cropland, acres tillable land, acres of pasture, ethnic background of lead operator, crops produced, technology index, labor practices, future plans, demographic characteristics, off-farm work, percent total income from farm, quality of life, the environment around farm, farm-community links, complaints from neighbors, manure handling practices, animal/land ratio, potential land available for manure spreading, and attitudinal items.

We then discussed what they want to accomplish by 9/2001 by category:

Types of change. For farming (see Kentucky B-16), for community (see Kentucky B-17), how affected (see Kentucky B-12, B-13, see also Texas).

Attachment. Attachment to place (home community) (1-10 scale, Wisconsin phone Q-21/Q-22), how long lived in community (Kentucky B-8 to B-10, Texas section F., also Wisconsin).

Community involvement. We need to ask what community they identify with. Church organizations (frequency of attendance, location [Kentucky B-9], distance in miles from farm or community [need both miles and name of place where church is located] [need to ask both operator and spouse]), other organizations (asked whether an officer or attend meetings), school activities (are they active?), and newspapers with (do they get a local newspaper, and, more importantly, do they read it? We also need to know about the infrastructure in the community to deliver the local news. In Stevenville, Texas, dairy news is front page news. Alex will do content analysis of the paper there.)

Purchasing. One key issue is “What is local?” Is it a certain distance from the farm? Is it purchasing in a nearby town or village? Another key issue is the categories of purchases. Doug noted the complexity of this. In Wisconsin they used five categories of purchases that correspond with information provided on income tax schedule F. These categories are on page 11 of the Wisconsin survey instrument and are crop expenses (chemicals/seeds/fertilizer/fuel), machinery, repairs & maintenance, buildings & equipment, and hired labor. In the Minnesota questionnaire, veterinary and consultants are two additional categories. [Increasing scale, however, confounds the distinction between veterinary and consultants as herds 500 cows or more tend to have para-vets that do artificial insemination and routine herd health work. At such a point veterinarians tend to become consultants. Consultants tend to be specialized, with the vets being only one type and others being those dealing with finances and nutrition.] In New York dollar amounts were collected, while in the other states it was locality and percentages. Larger farms tend to purchase commodities separately other than as mixed feeds. One possibility would be to estimate a gross dollar value of purchases by category and then estimate the percent purchased within the county (see the Maine items on page 19 and perhaps and additional categories). The expectation, based on Wisconsin data, is that the amount of expenditures in the local community will increase with scale of the farm, but that the amount spent per cow will decrease was increasing scale of dairy farms. We should collect dollar amounts and categories so that we can construct tables like Maine’s question No. 80, but somewhat simplified. Other questions to ask are: do you feel that your dairy operation is spending more, less, or about the same in [county name] than five years ago? Do you think your operation spends a larger percent (or fraction), a smaller percent, or about the same overall in [county name] than five years ago?

Quality of life/$. The Kentucky and Wisconsin questionnaires contain some specific items.

[Margot will send out a copy of the Minnesota BR&E survey instrument.]

Discussion of Future Project Activities Under Objective 2

For objective 2, “identify, examine and assess the effects of structural change in the dairy sector on local communities and related enterprises, we discussed the possibility of a joint telephone survey in up to seven states (possibly including Utah, but not Wisconsin where such a survey has already done). Discussed was using random digit dialing to contact 200 cases per state spread among three categories–non-farm rural, non-dairy farm rural, and urban–for a total of between 1200 and 1400 contacts. The target would be six minutes per interview, which means that some of the Wisconsin questions, particularly the farming questions, would need to be cut. Land-use questions would be desirable additions. At issue is: what would be the unit that would be sampled? Would it be “county?” Also at issue would be funding. The first step would be to assess the costs of such a survey. A rough estimate is that it would cost somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000 plus overhead costs. Since none of the states involved could reasonably fund such a data collection effort, we discussed developing a research proposal that USDA might fund. Selling points for such a proposal would include (1) providing valuable data about how dairy farming is perceived by nonfarmers and other kinds of farmers, (2) this data set would fit with the farm data collected under the project, (3) this is a national project that has already been piloted in Wisconsin, and (4) the USDA is interested in the health of rural communities. Henry Tyrrell was see about possible funding sources, such as rural development funds.

Report of Tony Shelton, Project Administrative Advisor

The 1996 Farm Bill provides opportunity to get rid of some of the bureaucracy regarding regional projects. This gives CSREES ability to re-formulate regional research and streamline the process. One other questions being considered it is: What value does regional research provide above professional meetings?

Report of Henry Tyrrell

CAFOs and the environment now have major implications for the dairy industry. Intensive animal production systems have developed without economic penalties for waste management. Such penalties are now coming along and will be a very interesting issue. Another issue is that of air quality but it is not yet talked about extensively. A future focus for this project might be an assessment of how the dairy industry might cope. Related to this might be how dairy communities adjust to these new realities. This would bring together natural and social sciences. Currently EPA is pushing a TMDL approach that makes no distinction between CAFOs and others. This means that everyone would have to meet the standards, even someone with one horse. Henry believes this is appropriate since marginal farmers cause the problem.

David MacKenzie NE region is leading efforts to implement the new (1996) Farm Bill, including requirement that states developed administrative procedures for evaluating regional projects. A big issue right now is requirement that 25 percent of formula extension and 25 percent of 1890 institution projects must be multistate. Although each state recognizes and assigns resources for formula research and extension, the farm bill requires that 25 percent of extension and research projects must be integrated. Henry sees this as an opportunity for this project; the opportunity for extension to use our data and to train people in rural economic development. MacKenzie is promoting a new way of looking at administrative structures. Some in CSREES think that its own staff should evaluate all Hatch proposals. This is very contrary to the bottom up approach of the past. In the Western Region all research projects must have an extension component. Henry thinks this is a good model for funding extension. A new formalized and agreed-upon procedure for multistate projects is needed to establish the merits of projects and ensure interest in participation.

Air quality is a coming issue for livestock industry, in particular, ammonia emissions. Henry likened this to a train without brakes at the top of a mountain headed down. Most ammonia is lost before the waste gets to the lagoon and we currently lack technologies for controlling it. Ammonia is a problem because of its impact on sensitive ecosystems. In the Netherlands, new swine standards going to affect on January 1, 2000. The standards impose a need to reduce the swine herd by 25 percent. The equivalent dairy standards going to affect in 2002, with a more severe impact anticipated. EPA is funding a high-visibility, nitrogen conference in Potomac, MD with Congress in news media there. The issue is how to balance environmental and productionist interests. The livestock industry needs to recognize that there is a serious problem (Henry has seen the data) and be proactive. The 1997 Clean Air Act gives EPA the power to regulate the issue. The National Cattlemans Association is suing, but it is a matter of time rather then whether. Therefore the livestock community needs to get out in front or face severe problems.

Ammonia is a key issue for dairy, with large concentrations cows in one place a problem (e.g., the Chino Valley). In the NE, sulfur combines with ammonia to form ammonia sulfate, which leads to particulates. If sulfur in the atmosphere is reduced, then NO_x is formed and this leads to ozone (O₃). In the Chesapeake Bay, 40 percent of the nitrogen deposited into the bay is through direct air-to-water transfer. In the Gulf of Mexico, atmospheric deposition of nitrogen may be part of the cause of the problem of hypoxia, which is nitrogen driven. Phosphorus is part of the issue but just from water-borne sources. The data are leading people to the source of the problem. In the case of ammonia the No. 1 source is agriculture.

Phosphorus is also a key issue in some regions, with many soils already being over supplied. It may be, however less of an issue than ammonia. Research in Maryland suggests that 50 percent of dairy producers could comply with phosphorus emissions requirements by reducing supplementation to recommended levels. If the recommendations could be reduced by 20% percent, then 90 percent of producers could comply.

These looming areas of environmental regulation may drive livestock back into areas where crops are produced. EPA needs to focus on the fact that all dairies are not alike. Different technologies have very different implications, therefore one needs to have a package of technologies and a research base. EPA, however, is not doing this; rather it is assuming that “one size fits all.” Social policy pertaining to dairying needs to very, the dairy industry is not one with a monolithic technology.

On the issue of the future of the project:

Given the current state of the project, an extension may be necessary to ride of the results. We need to approach Tony Shelton to get his views. A one or two-year writing extension may be appropriate. In year five, Wisconsin will be busy with a major data collection effort. At next year’s meeting way to talk about the products from the project.

If we decided to go forward with a request for renewal “on-time/on schedule” we would need some products to demonstrate that we had achieved the objectives of the project so that the proposal would not be for working on a continuation of the same objectives. Were that case, would we need to do major data collection in the next five-year cycle, or could we continue to process the data that has already been collected and follow new entries and exits? In any case, who want to leverage our past work to deal with future issues.

End of meeting.