Wayne County dairy farms diversify to survive

By TOM KANE

WAYNE COUNTY, PA - Dairy farmers are beginning to develop new milk products other than raw milk as a way to transition into the future.

They call it “value added” and it could be the difference between closing down the small family farm and making enough money to maintain the small-farm way of life.

“If you’re producing a mediocre product for a commodity market, you’re not going to make it unless you produce large quantities of your product,” said Brian Snyder of the Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture. “You can work on a small margin by producing more, or you can get smaller and produce a quality product with a high margin, like if you produce cheese.”

You can either make cheese, switch to producing organic milk, bottle your milk or sell raw milk to a specialty market. In order to survive the recent crisis in dairy farming, farmers are encouraged to make these switches, Snyder said.

“You can switch to organic by rotating your grazing and not use chemicals, not use growth hormones, feed your cows prime hay during the winter and protect the environment at the same time,” Snyder said.

Dairy farmers have to think differently and move innovatively, he said.

“Many need to hear it, but may not be ready to hear it,” he said. “Sometimes in a family farm, where the same thing has been done for so many generations, it’s hard to change. By using grazing systems and not confining systems, farms can get smaller if the quality of the product is higher.”

Some examples of diversification

On Bill Bryant’s Highland Farm in Calkins, Bryant’s daughter and son-in-law, Emily and Jay Montgomery, have started a cheese-making operation.

“I returned to the farm to help out my father and brothers,” Emily said. “My husband and I have a background in the food industry and I have a degree in food science, so we decided instead of putting our money into a dream house, we’re spending it on designing a cheese-producing operation.”

They began producing cheese this past January. “You don’t have to begin big like we did,” she said. “A dairy farm can begin small and build the business up gradually.”

They’re going to sell their cheese at farmers’ markets in the surrounding area and to restaurants in New York City.

“The income is small at first, but you have to build,” she said.

Charles Theobald, a dairy farmer who has been farming for 20 years in Aldenville, has started building a milk-bottling plant. He’ll start selling at the side of the road and will enlist the help of a marketing company, he said.

“I have kids growing up and I’d like to keep them in agriculture if they want to,” Theobald said. “There’s no money in raw milk, but bottling your own milk is going to be different.”

Theobald’s partner, Bob Ogozaly, went to Canada to learn how to pasteurize and homogenize milk and took some courses at Cornell on producing ice cream.

“Dairy men have to do things like this because they aren’t getting paid enough for their milk,” said Theobald.

Dairy farmers who want to make the transition must plan well and put their plan down on paper.

“If a bank sees a farmer who has thought out his process, has developed a good business plan and if he has some solid collateral, I think a bank will fund his plan,” said former Dime Bank CEO Joe Murray.

Banks want to see farmers succeed and not fail, Murray said.