Dairy farmers hang on waiting for help

It may not come in time

By TOM KANE

WAYMART, PA - Dairyman Joe Davitt Jr. has five things that he loves. He loves his wife, Cheryl, his new son, Dylan, his family, which has farmed for three generations, his land and his farming way of life.

He doesn’t want to give up any one of them, but he may have to give up the farming way of life.

Joe’s been farming since he was six years old, alongside his father, Joe Sr., who still helps when he can. Joe bought the farm from his grandmother and took it over in 1991. He’s proud, he’s independent and he’s a fighter.

And while there have been three generations of Davitts farming this land, there won’t be a fourth, he said.

“The young guys want to farm but they can’t because there’s no money in it anymorežno money to live a relatively decent way of life,” Joe said. “Our way of lifežthe small family farmžis going to die very soon unless something drastic is done both short-term and long-term.”

The pressures are mounting every day. Joe says he’ll know within the next three months whether he can survive or not.

In 1988, dairy farmers received $1.15 per hundredweight for milk. In 2006, they received the same amountž$1.15, 18 years later.

“How can a dairy farmer survive on that with the costs of production rising 30 percent every year?” he said. He can’t afford a cell phone. He can’t afford a new tractor, which he needs desperately. He can’t afford the seeds he needs this spring.

“When that old tractor broke down for the sixth time, I cried,” he said. Joe is not alone. All dairy farmersžnot just in Pennsylvania but all across Americažare in the same boat.

Why does he do it?

“It’s a wonderful way of life,” he said. “I love it. I love working my land. I love being my own boss. I love being around my family. I want to teach my son the way my father taught me and his father before him. It’s a heritage. It’s a history. We never made a lot of money but we had a lot of fun. It’s just in me.”

He grew up on his farm with brothers and cousins around, who worked and played side by side. If he has to sell his herd, he will. But sell his land?

“If I have to sell one acre, I’ll sell all of it and leave,” he said. “I couldn’t stand watching my land be cut up into a development and houses being built on it. I don’t care how much money I could make giving it over to developers. That’s not what I want.”

His wife, Cheryl, a second grade teacher in the Western Wayne school district, supports him in every way. She especially helps with her teacher’s salary, paying for the family needs, not the farm’s needs.

“I am very proud of Joe and how hard he works,” she said. “He’s taken a leadership position among dairymen, fighting with Harrisburg and Washington, trying to help not just himself but other farmers.”

He’s not always successful with every farmer.

“I’ve had some dairymen tell me I’m a fool for trying to move the politicians,” he said. “They’re saying that this has been going on for 30 years and they don’t care anymore. I can’t just sit and do nothing.”

Finally, the politicians are beginning to listen, he said. U.S. Senator Bob Casey visited his farm and is attempting to put emergency measures through the Senate. State senator Lisa Baker brought the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Affairs to a hearing in Waymart last week. Joe was one of the farmers on the panel.

Committee chairman Senator Mike Brubaker said the long-term solution has got to be market driven, meaning that consumers have got to pay more for milk and that any increase in price has to go to the farmers, not to middlemen and supermarkets.

Dairyman Bill Bryant of Highland Farms in Calkins thinks that there has to be a surcharge on milk that varies with the rise and fall in fuel and energy costs. The surcharge goes right to the farmer. “People would be willing to pay it, if they knew the money would relieve farmers,” Bryant said.

Brubaker’s committee will help dairy farmers by pressuring the legislature and the governor to pass emergency legislation to grant financial aid to farmers.

“Will it be in time enough to stop farms from closing?” he said. “I’m not sure it will.”

Joe wonders more about the long-term solution. “We can’t go on like this every year,” he said. “I don’t know whether the will is there in Harrisburg and Washington. I’ll believe it when I see it.”