Dairy farming, California style, is here to stay

John Oncken  —  2/21/2008 10:57 am

FRESNO, Calif. -- Midwest dairy farmers for decades have said that California dairying is in deep trouble and that a shortage of water will kill it.

But it hasn't happened yet and doesn't seem to be a big concern among California dairy producers. After all, every dairy farm has its own water well for cattle. The water farmers use is to irrigate corn, hay, cotton and a hundred other crops that are grown to feed America.

"Water is a major concern in California," one farmer said. "But most folks realize that agriculture is extremely important to the state's economy. Don't hold your breath waiting for our dairying to go backwards."

Bees are a much bigger concern among San Joaquin Valley crop farmers. There is a shortage of bees buzzing around and through the dozens of fruit and tree crops, pollinating every single bloom on every single plant.

A mysterious something (no one seems to know for sure what it is) has decimated many of the nation's bees and California fruit growers who import bees by the millions are hard put to find bees to bring in for their orchards.

Ed Harmon, a beekeeper from Selma, Calif., was unloading beehives from his truck with an end loader and placing them in an almond orchard.

"I raise bees and harvest honey on my farm but I also import bees from other places," he says. "These came from Oklahoma."

Harmon was placing the hives along a country road in a 160-acre almond orchard for one month. "The owner is paying $160 per hive for 160 hives in the younger trees," he said. "It takes two hives per acre for mature trees."

Although much has been said about the huge dairies in Tulare, Kings and Fresno counties along Interstate 99, you have to do some looking to find a dairy. They are built far apart in most areas and often far from the roads. And even though they produce lots of milk, they face serious challenges.

Manure is a major issue in California just as in Wisconsin. Ever-stricter rules dealing with odor and runoff are a fact of life. And as here, dairy folks spend the time and money to comply.

What is different between the two states is the price producers are paid for their milk. Last month Wisconsin dairy farmers received an all milk price of $21.10 per hundred weight: California farmers got $18.70 per hundred -- that's a $2.40 difference. (California producers have historically been paid $1-$2 less for their milk.)

California dairying is not standing still; the milk keeps flowing. In fact, too much milk, more than the processors, as huge as they are, can handle.

Rumors persist that milk is being dumped in the Central Valley by producers and dairy processors. It's probably true. The talk is that patrons of CDI and DFA-- two of the large processing dairy cooperatives -- may be assessed 25 cents to 45 cents per hundred to pay for milk that has been dumped.

There's also talk that major California dairy cooperatives may be contemplating a quota system for their producers in order to limit milk production. This would be a major reversal in the land where dairying has historically expanded when the milk price was high or when the price was low.

David Albers, a Bakersfield attorney and Fresno County dairy producer, recently outlined his ambitious plan for Blue Ribbon Cheese.

The new cheese factory is to be located on his 5,000-cow Vintage Dairy at Riverdale in Fresno County. Albers says he has the permits and is close to firming up the $300 million in financing.

The planned cheese factory will process 6.8 million pounds of milk per day (twice as big as any plant in Wisconsin) into American- and Italian-style cheese beginning in 2010.

Albers also heads BioEnergy Solutions, a company that plans to begin producing natural gas from cow manure via a digester nearing completion on his dairy.

Albers is certainly an entrepreneur, innovator and businessman. If all these dairy enterprises work out, he will be a major dairy influence for a long time.

At the same time, three other huge dairy processing plants -- at LeMore, Tulare and Visalia -- are planning expansions.

Albers was raised on a 900-cow dairy in Chino in southern California that is still in operation. His father, Ray Albers, came out of retirement to run it again. Jim, David's brother, operates another large dairy in New Mexico.

What's happening in southern California in what was once the most concentrated dairy area in the U.S during the 1970s through the mid-1990s?

In the mid-1990s there were 350 dairies on some 12,000 acres in the dairy valley near Chino, Corona and Ontario, about an hour east of Los Angeles. Producers had moved from the big city in the 1960s to the cheaper farmland where they could milk cows.

Cows were (and still are) raised in open corrals, the only building was the milking parlor, all feed was purchased and manure was a fact of life but not a big concern.

The dairy zoning was lifted in the late '90s and land developers moved in offering big money to dairy producers ($500,000 per acre was not uncommon) to build houses where the cows once roamed. Most producers took the money and began moving to the San Joaquin Valley in central California, or to Arizona, New Mexico and Idaho.

In contrast to some reports, there are still about 90 dairies remaining in the area. Some of them have been purchased and turned back to their dairy farmer owners when developers ran into trouble as the housing market turned sour.

The former Golden Cheese plant at Corona, Calif., once one of the biggest of the big, stands empty -- it never was profitable under a couple of owners. The milk now travels north to newer cheese factories.

Most folks never actually see California's huge agricultural industry but it's there and in the case of milking cows, still expanding. What we know as "the nation's salad bowl" and milk spigot often take second place to Disneyland, the Rose Bowl, Hollywood and the San Francisco lifestyle. But where would America be without the oranges, grapes, raisins, plums and dozens of other food products that come from that state?

The fact is, most of us never consider where food comes from, we just eat it.

John Oncken is owner of Oncken Communications, a Madison-based agricultural information and consulting company. He can be reached at 222-0624 or e-mail jfodairy@chorus.net

John Oncken  —  2/21/2008 10:57 am