Inside the Milk Tank

The sun is just beginning to peek over the hill as Mahra Parian tends to her cows. Golden light filters into the barn, reflecting off the milk pump that she attaches to her cow’s udder. The small barn is filled with the musky scent of hay and dairy cow. As she finishes the milking, she opens the gate and lets the cows wander out of the barn, through the walkway, and into the pasture. Their calves moo and rustle inside their pen. Once the cows are past, Parian opens the door to the calves’ enclosure and they bound off after their mothers, wandering away down the pastoral hillside to spend the day drinking their mothers’ milk in the grassy paddock.

Parian is the owner of Interbrook Farm, a raw milk certified dairy farm in Interlaken, New York. Her 13 cows, five of which she milks, are pasture-grazed and personally attended. She milks once a day seasonally, taking the spring off to rest herself and her cows before the intense summer milking season. Their carefully monitored manure goes directly back into nurturing the grass on which they graze, preventing pollution and excess nitrates in the soil. Her farm appears the picture perfect vision of local dairy, with a model that encourages sustainability and animal welfare and returns to a pastoral, almost antiquated way of life.

Parian’s farm is out of the ordinary for dairy in upstate New York. In South-Central New York, dairy is the main agricultural industry, with 4,420 dairy farms across the state. New York is ranked third nationally for milk production, creating an estimated $2.5 billion in revenue annually. The majority of dairy farms in New York have more than 300 cows, designating them as a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). These farms are the workhorse of the dairy industry, using technology and innovation to provide as much milk as possible from the animals they have. Huge barns with industrial metal fans cool alleyways of cows. Systematic milking barns allow for quick and efficient milking up to three times per day, siphoning the milk into huge stainless steel tanks that can be transported away on trucks. GPS technology and lab testing analyze site-specific soil samples and indicate where farmers should plant feed crops, where to place manure, and the the nutrient makeup of each food source. Strict regulations keep these large farms in check, encouraging best practices for sustainability and production. The advanced technology is something most small-scale farms like Parian’s don’t have, nor do they have the strict regulations. This opens up a gray area for pollution and ecological impact, something the industry is not equipped to manage.

 

The productivity of CAFOs has changed the industry nationwide. In recent years, the fall of dairy prices has forced farms to either scale up or shut down. Prices fell from $21.51 per 100 pounds in 2011 to $17.26 per 100 pounds in 2016. The price in 2016 was the lowest it had been since the Great Recession. Adjusting to the increased production at a lower rate can be hard on farmers.

“We’re getting too good at what we do,” says Paul Fouts, owner of Fouts Farm near Cortland, New York. “That’s not just New York, it’s the world as a whole. Because of information coming in from Cornell [University], and other places, and our own experience, we’re doing a so much better job at feeding our cows and we’ve outproduced our ability to market it. That’s really what it comes down to.”

Fouts is a fourth generation dairy farmer on a mid-size farm he runs with his wife, daughter and seven hired hands. His 500 cows are housed inside of a large barn with towering wooden ceilings and soft natural light flooding in from the open siding. Snow blows inside as the cows chew the line of feed placed in the aisle outside of their fence. Fouts walks down the aisle, inspecting each cow with an expert eye.

He explains that the reason the prices have gone down is because technology has taken over, creating a surplus of milk around the country. “Technology has changed the way we’re feeding cows, the way we’re handling cows,” Fouts says. “When you figure out cows per man, we have a lot more cows per person then we did 50 years ago. There’s only so much milk that can be consumed, so it drives prices down.” Fouts uses technology and research to maximize his output, taking as much milk from each cow as he can.

“It all comes down to at what point in time does milk production start to suffer, and that’s how we’re determining, ‘Yep, they’re happy,’” Fouts says. “Cows are most comfortable at 40 degrees, so they like this weather.” He points to the snow blowing through the windows. He uses sandy beds for his cows to lay on and monitors their movements throughout the day, making sure they have enough time to rest and they do not walk around too much. He carefully mixes their food to make sure they are getting the nutrients optimal for milk production.

Most dairy farmers in New York grow the crops that they feed to their cows, just as Fouts does. “Unlike other parts of the country where they might purchase that, they tend to grow it themselves,” says Tom Overton, professor in dairy management at Cornell University and the Director of Cornell’s PRO-DAIRY program and Associate Director for Cornell Cooperative Extension. “That’s one of our advantages here in the New England is we have a climate that is suitable for growing crops and feeding crops to cows.”

Overton specialized in nutrition for dairy cows and works directly with farmers across the state to implement best practices for nutrition, crop growth, and environment management. He works with Fouts to analyze what to feed his cows and how to best grow the crops to feed them. The technology Overton suggests allows dairy to produce at its most efficient.

Fouts owns a tractor that uses GPS technology to track where he plants certain crops, where he needs to place manure, and where certain soil can yield differently. If he plugs the information into the on-board computer, the tractor will “basically drive itself,” Fouts says. Most dairy farms in central New York grow much of their own feed, which helps cow nutrition and keeps their waste on-site. In the humid climate of the Northeast, the sheer volume of manure is a challenge for farmers.

“You have to use that manure somehow and the best way to use that is to feed the crops that you use to feed your cows,” Fouts says. Growing their own crops also gives the farms control over what they feed their animals. Fouts uses an outside contractor, as well as Overton’s Cooperative Extension, to look at the nutrition provided by each crop. He receives elaborate reports of exactly what mixtures his cows should be fed, tailored down to their age and their stage in the milking cycle.

The contractor, an Ithaca-based company called Dairy One, and Cornell also help Fouts maintain compliance with environmental regulations. As a medium-sized CAFO, Fouts must obtain permits for his manure storage, process, and implementation to ensure there is little or no runoff into nearby streams.

Dairy farms have come under scrutiny in recent years because the concentrated housing of animals in an indoor space can also concentrate large amounts of manure, methane, and nitrates, factors that can contribute to algae blooms if there is runoff or leaching into the water supply. Pollution and algae blooms are detrimental to local aquatic life and can damage water sources used by communities. Every aspect of Fouts’ manure operation must be up to code due to strict laws from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

Federal and state regulations regarding the environmental concerns of dairy farms have changed the industry. With inspections and permitting required, farms have been forced to pay attention to their ecological impact. Laws require documentation of every action by the farmer, including the dates and times where manure is spread. This is called a nutrient management plan, which details how much manure and fertilizer will be used and what nutrients will be put into the soil and crops. If there is a change in plans, farmers are required to report the incident. If there is a mishap, they must fill out an incident report. The laws are designed to be strict, and have been a step towards a more sustainable industry.

But these laws only apply to CAFOs—farms with 300 or more cows. Some farms with fewer than 300 cows can be permitted as a CAFO on a case-by-case basis, but for the most part, small-scale farms are unregulated.

“We do have programs [at Cornell] working with others in the industry to try to continue to get more farms, even farms that don’t have to have nutrient management plans, to actually have them, because we think that’s good for the environment overall,” Overton says. “But our larger farms are required to have nutrient management plans and they are more regulated on the environmental side than are the smaller ones at this point in time.”

When the CAFO permit was first introduced, New York required farms with 200 cows or more to be regulated. At the time, Fouts’ farm was just below the threshold. “We had a discussion among ourselves: do we stay below 200 cows and stay out of it, or do we keep on going?” In order to stay profitable, Fouts scaled up.

Fouts says he spent over a million dollars becoming compliant with CAFO regulations, and spent three-quarters of a million dollars on manure storage last year alone. Part of his decision was encouraged by the claim that governmental regulations would be applied to everyone by 2008. “That never happened,” Fouts says. Today, small farms are still not subject to inspection or regulations. Technology, and hiring outside help to implement that technology, is a big investment. With milk prices already so low, it is a cost most small farms won’t be able to afford.

“At the time I made the argument—we’re at 200 cows fully combined, and there were four 50-cow farms that all of their cows went into the creek. We were regulated, they were not. And who was polluting more?” Fouts says. “I think for the most part they’re trying to do what they can. But the larger farms are definitely more environmentally friendly than the smaller ones tend to be because they have to be. And they spend a lot of money doing it.”

For Parian’s raw milk dairy and her seasonal cycle of rotating pastures, environmental considerations are something ingrained in her lifestyle, not dictated by the government. Parian studied environmental studies in college and knows the benefits of giving the pasture time to regenerate. She is also experimenting with sylvopasture, where her cows graze under trees in carefully managed forest land and help nourish the soil. Her methods are so environment-forward that governmental conservation organization Soil and Water gives Parian funding. In regards to regulations, she doesn’t see the need. “I don’t think that anyone would tell me to do anything differently because my impact is so low,” Parian says.

Parian’s method of free-range dairy differs from the traditional confinement dairy operations normally incorporate. The indoor nature of those farms creates the threat of a higher impact on the watershed and surrounding environment.

Down a narrow, winding country road that curves through the hills of Brooktondale, New York is a small farm with two barns and four gray silos on several acres of green pasture. Cal Snow, a fourth-generation dairy farmer and the artisan behind the farm’s handmade cheese, is cutting curds on a Friday morning. His farm is small—he has a total of 80 cows, 35 of which he milks. The cows split their time between the indoor barns and grazing on the pasture land that meanders up the hillside.

Snow’s farm is small scale and largely unregulated. He’s never seen an EPA or DEC inspector, or an inspector from another environmental agency. His homegrown cheese business is inspected for sanitation and quality, but as far as environmental regulations, Snow is left to his own devices. Besides laws against spreading manure when the ground is frozen and keeping his operation far from a water source, what he does to prevent runoff and other environmental hazards is up to him.

Snow says environmental stewardship is something he thinks about regularly, but it is difficult to uphold the standard he would like. “When things get tough, you start doing things you don’t want to do. You go to dark places,” he says. “We’re doing some logging on our wood lot that we’re hitting it harder than I’d like to—but times are tight.” He looks at the ground remorsefully.

Snow has worked to keep his family farm afloat since 1974. At the time, they were larger than the average farm in the area. Now, they are “smaller than tiny,” Snow says. With milk prices so low, he has seen a lot of dairies scale up or sink under. In the effort to remain profitable, he has also seen many struggle with ethics. He says it’s easy to cut corners about being sustainable.

“That’s one of the disadvantages of running a high-risk, tight-margin business is you’re going to be always looking for ways to cut corners, for better or worse.”

He doesn’t have the manure storage facilities and careful documentation of manure spreading like Fouts, or the progressive pasture-rotating, free-range method like Parian. He recently added a bermed concrete pad to catch manure from his cows when they are in pasture instead of allowing it to wash down the hill with the spring rains. Like other dairy farmers uses his manure to fertilize the crops he feeds his cows. But without specific regulations, the environmental precautions come from his voluntary participation in specific programs—like the one where he added the concrete pad—and from his own pocketbook. It’s a difficult balance, and one he doesn’t take lightly.

“Everybody’s trying to figure it out. We seem to want to savor rural America but no one knows how to do it.”

Across the board, from operations with thousands of cows to those which are ‘smaller than tiny,’ farmers are working hard to be innovative. But above all they are trying to make ends meet. Fewer young people are going into the industry, seeing the difficulty in making a profit and the hard work required to keep the farm going. Fouts’ daughter is studying agriculture at Cornell but is unsure if she will continue the dairy tradition in her family. “My brother is studying engineering and said he didn’t want to come back to the farm. So it’s really just on me,” she says.

No matter the size or style of the farm, making a living in the current economy is challenging. Doing so with a minimal environmental impact is even more difficult. For most, the only option is to get bigger and more high tech. Many family farms are falling away as larger cooperatives are taking over the market. Fouts thinks this trend will continue.

“It’s going to be fairly large farms, with thousands of cows. They’re going to be very high-end technology, both on production and technology and environmentally. And the other thing you’re going to see is fairly small, niche market farms. You’re going to see a divergence in the industry. And the people who are in the middle, like us, you won’t see,” Fouts says.

While the niche market farmer may not have the capital and resources to get their milk on a supermarket shelf, they have a lot of traction in a place like upstate New York. Many farmers like Parian are marketing their product directly to consumers, a model that is based on knowing where your food comes from and paying those providing it a fair price. Parian’s raw milk is sold directly to the customer. As per state law, they have to pick up the milk from the farm—raw milk is not allowed to be distributed. Parian uses this as a way to educate the consumer. While her milk is priced much higher than average and the customer has to drive to her farm to pick it up, she believes her practice is a model of stewardship.

“You’re cutting out the middleman, which takes away from the money that goes directly to the farmer. And you’re inspiring people based on what you’re doing to pay a bit of a higher price to help give back to the land and take care of the land,” Parian says.

Snow, with his artisanal cheese-making operation, also capitalizes on the local market. He sells his product at GreenStar markets and at the Ithaca Farmers Market. He says it’s all about location. “We’re very lucky because you’ve got a market that people are interested in this sort of product.”

Having this kind of direct connection to your food is something Ithaca excels at, but is not the standard nationwide. With a cultural shift away from buying products cheaply in the supermarket, small farms can thrive in a way that values the land, the animal, and the individual. Larger farms simply don’t have this connection to the customer base, and can’t put the same emphasis on best practices the way a farmer like Parian can.

Parian dusts off her beige overalls and looks out over the grassy 48 acres of her property. Forest and farmland create a patchwork of green that rolls lazily down to the blue waters of Cayuga Lake. Her cows wander freely under the rising sun, followed by her free-range chickens. She watches her dogs wrestle each other in the grass near the hen-house.

She straightens the sign advertising her raw milk and heads inside her small, one-story house. Her peaceful farm rests quietly in the New York morning. Just down the hill from her house, a drainage ditch runs green with grass and a small patch of algae. Is this an algae bloom from manure on Parian’s farm? Is it runoff from a larger-scale operation up the road? Without inspection and a strong sense of stewardship, no one has the answer.