Dairy Farmers Need More Help

Resources from SBA Not enough to Meet Dairy Demand

By Rich Worthington, with the AgInformation Network of the West

Current federal aid programs available to dairy farmers are considered good first steps in helping them navigate the ongoing pandemic and related demand issues, but more will be needed, according to the National Milk Producers Federation.

Chris Galen with the National Milk Producers Federation says the resources provided to the Small Business Administration are not enough to meet demand.

“It looks like that there’s been so much demand on lenders and the SBA that either the websites have crashed, or banks don’t have access to the money because it’s already gone. So, that’s certainly very frustration for a lot of groups like ours that worked very hard to get the money initially a few weeks ago, and then to get this second supplement of money here this past week. But, what I think it illustrates is that there’s a lot of government programs out there to help various entities in the business community, including agriculture, and right now the demands for that, whether it’s the PPP or USDA assistance, are much greater than what the supply of money is.”

“We’re looking at disastrously low prices here this spring for dairy farmers. And unfortunately, the payment formula that USDA has is more weighted towards the first few months of this year, not towards the spring and summer, when we know that farm level milk prices will be at their worst.”

Resources for dairy farmers to learn more about aid programs are available online at www.nmpf.org.

California Ag Today2021-05-12T11:17:07-07:00May 13th, 2020|

Dairy GHG Emissions Falls Dramatically

Dairy Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduced by 45 Percent Over Last 50 years

By David Sparks, with the AgInformation Network

New research published in the Journal of Dairy Science finds the climate footprint of milk production in California has been significantly reduced over the past 50 years (1964 to 2014).

The amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced per unit of milk was reduced by more than 45 percent. Scientists at the University of California, Davis conducted a life cycle environmental assessment (cradle to farm gate) of California dairy farm production, using the latest scientific models and international research standards.

The study’s key findings are as follows:

The amount of greenhouse gas emissions per each unit of milk (e.g. glass or gallon) produced has decreased more than 45 percent, due to increased milk production efficiency, including improved reproductive efficiency, nutrition, comfort, and overall management.

The amount of water used per unit of milk produced has decreased more than 88 percent, primarily due to improved feed crop production and water use efficiency.

Dramatically improved feed crop production and utilization of agricultural byproducts have led to significant reductions in the amount of natural resources used to produce each unit of milk, including, land, water, fossil fuels, and energy.

Technology on the rise in the field–and the farm office

A recent agricultural-technology summit in Modesto focused not just on the flashy, but also the mundane. One farm-tech officer spoke of the need to use technology to track finances in real time, as a way to help farmers make more informed decisions about money. Getting the next generation interested in the business is the focus of one educator who helps teens find internships with equipment makers.

California Ag Today2020-02-19T19:26:43-08:00February 26th, 2020|

Sustainable Conservation Works with Growers and Dairies to Solve Problems

Farmers and Sustainable Conservation Collaborate on Economic Improvements

By Laurie Greene, Editor

Sustainable Conservation helps California thrive by uniting people to solve some of the toughest issues facing our land, air and waters. Everyday the organization brings together business, government, landowners and others to steward the resources that Californians depend on in ways that make economic sense.

“We partner extensively with farmers in California on a variety of issues which focus on how to find, solutions that will solve the environmental issue, but also work economically,” said Ashley Boren, executive director, Sustainable Conservation, which has a home office in San Francisco as well as an office in Modesto.

Ashly Boren, Executive Director of the Sustainable Conservation

“We work with the dairies in California to find manure management practices that work for the farm but also reduce nitrate leeching to ground water, to better protect groundwater quality.

“We help simplify the permeating process for landowners who want to do restoration work, maybe stream bank stabilization or erosion control projects,” Boren said. “We make it much easier to get good projects done.”

“We have a partnership with the nursery industry. This voluntary collaboration aims to stop the sale of invasive plants because fifty percent of the plants that are invasive in California were introduced through gardening, and the nursery industry has really stepped up to be part of the solution on that issue,” she said.

Sustainable Conservation is also doing a lot of work with groundwater. “We think there’s a real opportunity for farmers to help be part of the solution in sustainable ground water management. We are particularly focused on how to capture flood waters in big storm events, and how to spread the water onto active farmland as a way of getting it back into the ground,” Boren said.

Boren noted that she has partnered with the Almond Board of California and other grower associations regarding floodwater management. We actually have a pilot program with Madera Irrigation District and Tulare Irrigation District on helping them with some tools, as well as developing some tools together with them, that will help them figure out how to optimize groundwater management in their basins.

California Ag Today2016-11-21T14:39:08-08:00November 21st, 2016|

Cornell Kasbergen On Federal Milk Marketing Order

Continued Coverage of Milk Hearing

Dairyman Cornell Kasbergen: We Need Federal Milk Marketing Order

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Deputy Editor

Cornell Kasbergen, a dairyman in Tulare County, is fed up with the flawed California State Milk Marketing Order. So much so, that he and other dairymen and women have a great desire to switch to the Federal Marketing Order.

This idea is presently front-and-center in Clovis, CA as USDA officials are holding an historic hearing that may extend into early November.

“It started three to four years ago when our milk prices were dramatically less than those in the rest of the country, and we wanted to get our industry on a level playing field. It has been a lot of work getting the co-ops together, but we are just at the beginning of this whole process.”

Having the USDA here is, in itself, a big beginning,

Kasbergen has worked hard to drum up interest in the idea. “When I was a co-op board member at Land O’Lakes, Inc. [a national, farmer-owned food and agricultural cooperative milk cooperative], we worked with other dairy co-ops and their members to get educated. We discovered, for the last three to four years, California’s whey value in its milk pricing formula deviated from national prices, and California producers were losing money. Once we realized we were leaving a lot of money on the table—over a million dollars a day—it opened people’s eyes. That’s why we are having this hearing.”

“The California Department of Food and Agriculture intentionally left the state’s whey prices lower than the rest of the nation, and though we’ve been petitioning them over and over again to rectify the issue, they have failed,” said Kasbergen. “That’s why we have gone this route in getting our milk prices formulated by the federal government rather than by the state. Our state has really let us down.”

“The CDFA has taken hundreds of millions of dollars out of the dairy farmers’ pockets, the loss is killing the dairy industry in California,” said Kasbergen.

California Ag Today2016-05-31T19:27:07-07:00October 9th, 2015|