North Dakota, Pennsylvania trying to save dairy industries

North Dakota and Pennsylvania have set up task forces to boost struggling dairy industries, though they are taking different paths to that goal.

By BLAKE NICHOLSON, Associated Press Writer

http://bismarcktribune.com/articles/2003/12/17/news/update/upd5.txt

The North Dakota group is farmer-driven and relying on grant funds. The Pennsylvania effort is centered in the state agriculture department and using state money. The Pennsylvania endeavor has an aggressive schedule; the North Dakota farmers have struggled early.

Both groups want more dairies and more cows in their states.

"We decided we needed to bring together all aspects of the dairy industry in Pennsylvania," said Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff, who runs a dairy operation near Millville, in the northeastern part of that state.

Harvey Hoff, a Richardton dairyman who is spearheading the separate effort in North Dakota, said the state wants to help existing dairies and recruit more of them.

That effort began in earnest one year ago. It has led to a group now known as the North Dakota Dairy Coalition, with representatives of all aspects of the industry, from producers and processors to state and university officials, Hoff said.

Its 30 members have organized into six committees to deal with issues ranging from fund raising to waste management. The committees will gather Jan. 21 in Mandan to provide updates, Hoff said.

Pennsylvania’s Dairy Task Force, established in August, is creating the Center for Dairy Excellence, a new office in the state’s agriculture department. Wolff said the office will help coordinate the dairy efforts, set up a Web site for dairy information and help form a team that will assist dairy farmers with business and management.

"We’re looking at, in the next three months, having that operational," Wolff said.

North Dakota has lost about 90 percent of its dairy farmers in the past quarter century and about half of its dairy cows in the past decade, according to the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives, which is helping the dairy group. The state has about 430 dairy farms.

In Pennsylvania, one of the top milk-producing states in the country, the number of dairy cows has declined about 17 percent over the past quarter century, the state’s Agricultural Statistics Service says. The state has about 9,000 dairy farms.

"Milk production has started to show some substantial decreases, and that means we’re losing market share," Wolff said.

Officials cite several reasons for the declines, including low prices, aging farmers and a lifestyle that is not attractive to young farmers. Pennsylvania also faces urban pressure, Wolff said.

The debate about how to resurrect the floundering industry in North Dakota has centered around size of operations. Some officials, including state Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson, maintain that the state must accept the trend toward larger dairies to keep processing plants in North Dakota. Critics of that approach say it threatens family farming.

Wolff said Pennsylvania is seeing a similar debate.

"A certain group of society has mislabeled the large farms as factory farms," he said. "That is certainly not the case. Only two-tenths of 1 percent (of dairy farms) in Pennsylvania are not family owned."

Larger farms with more employees, including partnerships formed by families, enable dairy workers to take more time off, Wolff and Johnson said.

"We’ve really tried hard to educate the public," Wolff said. "Family farms are still the backbone of Pennsylvania agriculture; they just look different than they used to. They’re not the Norman Rockwell painting that hangs over the couch."

In North Dakota, the debate over large dairies contributed to fund-raising problems for the task force early this year, prompting the group to shelve plans to hire a full-time coordinator by summer. Hoff said the group organized six informal "farmyard socials" this summer to help bridge the divide.

"That has gone away (although) you’re still going to hit a few pockets of it," he said.

The North Dakota group hopes to hire a full-time coordinator by next summer. Hoff said the coalition expects it will need about $350,000 over the next two years. It has raised about $71,000 so far.

In Pennsylvania, officials hope to appoint a full-time director for the Center for Dairy Excellence this month. They are using $100,000 in federal grant money and $50,000 in state money to fund the first year of operations.

The North Dakota coalition’s $100,000 grant application was rejected earlier this year by a state group that provides money to developers of North Dakota farm products. The coalition plans to apply again to the Agricultural Products Utilization Commission by the end of the month.

"The first time, we just didn’t have enough information for them," Hoff said. "We weren’t ready … and they weren’t quite sure of our goals."