New dairy promises Iowa industry growth but who will milk all those cows?

A dairy herd grazes near Peosta , Iowa on Aug. 16, 2011. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA)

I’m delighted Daisy Brand, LLC will be building a 750,000 square foot manufacturing plant in Boone, Iowa. A total of 255 new jobs will be created, and in return, Daisy will receive $67 million in state and local incentives. It’s a feather in the cap of newly elected Mayor Elijah Stines.

Daisy, a family-owned company based in Dallas, Texas, is best-known for its cottage cheese, sour cream, and dip products. It’s the most significant new business built in Boone in recent years; Daisy will invest $627 million here. The average employee salary will be $28.85 per hour, along with health benefits. No doubt it will inject an economic booster into the arm of the city, Boone County, and central Iowa.

As a long-time Boone County resident and farmer, I celebrate this good news. However, as an agricultural writer and editor for four decades, I was compelled to dig deeper after reading a story in the Des Moines Register stating, “It would mean more cows. A lot more cows.”

How many more?

An estimated 43,000 dairy cows to meet the plant’s production needs. In the same story, Dan Culhane, Ames Chamber president weighed in, saying, “It can reinvigorate the dairy industry here.”

Reinvigorate is defined as giving new energy or strength. What does it mean in the context of today’s dairy industry? An upgrade of the current Iowa dairy model, or something more like Wisconsin? Does it mean Iowa following the lead of California, Texas, or Idaho?

New model overtakes Midwest

I called Wisconsin home for almost four years in the late 1970s. In those days, bucolic 100-cow dairy farms dotted the hills and dales. I spent a lot of time driving two-lane country roads, visiting and interviewing farmers. Often I returned home after dark, and as I passed farms in the shadow of towering silos, I’d see lights blazing in the dairy barns, as farmers worked to wrap up the evening milking so they could arise at 4 a.m. the next day and do it all over again.

Fast forward. At about the same time in California, a fledgling dairy industry was expanding, with technology, economies of scale, ample land, and plentiful labor escalating the growth of dairy herds. By 1993, Wisconsin had lost its lead as the highest milk-producing state to California, dropping to #2.

After leaving Wisconsin, my treks back there over the years from my Iowa home base at Successful Farming revealed a starkly changed landscape: Peeling paint on shuttered barns, sagging fences, deserted pastures, with silos left standing sentinel over the graveyards of once thriving 100-cow dairy farms. Wisconsin still has under 7,000 herds, compared to 1,600 much-larger herds in California.

Eastern Iowa’s dairy farms also have declined. In recent years, northwestern Iowa dairy farms have grown, with larger herd sizes becoming the norm, as farmers from the Netherlands settled there, along with a few transplanted California dairies fleeing development pressures. Most market their milk to Wells (Blue Bunny) and Kemps (formerly Dean’s Foods) in Le Mars.

Today Texas is #3 in dairy production. You may recall reading about South Fork Dairy Farm in west central Texas in April 2023, when an explosion and fire killed nearly 18,000 head of its herd. Located in Castro County, it has the second-highest milk production in the states, with more than 59,361 cows. South Fork owners plan to rebuild.

It’s no coincidence that the first transmission of bird flu (H5N1) to dairy cows happened in Texas, as well as the first human infection in a dairy worker. H5N1 now has been detected in eight states and 30 herds (four states traced their infections back to Texas herds). Scientists say viral fragments found in milk aren’t the same as active virus. But FDA will continue to monitor the situation.

Adding value – not volume

Iowa ranked #11 in total milk production in 2023. We have about 238,000 milk cows on 1,016 farms, according to the 2022 USDA Ag Census. Adding 43,000 cows would be an 18% increase. How much manure would 43,000 cows produce? (Manure-generated electricity, produced by biodigesters, can be sold to the grid. Some USDA grant funding is available.)

As far as I know, Boone County has one dairy farm. It’s a family operation. To boost dairy project entries at the Boone County Fair, Jeremiah Haub volunteered over the past nine years to lease calves to local 4-H club members so they could raise and show calves.

This farm also sells its milk to Picket Fence Creamery, a Dallas County family dairy that reinvented itself to bottle its milk and make its own ice cream back in 2003. The owners had no interest in following industry trends to get bigger. I wrote about Picket Fence years ago; today it also sells directly to Hy-Vee, Casey’s General Stores, and Fareway.

I’ve also written about Hansen’s Dairy, near Hudson. In 2004, it launched an on-farm creamery, where they pasteurize and bottle milk, and make butter, cheese curds, and ice cream. Their products also are sold at retailers in the Cedar Falls-Waterloo area. Several Hansen siblings make a living from their valued-added products.

Some smaller dairies are surviving by using robotic milkers, an expensive investment. Others are turning to solar and wind energy to reduce costs, as well as rotational grazing. I’ve also reported on farms producing organic milk and artisanal cheeses.

Of course, none of these farms will be sending milk to Daisy Brand. Other conventional farms will need to expand.

No Ubers or bus stops for workers

Who will milk these cows? Circling back to Wisconsin, I traveled there in 2014 to interview farmers and others for a series of stories about immigration reform, as well as dairy worker safety and health. With the industry trend to larger herds, the shrinking pool of family members and local residents no longer could handle the workload.

In Wisconsin, following the lead of California, most dairy workers are immigrants. Dairy farming is year-round, 24/7. Yet the H-2A federal visa is not. It’s seasonal, and doesn’t meet the needs of farmers and workers.

Clark County, Wisconsin, has the largest number of dairy farms in the state. Undocumented workers can own and register cars and trucks. But legislators didn’t want to appear soft on immigration, so they passed a law in 2006 preventing undocumented individuals from obtaining driver’s licenses. If workers cannot drive legally, farmers often provide on-farm housing. (Undocumented individuals aren’t eligible for insurance, either.)

If housing isn’t available, and they’re stopped, they’re fined $200.50 for driving without a license. Only 6% of Clark County residents are Hispanic; but they make up 75% of the cases of operating a motor vehicle without a license, according to data compiled for ProPublica by Court Data in Madison.

Recently I read about John Rosenow, one of the farmers I interviewed in 2014, who still is advocating for dairy workers. One of his employees had been stopped on his way to work more often than the law of averages, so Rosenow wrote the judge that he suspected harassment. It didn’t help. The worker’s fines cost him five days of pay.

A total of 19 states allow undocumented individuals to obtain driver’s licenses. Guess what? Iowa isn’t one of them. How many northwestern Iowa dairy farm workers are in same boat?

Passing legislation just for show

Recently, following the lead of Texas, Iowa legislators passed a law to apprehend and hold noncitizens, and transport them to Mexico, regardless of where they’re from. The law will take effect July 1 unless, like Texas, it’s blocked by the courts.

Once again, where will the workers come from to milk 43,000 more cows for the Daisy plant?  And how will they get to work? Of course, you’ll find some dairies in surrounding counties. One to the east in Marshall County sells its milk to Anderson Erickson Dairy.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s premature to worry. Construction of the Boone Daisy plant won’t be complete until 2027; the equipment won’t be in place until 2029. Iowa has a few years to wrestle with these questions.

I’m happy for the growth potential posed by the new Daisy plant in Boone. I want Daisy Brand to thrive here in Boone County. I hope there’s a plentiful milk supply for its products. But, wouldn’t it be great if 43,000 dairy cows could be raised on 80 different farms — farms with families with children enrolled in local schools, attending local churches, and paying property taxes? Children who would grow up to become the next generation of rural leaders. That would be a win-win growth model for Iowa!

Unfortunately, the trend toward larger farms has created a seismic structural transformation in the labor landscape of agriculture. And the concentration of livestock is a recipe ripe for future disasters: from zoonotic diseases to antibiotic resistance to pollution of water supplies.

Congress has a role to play, too. It failed to act on a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year, after Trump bullied Republicans into giving him the gift of immigration to use as a cash cow campaign issue this November.

This column first appeared on Cheryl Tevis’ blog Unfinished Business, and it is republished here via the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.

Editor’s note: Please consider subscribing to the collaborative and its member writers to support their work.

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