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Big Dairy Concentrates Cattle and Ownership

Last updated on 2013.06.14

Tom Lawrence at the Mitchell Daily Republic launches a five-part series on South Dakota's dairy industry with this report on industry trends. The series is of particular interest to Hanson County residents, who may find themselves hosting a 7000-head dairy in their watershed.

Featured in this first article is South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture Walt Bones, whose dairy operations own 4% of South Dakota's stock of 94,000 dairy cattle. Secretary Bones admits that he's never milked a cow himself. His job is about making money, not making milk. SDSU dairy expert Alvaro Garcia insists that such big dairy managers are still connected to the land. I have a hard time imagining a big dairy manager maintaining the same connection with his cattle, their comfort, and their environmental impacts the same way as small dairy operators who have a daily, hands-on relationship with their beasts.

Lawrence's article includes some familiar statistics on dairy decline. Dairy farms in South Dakota have decreased from 20,000 in 1965 to 4650 in 1981 to 349 today... and still dropping. Small Class B dairies have dwindled from 3900 in 1981 to 57 today. Big dairy feedlots, those with over 500 head, have increased from 4 in 1995 to 44 today. Those big dairies account for over half of our dairy production. South Dakota's dairy industry provides far fewer opportunities to be your own boss, and far more opportunities to work long hours for someone else.

Lawrence also notes that while ownership (and, concomitantly, wealth) is concentrating, milk production is increasing. Thirty years ago, we had 159,000 dairy cattle producing 1.669 million pounds of milk a year. Now we have 94,000 cattle producing 1.884 million pounds of milk per year. That's a 41% drop in critters but a 13% increase in dairy production, thanks to a near doubling of the amount of milk each cow can produce.

Those efficiency gains rely on doping and confining animals in their concentrated barns. According to Lawrence's report, less than 2% of America's dairy cattle graze in pastures. The vast majority spend their lives indoors. Our milk comes almost entirely from fleshy cogs pinned in place in a machine.

Lawrence cites one number that can't be right. The state Ag Department claims milk has a $16.3 billion economic impact in South Dakota. That just can't be: our entire state GDP is $39.9 billion. Milk can't produce 40% of our economic activity. A report from last year pegs dairy's direct and indirect economic impact in South Dakota at $509 million. Another blurb from the Big Ag lobby has the Ag Department claiming dairy produces an annual economic impact of $1.27 billion in South Dakota. That figure at least roughly matches Secretary Bones's frequent claim that each dairy cow produces about $13,600 in economic impact. But add in the Ag Department's claim that agriculture as a whole is responsible for $20.7 billion in annual economic impact in a state that does just under $40 billion in business, and I have to wonder if our Ag Department is just making up numbers.

12 Comments

  1. Stace Nelson 2011.12.05

    But removing a legislator from the Ag Committee with a "let the community, not the state decide" mentality was NOT in anyway about his stance on the issue.

  2. Steve Sibson 2011.12.05

    Does anybody propose making South Dakota's government bigger to reverse the trend?

  3. larry kurtz 2011.12.05

    West River: sell your ranches to Ted Turner. East River: plow yourselves under and preserve wetlands.

  4. Charlie Johnson 2011.12.05

    Animal agriculture in SD starting slipping big time when the bigger operations took over and the owner of the livestock was no longer doing the majority of the chores. Everyone can claim to be a family farm or farm including Ted Turner. What has driven SD agriculture for decades is family farm(ing). Family farming is where the farm family provides most or all of the capital, labor, and mgt. Not just one or two of the three components but all three. What we are witnessing is the segretation of these economic engines that has resulted in concentration of livestock, wealth, and power. When over 2500 dairy families no longer operate in SD from just a few years ago. When that farm family would have spent $50,000 in household living(not counting dollars spent on the dairy herd). When those spent dollars turn 7 times in the community-that's a $875 million impact gone just from lost farm families.($50,000 times 2500 times 7 = $875,000,000 Now what do we say?

  5. caheidelberger Post author | 2011.12.06

    Charlie, I'm curious about a couple of points related to efficiency.

    First, narrowly, I'm intrigued by the idea that we get more milk from fewer cows. Does fewer cows mean less environmental impact? Or does the concentration of those fewer cows in CAFOs create more harm to watersheds than having more cows distributed over pastures?

    Second, more broadly, I totally see the point you make, that having more families engaged in farming produces more economic activity for local communities. But with modern methods, we need fewer people to produce more goods. Is this what's happening in the economy as a whole: our productivity has increased to the point that we just don't need as many people to produce the the goods and services we need? And if we don't need people, what do we do with them all?

  6. Charlie Johnson 2011.12.06

    We perhaps have more than 2500 immigrant workers on SD dairies today. We have subsituted cheap labor for family labor. Concentration of any animal units is a concern.

  7. caheidelberger Post author | 2011.12.06

    From a purely economic perspective, our large immigrant labor force decreases the economic impact of our dairy industry, as those workers send a big chunk of their money back home.

  8. larry kurtz 2011.12.06

    Statehood for Mexico will not only legalize the workforce it will legitimize the flight of northerners unable or unwilling to fight the brutal winters.

    Rewild the West.

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