Moving Milk - Greenhorns

Transcription

MOVING MILK
TRANSPORTATION AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF MILK IN NEW YORK STATE
HOLLY RIPPON-BUTLER
ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES SENIOR THESIS
APRIL 16, 2012
TABLE&OF&CONTENTS&
INTRODUCTION&...................................................................................................................................................&3!
T HE!E MPIRE!S TATE!................................................................................................................................................................!5!
TRAIN&TRANSPORT&...........................................................................................................................................&8!
M OVING!M ILK !..........................................................................................................................................................................!9!
D ISAPPEARANCE!OF!C HEESE!F ACTORIES!........................................................................................................................!12!
A "T ALE"OF"T WO"C OUNTIES"................................................................................................................................................."14!
L EGAL!M ILK !............................................................................................................................................................................!17!
D EALER!C ONTROL!.................................................................................................................................................................!25!
F ARMER!C OOPERATIVES!.....................................................................................................................................................!27!
MILK&ON&WHEELS&.............................................................................................................................................&29!
IMPACTS!ON!THE!L AND !........................................................................................................................................................!34!
T HE!T RANSITION!P ERIOD!...................................................................................................................................................!35!
DISCUSSION&........................................................................................................................................................&40!
P RODUCER&C HALLENGES!...................................................................................................................................................!41!
(1)! S HIPPING"MILK"FARTHER "........................................................................................................................................"41!
(2)! INCREASED"PRODUCTION "........................................................................................................................................"45!
(3)! C OMMODITIZATION"AND"CAPITALIZATION "........................................................................................................."49!
T HE&V ALUE&OF&THE&S MALL&F ARM !..................................................................................................................................!52!
R ESOURCE"U SE"......................................................................................................................................................................."54!
INFRASTRUCTURE ".................................................................................................................................................................."55!
P OTENTIAL&S OLUTIONS!.....................................................................................................................................................!56!
F ARM"E FFICIENCY"................................................................................................................................................................."57!
R EGIONAL"S UPPLY"................................................................................................................................................................."57!
D IRECT"M ARKETING"............................................................................................................................................................."58!
V ALUECADDED"P RODUCTS"..................................................................................................................................................."60!
L AND"C ONSERVATION ".........................................................................................................................................................."61!
P OLICY"......................................................................................................................................................................................"62!
C ONCLUSION !..........................................................................................................................................................................!64!
WORKS&CITED&....................................................................................................................................................&69!
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INTRODUCTION
When my dad started milking cows at age ten, my grandfather had just purchased his first
electric milker. After each morning milking, they lifted cans of milk from the cold-water storage
pit in the barn and packed them onto a pickup truck for delivery to the local creamery. Over the
past half century, my dad has seen the dairy industry change dramatically. Since 1960 – when
my grandfather bought our 200-acre farm in Saratoga, New York – electric milkers, bulk tanks,
and diesel tractors have replaced hand milking, forty-quart steel cans, and gas-powered
equipment. A large tanker truck now comes to our farm every other day to pipe milk out of our
bulk holding tank and ship it hundreds of miles to the nearest processing plant. These
transformations illustrate the high producing, heavily mechanized, and capital-intensive industry
that dairy farming has become. Nevertheless, small dairy farms can, and do, persist. Against the
local and national trend in agriculture to get big or get out, our farm’s acreage hasn’t grown, and
our herd size has shrunk from sixty cows to twenty-five. Changes in the way our milk is shipped,
however – such as the transition from quart cans to tank trucks – have been out of our control.
Transportation plays a critical role in the dairy industry because fluid milk must be
handled and delivered rapidly between cow and consumer, due to its highly perishable nature.
Farmers rely on distribution companies to transport their product safely and efficiently to the
marketplace – and to relay profits. Producer and distributor have become inextricably linked in
the dairy industry. With this dynamic in mind, I ask how the development of the transportation
industry has affected New York State farmers over the past two centuries, and how this has
directly impacted farmers in the state today.
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The transition from a localized to mass-market milk distribution system in the nineteenth
century relied on the emergence of institutionalized transportation systems, such as railroads and
interstates, as well as new technologies, such as refrigeration, pasteurization, and bulk shipping.
As the mode of milk delivery changed from carts to railroads – and eventually to tanker trucks –
the spatial arrangement of farms, the volume of milk production, and the intensity of resource
use were altered as well. The changing transportation industry has in many ways came to dictate
the geographic and social landscape of dairy farming in New York State. Dealers entered into
farmers’ relationship with environmental and market conditions as the region of fluid milk
production expanded – creating an industry that looked to growth, no matter what the demand or
cost, as inevitable and guaranteed. Large farms have thrived because they have been willing and
able to adopt new standards of production introduced by milk dealers and demanded by
consumers. Although many factors affect the context of dairy farming in New York – volatile
milk prices, expensive inputs, availability of labor, and rising land taxes are all concerns for
farmers – in this paper I focus on how milk shipping has impacted the structure of the industry. I
argue that the way the transportation industry evolved over the past two centuries has created
economies of scale in the dairy industry that enabled milk to become a commodity and
encouraged the development of large-scale dairy farms in New York State, making it difficult for
small farms to compete.
Figure 1 A cart used for shipping milk in cans to
rail stations (American Memory Collection).
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THE!EMPIRE!STATE!
New York State is particularly well suited to dairying because of its combination of
market access and high-quality land.1,2 Although New York City has a high profile around the
globe, the state of New York is much more than the skyscrapers and business suits. Beyond city
limits, many of the State’s acres are farmland or forest. Farming has been a way of life in New
York since the end of the eighteenth century, when settlers from western New England first
ventured into the newly conquered hinterlands and began transforming the forests into farm
fields.3 New York State developed the first “mass market” for fluid milk in the nineteenth
century when railroads opened up the market connection between country and city.4 Dairy
farming became a profitable industry in the State, attracting producer and dealer investment. The
State has always been a national frontrunner in milk production and consumption, and has grown
to be the third-highest milk producing state in the country.5
1
Dairy farming for fluid milk production requires access to a regional market and adequate environmental resources
to support the intensive crop harvesting, manure application, and water withdrawal required. Rural population,
processing capacity, mean temperature, farmland availability, and farm-labor wage factors also play a role in
determining the location of dairy farms (Chantal Line Carpentier, Deepananda Herath, and Alfons Weersink,
“Environmental and Other Factors Influencing Location Decisions of Livestock Operations,” Winrock International
(2005): 12, accessed February 2012).
2
In a 1935 study, Richard Hartshorne remarks that the prevalence of dairying throughout New England and the
Middle Atlantic region, “is of course a result in part of the high degree of urbanization of that area, but is also an
adjustment to the rough hill country of the Appalachian plateau and the New York-New England highlands.” Market
conditions were strong enough to overcome environmental limitations in some cases, such as the ridge and valley
region adjacent to the Piedmont between the Hudson and Potomac; in other cases, dairy farming remained unpopular
despite easy access to large markets because of poor pasture land; and in still other areas, fertile soils trumped
market access by encouraging the development of dairy farms (for cheese production) even before farmers could
reach the fluid milk markets (Richard Hartshorne, “A New Map of the Dairy Areas of the United States,” Economic
Geography 11 (1935): 350).
3
The land was wrested from the Iroquois during the American Revolution (Alan Taylor, "Wasty Ways: Stories of
American Settlement,” Environmental History 3 (1998): 293).
4
E. Melanie DuPuis, “The Land of Milk: Economic Organization and the Politics of Space in the U.S. Dairy
Industry” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1991): 56.
5
New York produces 6.8% of the country’s milk behind California and Wisconsin (21.3% and 12.9%, respectively)
(“Industry Statistics: Milk production (most recent) by State,” State Master, accessed December 2011,
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/ind_mil_pro-industry-milk-production).
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Transportation improvements are a critical component of the region’s dairying
compatibility because they alter the interplay between market access and environmental
conditions – effectively decreasing distance from the market by shortening the time it takes to
get milk there, thus opening up new lands to economically feasible production. In 1842, the first
“milk train” carried Orange County milk on a New York State railroad, and by 1939 the State
was home to the largest milk receiving plant in the world.6 New York was the first place where
an argument was made for clean, pasteurized milk (as a public health concern), and also the first
place that a differentiation was made between certified and inspected milk (meaning farmers
who were willing to produce a cleaner, more regulated product could receive higher prices for
their milk).7,8 In the early 1900s, New York became one of the first states to mandate
pasteurization, legally holding farmers to standards of safety.9 Milk dealers in the State locked
farmers into contracts and producers struggled to meet the cost of production. These challenges
brought farmers together politically, leading to the creation of milk shipping cooperatives and
social organizations, such as the Grange.10
To tell the story of the evolution of fluid milk shipping in New York, I rely on a rich set
of historical archives, published studies, and farmer interviews – as well as personal experience
from growing up on a dairy farm in the State. The nuanced history that these sources yield is
intriguing and at times counterintuitive. Often the steps that ultimately pushed some farmers out
of the business made economic sense and improved efficiency. Trains that ran on a reliable daily
schedule and trucks that could collect large amounts of milk at a time also encouraged
6
The Sheffield Farms plant in Heuvelton, New York was the largest milk receiving plant in the world in 1939 and
also the site of a farmer strike that shut it down for over a hundred days (E. Melanie DuPuis, Nature’s Perfect Food
(New York: New York University Press, 2001), 165).
7
Deborah Valenze, Milk: A Local and Global History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 7.
8
Alice Katharine Fallows, “A City’s Campaign for Pure Milk,” Century Magazine (1903): 565.
9
Valenze, Milk, 230-1.
10
The Grange, short for the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, was founded in 1867 as a social
group and advocacy association for farmers.
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homogeneous production and required farmers to incorporate heavy capital investments into
their operations. As milk became a commodity product, producer and consumer were driven
farther apart, geographically and conceptually.
The changing transportation industry – along with growing concerns about public health,
expanding government regulations, centralization of control over milk prices, and new
technology – enabled farms to become larger, more standardized, and increasingly mechanized.
These changes have not been uniform and homogeneous, nor are they irreversible. I will first lay
out the history of the development of these two industries with a focus on the impact on
producers before concluding with a discussion on contemporary dairy farming in New York
State. I will make an argument for the environmental and social value of small farms before
considering a number of strategies that may help the small producers stay viable. The
transportation industry has led to both profits and challenges for farmers throughout New York’s
history and will be a factor in the dairy industry’s future.
Figure 2 Farmland in Upstate New York (photo by author)
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TRAIN&TRANSPORT&
Milk was not always the ubiquitous staple of the American diet that it is today. In the
1800s, milk was a localized and seasonal food – available to farmers and their neighbors in the
spring and summer months.11 The only way that milk left the immediate vicinity of its
production was as cheese. City dwellers, without access to nearby dairy farms, drank milk from
cows kept in public parks or cramped stables. A New York Times article from 1923 illustrates the
dynamics of the dairy industry before the Civil War:
The rural gentry controlled the milk, buying it from their neighbor farmers and
distributing it at an advanced price. The farmers delivered to a central plant, got their
meager payout and let the dealer take the risk…Thus an industry that was destined to
develop into huge proportions began its life in a haphazard way. Perishable,
indispensable, and subject to seasonal variation in quantity, this basic food has taken half
a century to reveal its great possibilities and to assert its right to equitable marketing.12
The construction of train tracks across New York State in the nineteenth century provided the
necessary infrastructure to move fluid milk from the country to the city. Railroads impacted the
rural economy and landscape as dairy farmers switched from producing milk for cheese to
producing for the lucrative fluid milk market. The influx of country milk could barely keep up
with urban consumption, and as demand grew, so did concern about sanitation. The push for
pasteurization introduced production standards and government involvement in the dairy
industry at the same time that farmers themselves were organizing politically to demand better
prices for their milk. The story of milk’s rise to prominence in New York State is a tumultuous
tale of producers, distributors, and consumers who influenced where and how it moved, and in
turn were affected by its movements.
11
Like humans, cows have a gestation period of roughly nine months and produce milk when they freshen, or give
birth. Dairy cows are bred every year and produce milk for 10 of the 12 months between births. In pasture-based
dairy without supplemental feed, cows are typically bred to calve in the spring and produce milk through the
summer to the fall, at which point their production level drops off significantly.
12
Anne Seward, “More Dairymen Pool Their Sales: Both Farmer and Public Benefit,” New York Times, June 17,
1923, accessed February 2012, New York Times Article Archive, 1851-Present.
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MOVING!MILK!
In the late 1700s, moving goods from one place to another in the United States was a
painfully slow endeavor. The small number of roads that existed were built by local governments
with local traffic in mind; traveling from Boston to New York City was done by horse-drawn
stagecoach and took up to a week. As one can imagine, “long-distance freight movement was
absolutely impossible” since transportation expenses could nearly double the cost of the good.13
Turnpikes and canals were significant improvements for transportation in the colonies, allowing
farm products in western New York to “double in value.” It wasn’t until railroads and
refrigeration, however, that a product as perishable as milk could be moved long distances.14,15
Just as the canal craze was starting in the 1820s, the railroad industry migrated to the
States from England. The concept of using taxpayer money to build transportation infrastructure,
which was introduced by the state governments during the construction of turnpikes in the early
1800s, provided the funds that enabled the rapid expansion of rail lines. Between 1853 and 1859,
railroads and canals briefly staged a competition for supremacy, but railroads won due to cheaper
maintenance costs and their ability to move goods much faster over longer distances with more
consistency.16 New York’s first railroad, the Mohawk and Hudson, was built near Albany in
1831 and was quickly followed by the Saratoga and Schenectady in 1832, the Rensselaer and
Saratoga in 1835, and the New York Central to Utica in 1836.17
13
Arthur Twining Hadley, Railroad Transportation, Its History and Its Laws (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,
1897), Google Books, 24.
14
Edith Van Wagner, ed., State of New York Agricultural Manual (Department of Farms and Markets Bulletin 133,
1918?), 61.
15
According to Hadley, the first American turnpike was built in 1790 and the road system was developed first in
Pennsylvania, although most completely in New York. The Erie Canal was the State’s first canal, completed in 1825
(Hadley, Railroad Transportation, 24).
16
Canals frequently froze during the winter (Hadley, Railroad Transportation, 30-32).
17
Hadley, Railroad Transportation, 34.
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Thaddeus Selleck, a contractor on the New York and Erie Railroad in Orange County,
New York, conceived of the idea to ship milk via refrigerated train as an experiment in the spring
of 1842, a year after the railroad was completed.18 At the time, the City’s milk supply came
predominantly from cows fed on distillery leftovers and kept within city limits. Convincing
farmers to switch from producing butter to sending their milk away on a rail car, especially one
that ran on Sundays, was the most difficult part of Selleck’s endeavor.19 As soon as the first train
pulled into the city depot, Selleck was unable to meet consumer demand. Milk trains soon
became the most profitable cars on the line and by 1900 five railroads were built into Orange
County to handle the huge demand for their services from both producers and consumers.20
After the Erie Railroad became the first rail company to operate a milk train in Orange
County, the “tentacles of the milkshed” began to grow along railroad lines further into Upstate
New York, encouraging homestead-style farms to convert to fluid milk production for the
wholesale market.21 The improvements in transportation, along with increasing demand from the
City, “led the farmers to give greater attention to the production of market milk.”22 In 1853, the
18
Selleck built a receiving station on Reade Street in New York City, where he then sold the milk to consumers.
Refrigeration at this time consisted of packing the milk bottles in ice. Commercial vapor-compression refrigeration
didn’t come to the United States until the 1850s, and synthetic refrigerants not until in the 1900s.
19
Selleck’s train was the first in the country to run on Sundays (because fluid milk needs to be shipped every day of
the week), which received heavy opposition from the religious community. Economics soon won out, however, and
Sunday trains became commonplace; “A great many farmers who could not reconcile their religious convictions
with doing business on Sunday refused to ship their milk for a time, but as they saw a good thing passing along
without their getting a share of it…these farmers compromised with their consciences in some way and became
Sunday shippers just like their worldly minded neighbors” (“The First Sunday Train: It Carried Milk from Orange
County, and from It an Enormous Traffic Has Grown,” New York Times, August 12, 1900, accessed March 2012,
New York Times Article Archive, 1851-Present).
20
A single car could hold 240 cans (each containing ten gallons), returning $132 in total. As early as 1865, slowrunning milk trains, such as the eighty-mile Erie route from Orange County to New York City, could turn a profit of
up $1,600 to $1,800 during the summer months (“Milky Ways,” New York Times, August 15, 1865, accessed March
2012, New York Times Article Archive, 1851-Present).
21
The term “milkshed” refers to the geographic area of farms that supply a city’s milk, similar to the concept of
watershed (Loyal Durand, Jr., “The Historical and Economic Geography of Dairying in the North Country of New
York State,” Geographical Review 57 (1967): 36, accessed November 2011).
22
Van Wagner, State of New York Agriculture, 517.
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social reformer John Mullaly reported significant jumps in the number of quarts shipped on new
railroad lines in recent years and predicted further increases:
Farmers whose lands lie sufficiently near any of the stations along the route to
enable them to transport their milk to New York, are only beginning to enter into
the business with spirit. They perceive how profitable it may be made, and many
who possessed only a dozen head of cattle a few years ago, are now rapidly
increasing their stock to supply the constantly increasing demand for milk.23
By 1905, New York Health Commissioner Thomas Darlington estimated that 87 percent of the
milk consumed in the City was produced within 40-400 miles in New York State.24 The rise of
train transport brought cleaner milk to New York City and significantly changed the land use and
agricultural profile of the State.
Figure 3 Map of transportation infrastructure in New York State in 1859 (Yale University Map Collection)
23
John Mullaly, The Milk Trade in New York and Vicinity (New York: Fowlers and Wells, 1853), 34.
George M. Whitaker, “The Milk Supply of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia,” U.S.D.A. Bureau of Animal
Industry Bulletin No. 51 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1905).
24
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DISAPPEARANCE!OF!CHEESE!FACTORIES!
Even before New York State farmers had the means to get fluid milk to the New York
City market, the framework existed for the rapid commoditization and capitalization of the
industry. Before the advent of railroads, dairy farmers took their milk to cheese factories where it
was made into a product that could be marketed over long distances. Cheese takes time to mature
and keeps much better with less refrigeration than fluid milk, making it perfectly suited to the
seasonable variation in dairy production. Farmers in New York were among the first to employ
economies of scale in cheese production, allowing factories to sell a uniform product preferred
by urban dealers.25 In her extensive chronicle of milk use and production throughout human
history, Deborah Valenze points out that as land around major Northeastern cities in the United
States became more valuable, large-scale cheese dairies continually moved westward and “a new
form of liquid milk production evolved around urban markets.”26 Between 1899 and 1909, as the
railroad system rapidly expanded into New York State, cheese manufacturing declined 19
percent while fluid milk sales more than doubled.27 The system of mass-market cheese
production set the stage for the fluid milk market of the late nineteenth century; to switch to fluid
milk production, farmers merely brought their milk to a creamery close to the train line at their
town’s center instead of a cheese factory in the surrounding hills. This transition from the cheese
to fluid milk market meant a change in the location of farms, the volume of production, and the
intensity of resource use.
The location of fluid milk creameries, unlike cheese plants, was limited by reliance on the
rail transport infrastructure, which tended to follow valleys. As the new fluid milk market opened
25
Valenze, Milk, 192.
Ibid., 149.
27
Roswell D. Cooper, Origin and Development of the Dairymen’s League, Cornell University Library Division of
Rare and Manuscript Collections (1938), Google Book, 1.
26
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with the expansion of the railroad system, producers closer to rail stations were better positioned
to enter the new market. Farmers needed to be within five to six miles of the creamery to be able
to deliver their milk every morning before the train departed, although in some areas farms
within twelve miles had their milk collected by an individual who drove a daily truck route that
ended at the creamery.28 These two complimentary systems of milk delivery led to the formation
of milksheds organized in five to ten mile strips on either side of the railroads with circular areas
around the terminus of the branch lines.29 Creameries could be found every few miles along the
lines and towns typically had four to six, most of which were owned by city dealers.30 The valley
locations of market milk farms not only provided better access to consumers, but better quality
soils as well, allowing farmers to meet the growing demand for high-volume production.
Cows naturally produce more milk in the summer months when pastures are richer,
leading to a dearth of supply in the winter. Cheese factories smoothed this uneven supply by
simply using the summer milk to make cheese throughout the rest of the year. Consumers wanted
to drink fluid milk year round, however, and shipping companies needed a predictable, highvolume supply. Farms producing milk for the fluid market were under pressure to produce in
high volume and to do so more evenly throughout the year. Higher-quality valley soils supported
the intense cropping of alfalfa that was harvested and stored throughout the winter to encourage
milk production during the months when pasture growth was poor.
As dairying migrated into the valleys where train tracks were built, the railroads became
spatial markers of the boundaries between more and less intensive types of dairying in New York
28
The individual was employed by farmers but paid by the creamery out of deductions from farmers’ checks
(Whitaker, “The Milk Supply”).
29
Durand, “The Historical and Economic Geography of Dairying,” 38.
30
The rest were run by independent owners or farmer cooperatives (Whitaker, “The Milk Supply”).
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State.31 In comparison to cheese farms, dairies participating in the fluid milk market had 30
percent larger herds, 30 percent fewer acres per cow, three times as many acres in alfalfa
production for feed, and were more heavily concentrated on “good” quality soils.32,33 The new
form of transportation changed the nature of milk production in New York, impacting farmers
whether or not they partook in the new market. As DuPuis explains, the domination of fluid milk
production meant that hill farms, previously classified as strictly cheese producing, were no
longer a different type of farm, but rather dairies with less ability to produce than their valley
counterparts.34 The next section provides an example of the importance of location and market
access for farmers entering the fluid milk market through the case study of two counties in
opposite corners of New York State.
A"TALE"OF"TWO"COUNTIES"
St. Lawrence and Orange County played a major role in the development of New York
State’s dairy industry. St. Lawrence County abuts Canada at the northernmost part of the State
(referred to as the “North Country”) while Orange County borders New York City limits. As
early as 1858, both St. Lawrence and Orange County had railroads crisscrossing them. While the
Orange County railroads ran in a direct path to the City, though, St. Lawrence lines had to
navigate around the Adirondack Mountains along the border of Canada before plunging into
central New York and eventually connecting to the New York City market through the Hudson
31
E. Melanie DuPuis, Nature’s Perfect Food: How Milk Became America’s Drink (New York: New York
University Press, 2002), 154.
32
DuPuis compares average herd size, average total acres per cow, average acres of land for alfalfa production per
cow, and percentages of poor, fair, and good quality soil used by cheese versus fluid milk producing farms. Cheese
farms utilized “poor” and “fair” soils (DuPuis, Nature’s Perfect Food, 148).
33
Ivan R. Bierly, Factors That Affect Costs and Returns in Producing Milk, in DuPuis, Nature’s Perfect Food, 148.
34
DuPuis, Nature’s Perfect Food, 141.
Rippon-Butler 15
River Valley lines. A comparison of how the two counties dealt with the changing New York
State dairy industry illustrates the interplay between market access and fluid milk production.
The northernmost tip of Orange County is located less than one hundred miles from New
York City, making it the ideal location to supply the demand for country milk that was growing
at the end of the nineteenth century.35 Due to their proximity to the market, Orange County
farmers were the first in the State to supply the City with fluid milk, which was touted as a
“pure” country product by the social reformer Robert Hartley. Throughout the end of the
nineteenth century and into the twentieth, the County had the highest volume of milk production
in the State. As trains stretched farther upstate, however, competitors were brought into the
market.
St. Lawrence County’s location, nearly 400 miles from the New York City market,
encouraged cheese to develop as the major agricultural output. When the Rutland Railroad
provided the first major market connection for the county in the mid-nineteenth century, it was
used to distribute cheese to the New York City and Boston markets. From New York City, the
good was exported to Britain, which was the principal market for North Country cheese in the
1880s.36 By the end of the nineteenth century, the Panic of 1893, a decline in export trade, and
competition from Wisconsin had caused the cheese producers in St. Lawrence County to look
domestically for alternative markets.
St. Lawrence County farmers began shipping fluid milk to New York City as early as
1898, and by 1913 a daily milk train on the New York Central line brought milk the 392 miles
35
Between 1840 and 1860, the City population grew from nineteen to thirty nine percent of the total population of
New York (David D. Danbom, Born in the Country: A history of rural America (New York: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1995), 83).
36
Rippon-Butler 16
from Ogdensburg (on the northern edge of the County) to West 30th Street in New York City.37
By 1929, four lines serviced the milkshed, providing 20 percent of New York City’s milk supply.
By 1939, St. Lawrence County was home to the largest milk receiving plant in the world, and by
1959 the County had become the thirteenth highest fluid milk-producing county in the nation –
with 17 percent of New York’s dairy farms.38,39 Although some producers stuck with the cheese
market out of loyalty to local factory owners, most made the economic decision to switch to fluid
milk production. By 1960 the crossroads cheese factories had all but disappeared. These two
counties are examples of the land use and farming changes that occurred across New York State
as railroads rapidly expanded and dealers inserted themselves into the milk distribution
process.40 These changes in industry organization coincided with a sociopolitical movement in
New York City for more stringent quality controls on the milk supply.
Figure 4 Horse-drawn carts line up at a Slawson Co. creamery
(Sarah Drowne Belcher Collection, Yale University Manuscripts
and Archives)
37
The Sheffield Farms plant in Heuvelton, New York was the largest milk receiving plant in the world in 1939 and
also the site of a farmer strike that shut it down for over a hundred days (DuPuis, Nature’s Perfect Food, 165).
39
40
Counties like St. Lawrence, without access to the fluid milk market, typically had smaller average herd size, milk
yield per cow, capital investment, percentage of milk sold in winter months, and income than counties closer to the
City. Orange County farmers tended to have larger herds, higher capital investments, less seasonal production, and
higher production of high-protein crops such as alfalfa than other counties (DuPuis, Nature’s Perfect Food, 151).
38
Rippon-Butler 17
LEGAL!MILK!
From the colonial days until the early 1800s, New York City residents bought milk that
was produced by cows kept on public pastures and sold from vendors with horse-drawn carts. As
farms were pushed farther from the city center, however, safe delivery from cow to consumer
became impossible because of the perishable nature of milk. The solution to the city’s milk
dilemma came from an unlikely source: the alcohol industry. In the early 1820s, entrepreneurial
distillery owners realized that the leftover mash from the distillation process provided excellent
feed for dairy cows, which they could keep in crowded (sometimes underground) stables near
their factories and milk twice a day, turning waste into a second profit.41 Grain mash is in fact
highly nutritious and is still used to supplement dairy cattle feed, but as the sole component of a
cow’s diet it leads to the production of watery “swill” milk with a bluish color. Distillery owners
combated this aesthetic problem by adding plaster and other whitening agents to the milk.
Figure 5 An 1858 political cartoon depiction of the
swill milk industry (Frank Leslie Collection, Yale
University Manuscripts and Archives)
41
Robert Milham Hartley traced the City’s milk sanitation problem to the obstruction of spirit trade from the
Caribbean during the War of 1812, which caused distilleries to appear on city limits at the same time that pastures
were disappearing to urban expansion (Valenze, Milk,165).
Rippon-Butler 18
The campaign for cleaner milk began with babies. After seeing infants dying and the poor
left with no option other than to purchase adulterated milk, Robert Milham Hartley, a prominent
religiously-inspired social reformer and temperance advocate, became determined to show the
link between the terrible conditions faced by urban cows fed on distillery “slop” and the state of
infant health in the City. Between 1836 and 1837, he published a series of articles that made the
first case for pure milk in the United States.42,43 The second wave of agitation was led by Nathan
Straus and John Mullaly, New York City social reformers whose concern with milk quality
stemmed from a more secular desire for social equality as opposed to Hartley’s religious
reforms. Mullaly published an influential book in which he urged citizens to demand dealer
responsibility in creating a purer milk supply. Straus, who was head of the Macy’s department
store, opened the first public infant milk depot with the help of prominent city health officials.44
In his 1853 publication on the dangers of the milk industry, Mullaly remarks that
“thousands of children annually sicken and die in this city, from the effects of bad milk…and yet
the evil goes on unchecked – because, by this traffic men can ‘put money in their purses.’”45,46
Mullaly points to two factors that created the situation, the first being a supply chain disconnect
between producer and consumer.47 Secondly, like Hartley, Mullaly saw the “spurious” milk trade
42
Valenze, Milk, 165.
Pure milk at the time was defined as “milk that is not adulterated by the admixture of chalk or whiting, magnesia,
molasses, flour, starch, and other foreign substances, but which is simply diluted with water and flavored with a
little salt to keep it sweet” (Mullaly, The Milk Trade, 24).
44
The Nathan Straus Pasteurized Milk Station at the East Third Street Pier in New York City opened in 1893 and
encouraged the movement for a widespread sterile milk supply for infants (Valenze, Milk, 218).
45
From city records showing average deaths of seventeen thousand over the past five or six years, Mullaly
calculated that eight or nine thousand children died annually of “milk-posion,” nearly half of them under five and
one fourth under one year old. He admits that “milk-poison” is not an official illness in the Inspector’s records, but
cites physicians reports of convulsions, marasmus, diarrhea, dysentery, and cholera infantum to prove the
connection (Mullaly, The Milk Trade, v).
46
According to Mullaly, the inhabitants of New York, Brooklyn, Williamsburgh, and Jersey City were paying
nearly half a million dollars (out of the three million total they spent on milk annually) just for water because the
milk was diluted with distillery leftovers (Mullaly, The Milk Trade, iv).
47
The distiller himself is not actually the one selling any of his swill milk, “his hands, he appears to think, are clear
enough of that murder” (Mullaly, The Milk Trade, xvi).
43
Rippon-Butler 19
as essentially a class struggle – poor farmers would be arraigned at once for selling bad milk if
they tried to keep a cow in bad conditions and fed on the slop from distilleries, yet the rich
distillery owners who kept one or two thousand cows and sold ten or twenty thousand quarts of
milk a day were immune.48 Mullaly urged parents to stop blindly trusting their milkman, who
himself might not be able to tell the true quality of the milk, and to start demanding a milk
supply that was regulated and safe from the source.
Public support for Mullaly’s convictions grew and the trade in country milk boomed.49
As fluid milk traveled further from its source, however, small producers no longer had personal
responsibility to their consumers, who began to worry about the quality of their milk. Deborah
Valenze reports that, “Women reformers, wealthy philanthropists, socialist cooperators,
laboratory scientists, population advocates, and pediatricians had something to say about this.”50
The rise in scientific knowledge, tied to research being done at new agricultural colleges, as well
as advances in scientific techniques, such as the microscope and pasteurization, led consumers
and health officials to realize milk could be impure in ways that might not be visible. Long
transportation lines, and their inherent lack of transparency, encouraged this new microbial
paranoia amongst dairy consumers.51 By the turn of the twentieth century, city residents viewed
milk as a petri dish for disease. Additives with formaldehyde and boracic acid were the main
method used to inoculate the pieces of manure, dead flies, and dirt that made their way into milk
between cow and consumer.52 The evolution of mandatory pasteurization as a way to control the
48
Mullaly, The Milk Trade, xiii-xiv.
Over the next few decades, distillery owners faced fierce competition from the country milk supply until finally,
in 1875, milk from distillery-fed cows was outlawed in New York (Mary Habstritt, “Manhattanville and New York
City’s Milk Supply,” Archive Industry, accessed February 2012, http://www.archiveofindustry.com/histories.htm).
50
Valenze, Milk, 7.
51
Pasteurization was discovered in 1857 but not applied to milk until the 1890s (Valenze, Milk, 214).
52
Valenze, Milk, 211.
49
Rippon-Butler 20
ever-extending supply chain came from public demand, university research, private industry
investment, non-profit initiative, and government policy.
Before the 1900s, very little collective knowledge existed about milk. Attempting to write
a book on milk and dairy products in 1887, Professor Henry Wing of Cornell University pointed
out, “In the collation of the information, where so many points are still unsettled, it is of course
difficult in all cases to distinguish fact from conjecture.”53 The rise of land grant colleges after
the 1882 Morrill Act significantly contributed to the spread of knowledge about the potential
risks of milk as a product.54 Bacteriology as a field began to grow with the improvement of
microscopy, which allowed scientists to see the previously invisible threat of pathogens in milk.
Concern over serious illnesses transmitted through raw milk began to rise amongst consumers.
Bovine tuberculosis, septic sore throat, scarlet fever and undulant fever were all known diseases
contracted from cows while diphtheria and typhoid fever could be passed from person to person
through milk.55
Figure 6 Testing dairy products in an agricultural school (left), and milk being tested in a petri
dish (right) (Sarah Drowne Belcher Collection, Yale University Manuscripts and Archives)
53
Henry H. Wing, Milk and Its Products: A Treatise Upon the Nature and Qualities of Dairy Milk and the
Manufacture of Butter and Cheese (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1905), Google Book, vii.
54
The first Agricultural Experiment Station, modeled after stations in Europe and paid for by private and state
funds, was started at Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1875. By 1887, when the Hatch Act authorized the
federally funded establishment of these Stations in each state, nearly half of the states already had organizations or
colleges that conducted similar research. The Adams Act of 1906 and the Purnell Act of 1925 increased funding to
these colleges (Jasper Womach, “Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms, Programs, and Laws, 2005 Edition,”
Congressional Research Service Report for Congress (from the National Council for Science and the Environment),
Order Code 97-905 (2005): 1-282).
55
Ira V. Hiscock Papers, “Safe milk,” Box 78 Folder 1462, National Dairy Council (1939): 10, Yale University
Manuscripts and Archives.
Rippon-Butler 21
Milk distributors weren’t blind to the change in public opinion that was occurring. Many
prominent dealers started enforcing their own sanitary and pasteurization standards on farmers as
a way of distinguishing themselves in the marketplace.56 When the first Walker-Gordon Dairy
Laboratory opened in Boston in 1891, however, “no consistent effort had been made to produce
a milk clean physically and clean bacteriologically.”57 Scientists at the company realized that to
produce their “modified milk” prescribed by doctors for infant health, they would need to change
the image of the milk into a pristinely clean product.58 The company enlisted the help of vets,
chemists, bacteriologists, and the Milk Commission to determine the most scientific and
beneficial way to monitor milk production for their laboratories. The company also understood
the importance of reducing transportation time by sending milk on express trains in carefully
sealed bottles that were kept iced. The Walker-Gordon company initiated the practice of
inspection at their supply dairies across the Northeast at a time when special farms designed to
provide high-quality infant milk were considered a fad. Infant milk dairies did in fact turn out to
be a fad, but the idea of on-farm quality control persisted.
Figure 7 Walker-Gordon Laboratory Booklet (publisher and date unknown, sometime after Dec.
1891 when the first lab was opened in Boston) (C.-E.A. Winslow Collection, Yale University
Manuscripts and Archives)
56
The biggest dealers set exacting standards determining what foods cows could and could not eat; how the stables
should be lit and ventilated; how often the stable should be whitewashed; where the milk room should be located in
relation to the stable; that the night and morning milk must be kept separate; and any representative of the
corporation had the right to inspect any of the stables for compliance (Whitaker, “The Milk Supply”).
57
Author’s emphasis (C.-E.A. Winslow Papers, promotional booklet published by the Walker-Gorden Laboratory
Co., unknown date, 9, Yale University Manuscripts and Archives).
58
Walker-Gorden, 5.
Rippon-Butler 22
In 1900, New York City’s milk supply came from a complex matrix of dairies located in
Upstate New York and the surrounding states. It was nearly impossible for public officials to
monitor all the farms and milk stations in the system, although it was becoming increasingly
apparent that was what the public wanted. The Rockefeller Institute, a non-profit research
organization, stepped in to supply the first funds for inspections of dairy farms in Upstate New
York. Sarah Drowne Belcher, a bacteriologist with a Ph.D., was given the job of figuring out
how to convince farmers to incorporate cleaner standards into their production. Initially, these
attempts to improve milk quality were met with resistance – “To many…the visit…was a Board
of Health bugaboo,” Ms. Delcher reports. “They were not responsive to criticism, and they were
forewarned and forearmed against directions as to how they should run their own business.”59
After the private initiative gained momentum, however, the government got involved with the
regulation of milk.
By 1905, all milk stations were subject to inspections by the city Board of Health, which
could refuse permits to city dealers.60 The New York Milk Committee was formed in 1907 by
the Mayor’s Milk Commission to develop a system of country milk inspections.61 Legislators
realized that farmers were businessmen and would require financial motivation to change their
practices. The Board of Health conceded that “sanitary milk will not be produced on a large scale
until its production becomes financially more profitable than that of the dirtier grades.”62,63 New
59
Sarah Drowne Belcher Collection, Unmarked Document, Box 1, Yale Manuscripts and Archives.
The State Department of Agriculture could also inspect milk stations but only had the power to make suggestions
(Whitaker, “The Milk Supply”).
61
Ten Years of Work (1907-1916) Report of the New York Milk Committee (New York, 1916), 11.
62
C.-E.A. Winslow Papers, “Health News,” Bulletin No. 126 from the Department of Health of New York City,
September 1912, Yale University Manuscripts and Archives.
63
Milk classified as “A” included certified, guaranteed, and inspected raw milk as well as pasteurized milk and was
to be sold for infants and children in bottles with marked caps; “B” was pasteurized milk and selected raw milk to be
sold in bottles or cans with caps marked in green letters; “C” was for cooking purposes only and marked with red
letters. The term “pasteurized,” like organic, could not be used without official sanction from the Department of
Health indicating compliance with stringent set of requirements (C.-E.A. Winslow Papers, Ernst J. Lederle, The
60
Rippon-Butler 23
York became the first city in the country to have a certified grade of milk as one of two standards
towards which farmers could work for higher profit.64 Farmers who followed Sarah Belcher’s
suggestions and passed certification inspections were able to get two to four cents more per quart
for their milk, which more than doubled their profits.65 Once they realized they were being
offered an aid to develop their business, Ms. Belcher reports, “farmers and dairymen were found
to be keenly intelligent…eager to carry out reasonable suggestions of practicable value.”66
In 1912, New York extended the market value of milk cleanliness by creating the A, B, C
grading system that is still used today.67, 68 The market value was not applied equally, however.
The certification process was costly and time consuming and typically only the largest dairies
invested the effort. The government agencies responsible for footing the inspection bill were not
keen on expanding the system and began to consider pasteurization as a more efficient standard.
This requirement would shift the burden of milk sanitation from city officials performing
individual farm inspections to the milk dealers, who would be required to invest in pasteurization
equipment. The New York State Legislature passed a bill in 1911 requiring that all milk sold in
the City be pasteurized and New York State followed suit in 1916, but the fight between farmers
and regulators was far from over.69 Bootlegging of uninspected milk became a highly profitable
Sanitary Control of New York’s Milk Supply (Athens, P.A.: Press of W.G. Jordan, September 27, 1911), 6, Yale
Manuscripts and Archives).
64
The grades were certified (“very clean;” top standard) and inspected (a lower standard).
65
Certified milk was worth $.03-.06 per quart instead of $.01-.02 (Fallows, “A City’s Campaign,” 555-565, 561).
66
Sarah Drowne Belcher Collection, Unmarked Document, Box 1, Yale Manuscripts and Archives.
67
A included certified, guaranteed, and inspected raw milk as well as pasteurized milk and was to be sold for infants
and children in bottles with marked caps; B was pasteurized milk and selected raw milk to be sold in bottles or cans
with caps marked in green letters; C was for cooking purposes only and marked with red letters (C.-E.A. Winslow
Papers, “Health News”).
68
Ten Years of Work, 13.
69
There is some discrepancy in the archives and literature about the official date that New York City began
requiring milk to be pasteurized – while some sources say 1911, others say 1912, and still others say 1914. As far as
I could determine, 1911 was when the bill passed, 1912 was when it went into effect, and 1914 is an anomaly
perhaps based on parsing of words – for example, it may have been required in 1912 for milk that was not certified
to be pasteurized but not mandatory that all milk entering the city be pasteurized until 1914. The dates that I use
come from Deborah Valenze’s book.
Rippon-Butler 24
industry in the 1920s, demonstrating farmer and distributor resistance to new inspection
standards.70 Some who resisted expressed the fear that pasteurized milk would create the illusion
of safety at the expense of proper attention to visible contaminants, such as dirt. Others worried
milk would lose its health benefits after extreme heating, an argument still used by raw milk
advocates today.71.72
Although many New York City residents had a safer milk supply following the
pasteurization mandate, many were still unable to afford the cleaner milk.73 Unequal access to
the benefits of the milk market was a concern for producers as well as consumers. A number of
milk dealerships merged together as smaller creameries went out of business because they
couldn’t afford the required pasteurization equipment. Meanwhile, bigger companies increased
their economies of scale by collecting milk from larger areas into centralized plants. As the milk
supply became increasingly industrialized, officials looked to “large-scale, capital-intensive,
modern corporations and larger, more intensive farmers,” as safe, reliable, and efficient suppliers
of city milk.74 Pasteurization and new standards of production generally improved the quality of
milk, but also introduced the idea that someone other than the producer or consumer could
determine how goods must be produced to be successful on the market. As shown in the
70
Melanie Bower, “New Yorkers Spent Centuries Crying Over Spilled Milk,” March 5, 2012,
http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/departments/aftertaste/new-yorkers-spent-centuries-crying-over-spoiled-milk/.
71
Officials had to assure the public that “the evidence available as to the effect of pasteurized milk versus raw milk
upon the growth and development of children…indicates that pasteurized milk has not lost its growth-promoting
qualities” (Hiscock Papers, “Safe milk,” 17).
72
Although many people still argue for raw milk, the Food and Drug Administration website firmly states,“While
the perceived nutritional and health benefits of raw milk consumption have not been scientifically substantiated, the
health risks are clear.” An example of the contemporary argument that pasteurization destroys health benefits: “The
Shocking Truth About Raw Milk and Pasteurization,” Natural Bias, January 7, 2010, accessed April 2012,
http://naturalbias.com/the-shocking-truth-about-raw-milk-and-pasteurization/.
73
Social organizers worked to establish pure milk stations in poor neighborhoods and the Hylan administration
started a program called the “Mayor’s Milk Funds” in 1918 to help provide a safe milk supply to all the city’s
inhabitants by raising awareness and funds (Melanie Bower, “New Yorkers Spent Centuries Crying Over Spilled
Milk,” Edible Manhattan, March 5, 2012, accessed March 2012,
http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/departments/aftertaste/new-yorkers-spent-centuries-crying-over-spoiled-milk/).
74
Rippon-Butler 25
following section, the foundation for this step towards commoditization and capitalization was
laid at the beginning of dealer involvement in the milk shipping business.
DEALER!CONTROL!
Even in the era before trains and pasteurization, small dairy farmers were burdened by
the distribution process. An 1865 New York Times article on dairying in Orange County
observes:
The farmer who drives twenty milch [sic] cows may always expect better
treatment from the milkman than he who owns only two or three. If there is
danger of so abundant a supply as to weaken prices somewhat, the small farmers
are first made to suffer…Wise men, in their generation, are milk-dealers.75
The article goes on to illustrate the divide between the bottom and top tiers developing in the
dairy industry. With a little intelligence and resolution, the author observes, farmers could tap
into a hugely profitable business: “Probably in no part of the United States can there be found a
smaller proportion of poverty than in the milk district of Orange County.”76
Railroads, such as the Erie, presented a paradox for farmers. Although they drove the
expansion of the profitable fluid milk business, producers received an increasingly smaller
percentage of these profits. An 1865 New York Times article observes that, “on no other road is
there greater punctuality in delivering milk,” yet correspondingly, “there is no other route, by
which milk is brought to this city, more costly than the Erie Railway.”77 Railroads increasingly
placed dealers and distributors in control of the milk supply, facilitating demand and encouraging
higher production despite distance from market and other geographical factors that previously
limited fluid milk distribution. The further dealers reached into the supply area, the cheaper milk
75
“Milky Ways.”
“Milky Ways.”
77
Ibid.
76
Rippon-Butler 26
could be purchased for, which drove prices down for farmers everywhere. It quickly became
apparent that regulations were needed to control the variability.
In 1882, a group of producers and dealers got together to form the New York Milk
Exchange. The Exchange was the first incorporated distributors’ organization in the milk
industry, and was designed to solve the problem of price fluctuation by fixing the market price of
milk purchased by stockholders.78 Thirteen years later, in 1895, the New York Milk Exchange
became the Consolidated Milk Exchange, Ltd. Members met to fix the price of milk received by
producers – raising it when supply was short and lowering it during surplus times.79
Dealers attempted to deal with pricing variability by guaranteeing future supply. Farmers
throughout New York State entered into contracts with milk distributors at the end of the
nineteenth century to ensure that the milk they were committed to producing would be delivered.
These contracts also locked them into prices set by the dealers. Large, corporate distributors were
typically favored by farmers because the more reputation and capital they had at stake, the more
reason they had to be reliable. By 1905, 80-90 percent of milk sold in the New York City area
was handled by 125 dealers and “the day of the small peddlers who buy direct of the producers
[had] gone by.”80,81 While producers may have been drawn to this consolidation because larger
companies tended to be more reliable, they soon realized the dangers of too much power in too
few hands. Roswell D. Cooper points out in his history of the Dairymen’s League that “the law
of supply and demand ceased to operate” during the early twentieth century.82 Even as the
demand for milk exceeded the supply during 1915 and 1916, dealers were purchasing it for less
78
Dillon, Seven Decades of Milk: A history of New York’s Dairy Industry (New York: Orange Judd Publishing
Company, Inc., 1941), 7.
79
Whitaker, “The Milk Supply.”
80
Ibid.
81
There are now only 67 dealers of milk in New York Stae according to FDA Website (“Sanitation Compliance and
Enforcement Ratings of Interstate Milk Shipper” https://info1.cfsan.fda.gov/milk/mkex/ims/imssl-ne.cfm#NY)
82
Cooper, Origin and Development, 4.
Rippon-Butler 27
than the cost of production due to the fact that they already had contracts with dairymen.83
Farmers did not sit idly by and allow profits to be taken out of their hands, however. Beginning
in the latter half of the nineteenth century, producers began to organize in order to gain control
over the distribution of their product.
FARMER!COOPERATIVES!
Orange County was home to the first stirrings of discontent with the new system of
dealer-controlled milk distribution and price setting. The New York chapter of the Grange
movement was founded in 1873 to advocate for family farms and help establish cooperatives that
eliminated the “middlemen” and put markets within reach of small farms.84,85 Ten years later,
Orange County farmers formed the first producer cooperative, called the Erie Milk Producers
Association, to help organize a significant farmer strike against fluctuating milk prices in 1883.86
The strike, although initially successful in securing higher prices from the dealers, soon
propelled them to push the milk trade into counties farther from the City where farmers were
happy to accept their contracts. Sensing a need for wider organization, producers formed the
Dairymen’s League in 1907 to use political action to protest the New York Milk Exchange and
dealer contracts.87,
The Dairylea Cooperative (as the League came to be known) drove political organization
of New York dairy farmers through a period of rapidly changing market conditions. The
83
Farmers at the time were receiving only two cents per quart for milk that cost an average of four cents per quart to
produce because powerful dealers held a “‘take it or leave it” bargaining position (Dairylea 100 Years of Service:
1907-2007 (Dairylea Cooperative Inc., 2007), 3).
84
“New York State Grange,” accessed April 2012, http://www.nysgrange.org/aboutnysgrange.html.
85
Andrew Alberti and Anita Deming, From Forest to Fields: A history of agriculture in New York’s Champlain
Valley (Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County, NY and Lakes to Locks Passage, Inc., 2010), 27).
86
Eric Brunger, “Dairying and Urban Development in New York State, 1850-1900,” Agricultural History 29
(1955): 171, accessed November 2011.
87
Farmers could join the League by purchasing stock at $2.50 a share (Cooper, Origin and Development, 2).
Rippon-Butler 28
cooperative started out with only 700 members, but recruiting techniques, such as attending
church meetings with sign up sheets, combined with a successful strike against milk dealers in
1916, pushed membership over 42,000 in the first decade of its existence.88 Dairylea is currently
the largest milk-marketing cooperative in the Northeast. Membership has shrunk to only 2,000
farm families, though, dramatically highlighting the diminishment of the region’s farming
community.89,90
The transportation industry greatly influenced the development of milk production in the
second half of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth. Fluid milk became a
financially viable product for many farmers in Upstate New York for the first time and city
residents gained a safe, reliable supply. Farmers were required to produce their milk in a certain
way for the first time and dealer actions prompted producer organization. Truck shipping in the
mid-twentieth century provided another set of trials and opportunities for producers.
Figure 8 1933 farmer strike (Ourflatworld.com)
88
After a second strike in 1919, membership exploded to 90,000 farmers (“Milk Producers Organize,” New York
Times, May 30, 1907, accessed April 2012, New York Times Article Archive, 1851-Present).
89
Dairylea, 4.
90
Dairylea Cooperative website, accessed April 2012, http://www.dairylea.com/.
Rippon-Butler 29
MILK&ON&WHEELS&
While trains remained the central means of liquid milk transport into the first half of the
twentieth century, the invention of the automobile and the adoption of tank shipping led to the
emergence of a new and competing method of hauling that would eventually come to dominate
the milk shipping industry. The idea to ship milk in tanks came, oddly enough, from the United
States Postal Service. In 1922, the New York Times reported on a successful new container
system being used for transporting mail between New York and Chicago on the New York
Central Railroad. The tank cars were easily packed at the post office and could be removed by
crane at their destination, saving labor and preventing in-transit loss of valuable packages. The
article observes that “the tank containers for the transportation in bulk of milk or other fluids is
the latest extension of the system.”91 In 1926, Borden’s Farm Products became the first company
to implement the train tank system for milk shipment to New York City.92 Double walls and
heavy insulation encased the inner glass linings of the tanks (which held up to 6,000 gallons),
eliminating the method of packing milk cans in ice. The bulk system saved approximately two
hours of manual loading and unloading time as well as innumerable hours that would have been
spent cleaning the steel cans. The Dairylea Cooperative became the first organization to use tank
trucks to haul milk in the same year that railroads adopted the containers, foreshadowing the end
of the railroad’s reign in milk shipping. By 1938, trucks transported over half of the New York
City milk supply – up from only 10 percent in 1931.93
91
“More Container Cars: System Extended to Include Milk, Freight, Express, Mail shipments,” New York Times,
October 1, 1922, accessed March 2012, New York Times Article Archive, 1851-Present.
92
“Will Use Tank Cars to Ship Milk Here: Borden’s May Discard 40-Quart Cans – New Carriers Obviate Use of
Ice,” New York Times, July 6, 1926, accessed March 2012, New York Times Article Archive, 1851-Present.
93
Rippon-Butler 30
Figure 9 A Borden’s bulk tank train car (Sean Lamb, Illinois Railroad Museum)
A number of factors likely contributed to the rapid replacement of rail transport by tanker
trucks in the mid-twentieth century. Following the Depression, farmers began using tractors
more heavily, which facilitated the expansion of farms beyond the extent of rail lines and created
need for a new mode of market access; the rise of the automobile culture and public road
improvements in the 1920s built the necessary infrastructure; the manufacture of large hauling
trucks by companies such as Ford along with the invention of the bulk tank system provided the
technology that made bulk milk systems possible; and materials, such as rubber and fuel, that
were required by trucks became available following the end of World War II-era rations. Carts
and trucks had been used by farmers to carry milk in cans to local creameries or rail stations for
over a century, but it was not until the introduction of bulk containers that the milk could be
brought by truck from the creameries, where it was pooled, to processing plants, where it was
packaged. Bulk tanks designed to collect milk on farms came later and allowed distribution
companies to bypass the local creameries altogether.
The First World War took a number of young laborers away from the dairy industry,
creating a need for mechanized equipment. Tractors, which were introduced in the 1920s and
became popular following the Depression, allowed farmers to cultivate larger plots of land with
less manual labor.94 The desire for farmland, combined with the ever increasing development
94
Tractors only became affordable for most farmers when post-Depression government support brought cash back
into the agricultural industry (Douglas Harper, Changing Works (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001),
96).
Rippon-Butler 31
pressure from growing urban populations, meant that farms were moving farther from town
centers, and therefore rail depots. Creamery stations closed or consolidated as farms did the
same. The need for an expanded system of farm access to the fluid milk market was growing, but
it would require infrastructure and technology changes to support it.
Prior to the 1920s, the roads in America were mostly a dismal disarray of disconnected
and poorly maintained dirt paths designed for local use. The surge in relatively cheap cars and
disposable wealth amongst the American people following World War I laid the foundation for
the rapid expansion of the automobile culture. As shown by a 1918 New York Times headline
proclaiming, “America Leads in Motor Traffic: Automobile Use Increases 330 Per Cent in Four
Years,” public appetite for motor transport was voracious and growing in the early twentieth
century.95 The federal government responded by supporting the construction of America’s postwar infrastructure around the new mode of transport. The Federal Highway Act of 1921
strengthened state highway departments’ control over maintenance and demonstrated the
government’s commitment to meeting the demand that was already growing for a federallycontrolled highway system for public as well as agricultural use.96
In 1924, a U.S.D.A. survey taken in conjunction with the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads,
revealed the “inestimable public benefit of good roads” in the “growth of milk transportation by
automobile service” to Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St.
Paul, and Minneapolis.97 A good road system greatly increased connectivity and made truck
95
“America Leads in Motor Traffic,” New York Times, January 6, 1918, accessed March 2012, New York Times
Article Archive, 1851-Present.
96
David A. Pfeiffer, “Ike’s Interstates at 50: Anniversary of the Highway System Recalls Eisenhower’s Role as
Catalyst,” Prologue Magazine 38 (Summer 2006), accessed March 2012,
http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/summer/interstates.html.
97
New York was slower on the transition due to the fact that a highly efficient rail system already extended far into
the State, but within a few decades truck shipping caught up (“Motor Are Changing Milk Transport Methods:
Government Survey Shows That Six Large Cities Now Receive Bulk of Their Supply by Mother Trucks – New
Rippon-Butler 32
shipment of goods, including milk, much more efficient across the country. When Eisenhower
signed the Federal Aid Interstate Highway Act of 1956, authorizing the use of federal money for
the construction of an interstate highway system, the New York State Thruway was already
under construction – authorities heralded the traffic reducing, tourism promoting, and milk
moving benefits of a 115-mile section of the New York-to-Buffalo toll route completed in 1954
between Utica and Rochester.98
Once the highway system was in place, the second important factor in the dairy
industry’s shift to bulk shipping was trucks that could handle the heavy load of fluid milk.
Originally, trucks built for commodity transportation were only made to replace horse-drawn
vehicles for light loads on short distances. The first large tanker trucks were designed for use in
the oil industry in the early twentieth century.99 By 1936, the truck had “widened its sphere until
it [had] become a formidable competitor of the railroad,” carrying everything “from farmers’
produce to ping-pong balls,” and “baby carriages to beer.”100 At the time, farmers still had to
bring their milk to local creameries where tanker trucks picked it up and carried it in bulk to the
nearest processing plant. Two men would soon change this.
A.C. Fisher grew up lifting forty-quart cans onto the milk truck that came every morning
to his family’s farm in Copake, New York. In 1948, he and Derwin C. Vaill, a field inspector at
Bryant Chapman Dairy, developed what is believed to be the first bulk tank system on the East
Conditions Due to Highway Improvement,” New York Times, July 27, 1924, accessed March 2012, New York Times
Article Archive, 1851-Present).
98
Bert Pierce, “Automobiles: Thruway: Upstate Cities Will Benefit by Opening of First Major Section of Highway,”
New York Times, June 13, 1954, accessed March 2012, New York Times Article Archive, 1851-Present.
99
Mack, GMC, and Ford were all manufacturing tank trucks by 1911 (Samuel T. Pees, “Tank Wagons and Trucks,”
in Oil History, Petroleum History Institute, last updated June 6, 2004, accessed March 2012,
http://www.petroleumhistory.org/OilHistory/OHindex.html).
100
New York City market alone had expanded to over 100,000,000 quarts of milk annually delivered by truck in that
year (Helen Dallas, “‘Monsters of the Night’ Spread a Vast Network of Routes Over Nation,” New York Times,
December 15, 1936, accessed March 2012, New York Times Article Archive, 1851-Present).
Rippon-Butler 33
Coast.101 Bulk tanks, which allowed farmers to store milk on their farms instead of shipping it
daily in cans, had been used by large dairy farms in California, but Fisher and Vaill’s invention
was the first adaptation for small farms. Vaill became instrumental in convincing dairy farmers
that bulk shipment of milk in tanker trucks was the way the industry was moving.102 Tanks
eliminated farmers’ daily task of sanitizing and transporting milk cans to local plants, giving
them more time to devote to their herds and crops. Farmers initially resisted adopting this new
system, however, due to the expense of the tanks. Many who couldn’t, or chose not to, invest in
the new system ultimately went out of business.
From the 1920s until the end of World War II, the hauling industry for New York City’s
milk supply was split equally between trucks and railroads. Around the same time that Fisher and
Vaill introduced the bulk tank to New York farmers, the end of wartime rations on rubber and
gasoline made truck transport much more economical. Lower hauling rates helped trucks gain an
increasing percentage of the milk distributing market despite efforts by rail companies to
compete. In 1949, four eastern railroads reduced their bulk rates for milk shipping by 27 percent
in an attempt to retain the business that was seeping away from them.103 The rate reduction,
“believed to be the largest cut ever made on milk,” affected a 400-mile radius milkshed around
New York City – including Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, northern Pennsylvania, and parts
of New York Sate. By the end of the 1960s, however, bulk tanks and truck transport of milk had
nearly completely replaced shipment by rail. Like railroads, this new mode of transportation
brought changes to the physical and social landscape of New York’s dairy industry.
101
Harold Faber, “Pioneer in Use of Bulk Milk Tank Is Honored on Dairy Day Upstate,” New York Times, July 2,
1978, accessed March 2012, New York Times Article Archive, 1851-Present.
102
“From the Beginning: the struggle for higher quality milk,” Rapid Dairy Transport, Inc., accessed March 2012,
http://www.rapidpoolwater.com/companyhistory.html.
103
“Railroads Reduce Rates on Milk 27%: Attempt to Regain Business Lost to Trucks – Effect on Retail Prices
Uncertain,” New York Times, August 3, 1949, accessed March 2012, New York Times Article Archive, 1851-Present.
Rippon-Butler 34
IMPACTS!ON!THE!LAND!
The New York City milkshed, made more extensive by railroads, became more
accessible with the growth of truck shipping. DuPuis points out that the transition “eroded the
geographical boundaries that segmented the dairy production,” as farmers further away from
railroad lines gained access to the milk market.104,105 A new ring structure stretching into the hill
country around distribution plants began to supplement the linear milkshed. While more farmers
were able to enter the milkshed, the market was not uniformly accessible or profitable.106
Figure 10 A diagram of a milkshed with both rail and truck shipping access (DuPuis, Nature's Perfect Food, 2001).
The “border-line” problem, a phrase coined by Harvard economists John D. Black and
John Cassels, refers to the pricing issue that emerged as milkshed boundaries expanded.107
Whenever milk prices went up, an influx of new farmers entered the market, thereby driving
prices down and putting pressure on distributors to shut plants on the edge of the milkshed in
104
By the mid-1960s, “it was not uncommon for farms to be located more than 100 miles from the receiving plant
(Changes in the Processing and Distribution of Milk and Milk Products: A Challenge to Farmers, Volume 2:
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (Paris: 1974), 241).
106
Truck shipping opened up transportation options to farmers on poorer soils, which aggravated the seasonal
surplus disparity between hill and valley dairies. Some back road farms were left out entirely because large trucks
couldn’t cross the small bridges connecting their farms to main roads (Harper, Changing Works, 239).
107
John D. Black, The Dairy Industry and the AAA, (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1935), in DuPuis,
Nature’s Perfect Food, 175.
105
Rippon-Butler 35
order to bring prices back up. Consequently, farmers in these edge regions were then shut out of
the milk market. Geographical limitations had always been a part of farmers’ ability to ship fluid
milk, but once those limitations were artificially overcome by truck shipping, farmers began to
blame dealers for inequality in the market. A number of farmer strikes in the 1930s, similar to
those of the early twentieth century, protested the geography-driven disparity in market access.108
In the next section of this paper, I bring in the voices of six farmers who lived through
this transition period from railroads to trucks. These farmers’ stories illustrate the changes and
challenges of the time from the producer point of view.
THE!TRANSITION!PERIOD!
Louis Marchaland, the eldest of the farmers I interviewed, moved onto the Easton, New
York farm that his son now runs in the midst of the Great Depression. At 200 acres, the farm was
large for its time. Farming was a family affair for the Marchalands. Louis’ mother, a
schoolteacher, helped run the farm by cooking, cleaning, and raising the children; and Louis and
his seven siblings helped their father milk the twenty two cows by hand. “I was milking cows
when I was ten years old,” Louis recalled; “and I’ve been milking them ever since.” It wasn’t
until 1939, when a “highline” came through, that power and the possibility of electric milkers
came to the Marchaland farm.
Louis’ father, who grew up in an orphanage in Burlington and began working on farms
for money as a kid, had been the manager of a railroad milk shipping plant in Rupert, VT before
108
DuPuis argues that farm location had implications for political involvement – farmers in the “middle” areas
(between the land close to the market and the marginalized lands) were most likely to strike because they
experienced the most volatile price fluctuations (DuPuis, Nature’s Perfect Food, 176-81).
Rippon-Butler 36
the plant burnt in 1932.109 Louis remembers helping his dad and seeing milk come in still warm
from the cows to be cooled. It was brought to about thirty seven degrees before being packed
with ice around the bottles into a train car, which would then make the daily trip to New York
City.
By the time Louis took over the farm from his father, the milk shipping industry had
transitioned to tank trucks. The milk his cows produced was loaded onto a truck in cans and
taken to the H.P. Hood plant in nearby Troy, New York. Hood put pressure on Louis to switch to
bulk shipping, but they couldn’t pay the premium that other companies were offering so he
switched to Diamond Rock, which was soon bought out by Dairylea. Louis’ son now ships to
Stewart’s, a local convenience store chain that sells its own brand of milk and ice cream. He
explained the decision simply: “we got more money through Stewart’s than we would have
through Dairylea.” The Marchaland farm grew to its current 700 acres when Louis purchased a
number of neighboring farms that were going out of business in the late twentieth century. His
son has since taken over the dairy operation.
------Janet and Clifford Stewart (no relation to the chain) live down the road from Louis
Marchaland on a similar sized farm also now run by their son. Clifford started out as a milk
tester for the National Dairy Herd Improvement Association and Janet grew up on her family’s
dairy farm, which her brother later took over.110 The Stewarts began leasing a farm of their own
under contract from the previous owner and were able to pay it off slowly with help from the
Farmers’ Home Administration and Farm Credit.
109
In 1935, the plant was briefly reopened before closing for good in 1942.
DHI is a a producer-driven quality control organization started in 1905 (Jay Mattison, “National Dairy Herd
Improvement Association,” written statement for the House Agriculture Committee Subcommittee on Livestock and
Horticulture hearing, July 22, 2004).
110
Rippon-Butler 37
Unlike Louis, the Stewarts “shipped to Dairylea from square one,” Janet told me. “Even
through the bad times.” Dairylea had a plant in nearby Troy where they could go and get ice
cream, butter, or whatever they needed, which was then simply taken out of their milk check.
Their choice to ship with Dairylea was a combination of convenience and the desire to support
the farmer-owned cooperative.
Farming hasn’t always been easy for the Stewarts, especially recently. “You know I was
just looking at my 2002 diary,” Janet remarked, “and it said in there ‘I made out farm checks
today, no money, milk $11.40. That’s not that long ago.” Clifford best expressed the attitude that
kept the Stewarts farming when he told me, “we decided, we’re in the dairy business and we’re
going to stay in the dairy business, so we always have stayed, fifty some years.” The farm is now
being taken over by their son Keith, one of five kids, who owns the herd and the fields, and is
paying rent on the rest.
------Evelyn Braymer was born in 1929 in the town of Salem, New York and grew up on a
farm that her parents bought in the 1930s. Her husband’s parents purchased the farm that Evelyn
and her husband later moved to because it was close to the Salem train station (and therefore the
milk market). Although his parents were forced to sell the farm a few years after purchasing it
due to the onset of the Great Depression, they continued to rent the property until 1947, when
Evelyn and her husband were able to buy it back at the end of World War II.
At that time it was easy to buy land because there was a large demand for produce and
milk. Shipping companies, such as H.P. Hood, encouraged new farmers with summer barbecues
and other promotional events. At the most, Evelyn and her husband milked about forty cows and
raised 200 chickens. Although they later switched to the cooperative Agrimark, Evelyn described
shipping their milk to H.P. Hood as a “family relationship.”
Rippon-Butler 38
The Braymers had a son interested in farming, but they eventually sold the cows and
began renting their land to a large farm down the road. “The farm is too small for two families,”
Evelyn explained, matter of factly. “We didn’t want to go into debt to finance him.”
------Carleton Philpott graduated high school in 1951 and came home to work on his family’s
small dairy farm in Hoosick, New York with his father. Not long afterwards, he married Corinne
and wanted to start a family. To bring in some extra income, Carleton began driving a daily truck
route to pick up milk from other farmers in the region and deliver it to the nearby United Dairy
System creamery at the Hoosick train station.111 After bulk tank trucks were introduced in the
1960s, milk was taken directly to West Springfield (an hour away) where it was pasteurized,
separated and bottled or made into cheese. Carleton described the transition period for farmers in
this area as a rapid and somewhat confusing time – the milk companies would tell farmers,
“We’re going to go bulk,” and farmers were given six months to obtain an expensive bulk
holding tank or their milk would no longer be picked up. Farmers were upset about the new
method of transportation because of the milk check changes that came with it: “We got less
alright,” Carleton explained. “You not only had the stop charge, you had to pay part of the
hauling, and then they had a diesel fuel tax…that all came out of the $11 [per hundredweight].
On top of the added charges, farmers felt less secure that their milk would be picked up
when it was no longer neighbors, such as Carleton, driving the truck:
Back when I was picking up canned milk…you didn’t leave anybody’s milk, no
matter what. I mean if the snow was four feet deep you had to get that
milk…Well, when the tanks come in, that was a different story then…Back then
they would try three times to back into your driveway and if they couldn’t make it
to the milk house, they’d leave you.
111
The United Dairy System company would eventually become AgriMark after a number of mergers through the
latter half of the twentieth century.
Rippon-Butler 39
Company owned tanker trucks only came to farms every other day and refused to pick up
the milk if they couldn’t get in the driveway after three attempts. Farmers who could
afford it bought bigger holding tanks in case this happened, but most commonly a missed
pick up meant the farmer was forced to dump two days’ worth of milk.
The Philpott’s son helped on the farm for a number of years after college but
eventually took a job off the farm. Carleton has since sold his dairy herd and now bales
hay to sell to other farmers and horse owners.
------These farmers’ actions and observations illustrate the number of factors that go
into the decision of how to distribute a perishable product such as milk. Evelyn Braymer
and the Philpotts mentioned the importance of location in their decision of where to ship,
especially when milk was still moved by rail. The Stewarts decided where to ship based
on company loyalty; and Louis Marchaland exhibited strictly economic decision-making.
Their stories show that transportation is not simply another expense for the farmer, but
rather a factor that is tied to how, and even why, they farm. The many vivid, and often
amusing, recollections that these farmers conveyed to me during the interviews exemplify
the fact that farming is a challenging business, but not one without joy.
Figure 11 Loading milk cans onto a train (“Remembering the Rutland”)
Rippon-Butler 40
DISCUSSION&
Empty silos and crumbling barns dot the countryside of the Northeast, remnants of a time
when nearly every rural resident could say their neighbor was a farmer. Development now
sprawls outwards from cities, replacing the rural with the suburban one farm field at a time.112
Declining farm numbers and consolidation is a trend in many agricultural sectors, but dairy
seems to be particularly hard hit. Between 2002 and 2007, according to the most recent available
census data, the number of dairy farms in the New York State decreased nearly 20 percent while
only 2.4 percent of all farms in the State disappeared.113 Interspersed between highways and
housing developments, however, the farms that remain are growing larger and increasing milk
production.114
In this section I return to my original question – how has the transportation industry
affected New York dairy farmers – with a focus on the present. Milk dealers have encouraged
economies of scale in the dairy industry by shipping milk further, promoting increased
production, and working to create a homogeneous product. These developments have tied
geographically diverse regions of the country into the same pricing structure, created milk
surpluses, and placed increasing burdens of capitalization on the farmer. Why does this matter
and what should be done about it? I will begin by laying out some of the problems faced by
modern dairy farmers and explain how these challenges emerged out of the development of the
transportation industry. I will then make an argument for the role that small farms play in
112
Farms in the Northeast have declined 83 percent since 1960 and the number of milking cows has gone down by
49 percent (J. R. Winsten, et al., “Trends in the Northeast dairy industry: Large-scale modern confinement feeding
and management-intensive grazing,” Journal of Dairy Science 93 (2010): 1759-1769, accessed February 2012,
http://dx.doi.org/10.3168/jds.2008-1831).
113
In 2002 there were 37,255 total farms and 6,531 dairy farms; in 2007 the numbers were 36,352 and 5,237
(“Selected Farm Characteristics by North American Classification: 2002 and 2007,” U.S.D.A. Census of Agriculture
2002 and 2007, http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/index.php).
114
Since 1960, the number of cows per farm in the Northeast has gone up 50 percent and average milk production
has more than doubled (Winsten, et al., “Trends in the Northeast dairy industry,” 1759-1769).
Rippon-Butler 41
supporting New York’s agricultural vitality, and end by providing suggestions for how farmers,
policymakers, and consumers can help mitigate their disappearance.
PRODUCER&CHALLENGES&
(1) SHIPPING&MILK&FARTHER &
In 2009, farmers across the country received $11.30 for a hundred pounds of milk – $.50
less than what Carleton Philpott was paid in the 1970s.115,116 Although the price of milk has
steadily risen in grocery stores, farmers are seeing a small and unreliable portion of that
increase.117 The long-term stagnation in milk prices, accompanied by month-to-month variation,
makes it nearly impossible for farmers to plan for the future in a business characterized by longterm decisions, big capital expenses, and payoffs that occur over many years. The transportation
industry is part of the reason for the black hole of profits in the milk supply chain. Enabled by
improvements in transportation and encouraged by dealer contracts, farmers have entered into an
increasingly interconnected and geographically diverse milk market over the past two centuries.
This development has caused a decline in local agriculture infrastructure and subjected farmers
to national-level price controls, two changes which are particularly damaging to small farms.
In 1918, New York had 700 milk stations, platforms, and skimming stations.118 The rise
of supermarkets, convenience stores, and restaurants following World War II put small
processing plants at a disadvantage because they couldn’t supply the large volumes required by
115
Farmers are paid by the hundredweight, or 100 lbs, the standard unit of measurement for milk sold in bulk.
“Agricultural Prices,” National Agricultural Statistics Service (December 1979): 4,
http://usda01.library.cornell.edu/usda/nass/AgriPric//1970s/1979/AgriPric-12-31-1979.pdf.
117
Using the approximation of 12 gallons per hundredweight, the percent that farmers received out of what the milk
was sold for in stores varied from 34% (when milk prices were lowest) to 46% when they were highest (data from
http://ycharts.com/indicators and http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymos).
118
Van Wagner, State of New York Agriculture Manual, 63.
116
Rippon-Butler 42
these purchasers.119 Milk dealers found it cheaper and more convenient to have a few centrally
located plants capable of processing large amounts of milk, which led to business mergers and
closures in the latter half of the twentieth century.120 While the California and Wisconsin dairy
industries expanded their capacity for dealing with milk and milk products between 1975 and
2000, the capacity of other major dairy states, namely New York, remained unchanged.121 By
2010, the number of processing plants in the State had dropped from 700 to 116.122
This decline eroded the agricultural infrastructure of the region. Shipping plants weren’t
the only agriculture businesses disappearing – throughout the past century farms have also
merged and closed as new generations looked for less strenuous work and the industry became
more capital intensive. The authors of a 1996 case study on farmland protection in Orange
County explain that the image of the independent family farmer is an outdated one; “Involved in
a highly interdependent industry, farmers rely on input suppliers, processors and handlers,
veterinarians, equipment dealers and financial institutions.” Consequently, “the fewer farms
there are to purchase supplies from local agribusinesses, the more fragile the whole industry
becomes.”123 This fragility particularly affects small farms because they tend to be operated by a
single individual and rely more on the local infrastructure for goods and services than their large
competitors. Farmers now have fewer shipping companies to choose from to sell their milk to
and fewer farms in their neighborhoods to sustain the businesses that support agriculture, such as
119
At the end of WWII, 54 percent of milk was delivered to consumers’ doors but by 1971 it was down to 19.3
percent (Changes in the Processing and Distribution of Milk and Milk Products, 274, 276).
120
The mass merging trend extended to milk dealer companies as well as physical creameries: between 1923 and
1940, National Dairy underwent 514 mergers and Borden underwent 405 in the New York City milkshed (DuPuis,
“The Land of Milk,” 68).
121
Carpentier, “Environmental and Other Factors,” 9.
122
Ron Butler, “Adding Value to the Dairy Industry,” Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences,
(2010), accessed April 2012, http://cce.cornell.edu/AG/PRODUCTIONAGRICULTURE/Pages/DairyCattle.aspx.
123
Lucy T. Joyce and Nelson L. Bills, “Agricultural and Farmland Protection Planning: A Case Study in Orange
County, New York,” Staff Paper Department of Agricultural, Resource, and Managerial Economics Cornell
University, (1996): 10.
Rippon-Butler 43
tractor dealerships, veterinary clinics, and feed stores. While large farms may have their own
tanker trucks on site to ship milk with, smaller farms must depend on shipping companies to pick
up their milk every other day. The social support provided to farmers from vibrant local
communities is an important aspect of agricultural infrastructure as well. While some farmers
applauded the increased capacity to tap into growing markets that truck shipping brought, the
new system led to perhaps unanticipated consequences, such as loss of community interaction
previously provided by the daily task of bringing milk to the local creamery.124 The
disappearance of milk distributors and farms meant the loss of farm neighbors, taking much of
the enjoyment out of the business for many farmers whose work became more solitary.
Paradoxically, while farmers became further isolated in their own communities, government
price controls linked them to an increasingly interconnected national industry.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 was the first time that the federal government
took a direct role in setting milk prices. Four years later, the government passed the Agricultural
Marketing Act of 1937, which allowed producers to collectively influence the supply, demand,
and price of a commodity to create orderly marketing.125 These price controls were necessary to
protect farmers from dealer contracts and arbitrary price setting, but they haven’t been a perfect
solution. Dairy farmers are now subject to Milk Marketing Orders, which are voluntary programs
“initiated and approved by dairy farmers” through a voter referendum and enforced by state and
federal governments.126 Similar to the 1882 New York Milk Exchange, these orders facilitate
orderly milk marketing by setting minimum prices, organizing milk movement, and arranging
payments from handlers. As the Farm Bureau website points out, because this pricing system is
124
Harper, Changing Works, 242.
Womach, “Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms.”
126
The State is responsible for Western New York milk marketing orders while the eastern part of the State is
subject to federal milk marketing orders (New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, last updated
2012, accessed April 2012, http://www.agriculture.ny.gov/DI/DIprograms.html#10).
125
Rippon-Butler 44
federally based, “there is no recognition of the fact that farm businesses in the Northeast are
operating in a higher cost environment than other parts of the country.”127 Small farms in New
York are not only competing against farms in other regions with higher returns on production
costs, but also with large farms within their own state that outcompete them based on economies
of scale.128,129 Additionally, Louis Marchaland pointed out the inherent contradiction of a price
setting board that allows representatives from large shipping companies to be members: “How
many other businesses have the buyers of the product on the board telling them what they’re
going to pay for it?”
Milk Marketing Orders are only part of the story when farmers look at their milk checks
each month. The base price that farmers get for every hundred pounds of milk is determined
from a formula based on dairy commodities traded on the on the Chicago Mercantile
Exchange.130,131 The payout per hundredweight ($/cwt) that the farmer collects, however, is
much more complicated. A typical milk check includes premiums for volume, cleanliness (lowbacteria counts), and solids (mainly butterfat and protein). The four major deductions are
127
“Milk Money,” New York Farm Bureau, September 10, 2007, accessed March 2012,
http://www.comefarmwithus.com/MilkMoney.htm.
128
According to 1999 figures from the Economic Research Service of the U.S.D.A., farmers in the Northeast
received the lowest net cash per cwt returns in the country at $1.99 (based on $14.80 cash expense and $16.79 gross
returns) while the Pacific region farmers were getting $5.39/cwt (Geoffrey A. Benson, “Milk Check Money: What
determines the price farmers receive for Grade A milk?” North Carolina Extension Service (2001): 7). In 20102009, NY farmers receive $4.54/cwt value of production less operating costs (ranking 14th in the country) compared
to the national average of $4.96/cwt and the highest value of $8.50/cwt in Florida (Data Set for Commodity Costs
and Returns for Milk, (Economic Research Service), January 30, 2012, accessed April 2012,
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/CostsAndReturns/TestPick.htm).
129
Value of production less operating costs was $3.11/cwt for farms across the country with fewer than 50 cows
compared to $5.81/cwt for farms with 1,000 cows or more (Ibid.).
130
The four commodities are: butter, dry milk powder, whey powder, and cheddar cheese. All of these are globally
traded (“Milk Money”).
131
Prices are also determined from basing points, which are geographic locations used to establish minimum fluid
milk prices for federal marketing orders. Minimum fluid prices paid to farmers generally increase with distance from
the basing point. In the 1930s, Eau Clare, Wisconsin was considered the principal surplus milk production region
and served as the basing point for most milk under federal marketing orders. Since then, arguments have been made
that there are other surplus regions of the country, such as the Northeast, but when the U.S.D.A. attempted to
establish a pricing structure with multiple basing points it was thwarted by legislation in 1999 (Womach,
“Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms.”).
Rippon-Butler 45
hauling, federal advertisement/promotion, cooperative/marketing fees, and the half-month
advance payment. Stop charges, taken out each time the tanker truck pulls into a farmer’s yard,
and hauling fees, which increase with distance from the processing plant, are two directly
transportation-related costs passed on to farmers. The Dairylea cooperative, which is the biggest
mover of milk in the Northeast, organizes its pickups and payments into zones subject to price
deductions based on distance from Boston and the density of farms in the area.132 This
complicated process of milk marketing is necessitated in part because of the oversupply of milk,
another issue that came out of the involvement of milk dealers in the industry.
(2) INCREASED&PRODUCTION &
In 2012, Dominoes started selling the “Wisconsin,” a six-cheese pizza with two
additional cheeses in the crust. The creation was developed in partnership with Dairy
Management Inc. (DMI), an offshoot of the U.S.D.A. that generated the “Got Milk? ” campaign
and that is responsible for the behemoth task of promoting the milk produced by the U.S. dairy
industry.133 According to their website, DMI helps “build demand for dairy on behalf of dairy
producers.”134 Its purpose might be more accurately described as damage control. The U.S. dairy
industry cycles through periods of surplus and deficit production, which tend to push milk prices
up and down. Surprisingly, tactics such as creating demand for milk by turning it into a pizza in
times of surplus don’t always benefit the producer. At first, Dominoes bought the surplus milk
(which had been made into cheese so it would keep), causing milk prices to go up and dairy
132
Starting with zone 0 in Boston, the farmer is paid $.05 less per cwt every zone out; the zone our farm is in
receives a $.25 deduction on every hundred pounds while Albany farmers receive a $.55 deduction even though they
are closer to Boston because there are fewer farms in that area (Phone interview with Ken Krutz of Dairy Marketing
Services (Dairylea), December 2010).
133
Michael Moss, “While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales,” New York Times, November 6, 2010,
accessed April 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/us/07fat.html?pagewanted=all.
134
Dairy Management Inc., accessed April 2012, http://www.dairyinfo.com/.
Rippon-Butler 46
farmers to add cows to their herds. Then, when Dominoes and DMI came under attack from
health critics who pointed out that an eight-cheese pizza might not be the best move for a nation
combating obesity, the fast food chain stopped producing it. When Dominoes stopped needing
the cheese, farmers lost their outlet for surplus milk, and prices went down. Dairy farmers were
stuck with low profits and large herds because, as Evelyn Braymer explained, “if you’ve already
got a cow that’s milking, you just don’t stop it like you do making cars.”
The role of the transportation industry in creating this problem of surplus has parallels
with the history of electricity in America. In the 1930s, rural electrification became a national
priority and the way power was produced began to change. Previously, individual power
producers regulated their output based on consumer usage – making sure that in times of heavy
demand, the generators ran at full capacity while in times of reduced use, they operated at lower
intensity. When the demand for power grew and the government created a national grid to
manage it, power from many sources was pooled together. Producers switched from producing to
fill local demand to producing as much as possible because they had a guaranteed outlet for it.
The milk industry underwent a similar change as trains and trucks connected farmers to markets
and the federal government got involved with regulating the supply. Farmers who had previously
produced to meet local demand began producing as much as they could, knowing that dealers
would guarantee a market for their milk.
The introduction of different classes of milk leading up to the mandate of pasteurization
was an attempt to incentivize farmers to invest in higher quality as well as quantity. The system
of moving milk that ensued was a forerunner to the current surplus problem. While the new
classes brought increased profits to some, they meant that dealers had to accept, and find a
market for, the influx of higher-cost, perishable fluid milk. Dealers still needed to sell surplus
Rippon-Butler 47
milk for butter or cheese as they had in the past, but they were now forced to pay farmers the
higher fluid milk price regardless of end use. Dealers passed these losses on to farmers or simply
refused to pick up milk at all. In 1920, cooperative associations of dairy farmers organized to
force handlers to accept milk at varied prices, eventually resulting in the 1937 Agricultural
Marketing Act.
A 1960 report on the effects of the Marketing Act on milk movement in the New YorkNew Jersey milkshed provides insight into government attempts to regulate production and
create a more even supply. The report illustrates the creation of feeder plants to keep the market
for milk stable while supply fluctuated throughout the year. These plants, which were typically
big enough to receive milk but ill-equipped to manufacture it into consumer-ready products,
would collect milk from producers, weigh and test it, and then ship it on to other plants. The
report suggests that the efficiency of the system could be improved by reducing inter-firm
politics that were causing milk to move long, often unnecessary distances.135 The problems of the
feeder system were just the beginning of the complicated surplus milk problems that have since
arisen.
Feeder plants were made possible by the transition to truck shipping, which was
occurring around the same time that the Milk Marketing Orders were introduced. The 1930s
were an era characterized by improved access – as the government pushed the development of
rural roads and electricity, dairy farmers previously beyond the reach of the fluid milk market
flooded in. Facing a surplus of perishable milk and a system that was set up to encourage more
production, the dairy industry embarked on a period of aggressive advertisement to push its
product further into the consumer world. The National Dairy Council, founded in 1915, became
135
Class III Milk in the New York Milkshed: I-Manufacturing Operations, Marketing Economics Research Division
of the U.S.D.A. (1960).
Rippon-Butler 48
actively involved in promoting milk in schools, factories, and offices as early as 1927. 136,137 To
bolster the dairy industry, the Council launched a campaign to link consumer health and
economics. Their claim that “safe milk is the only truly economical milk,” had two meanings –
producers could charge more for higher-quality milk, and consumers would reap the long-term
health benefits.138 In 1934, the New York State Milk Commission embarked on a 500,000-dollar
advertisement campaign – paid for by a one percent tax on every hundred pounds of milk
charged jointly to producers and distributors.139,140 Other advertising campaigns, such as “Milk
Sundays,” which involved a morning church service followed by lunch where milk was served,
drew on farmers’ moral convictions. The State Chaplain at the time remarked, “We must insist
that anything as essential to human life as milk, is holy.”141
In addition to the aggressive milk-promotion that began in the 1920s, the transition from
forty-quart cans to bulk tanks encouraged increased milk production. The new system meant
farmers were paid by weight, rather than volume, which allowed them to ship more at cheaper
costs once they overcame the initial expense of buying a bulk tank. These economies of scale
have come to define the minimum size of dairy farms that ship to the wholesale market. Ken
Krutz of Dairylea explained to me that the unwritten protocol of the cooperative is that any new
producers who are added to the pickup route pay the hauling costs for 2,000 pounds of milk
(about what a twenty-cow dairy would produce every other day) with the expectation that they
136
The National Dairy Council, a publicly funded organization, is dedicated to “educating the public on the health
benefits of consuming milk and milk products throughout a person’s lifespan (“About,” National Dairy Council,
http://www.nationaldairycouncil.org/AboutNDC/Pages/AboutNDCLanding.aspx, accessed February 2012).
137
In 1929, the Council published “posters, booklets, stories, plays, projects, film strips, motion pictures and
exhibits,” to promote dairy products (Ira V. Hiscock Papers, Letter from M.O. Maughan to Professor Hiscock, Box 5
Folder 112, March 5, 1927, Yale Manuscripts and Archives Collection).
138
Hiscock Papers, “Safe Milk.”
139
“N.Y. State Will Advertise Milk: Increased Use is Aim of $500,000 Campaign,” Daily Boston Globe, June 3,
1934, accessed March 2012, http://search.proquest.com/docview/758602139?accountid=15172.
140
The Grange, organized to advocate for farmers, supported this advertising campaign (Elizabeth L. Arthur, The
History of the New York State Grange: 1934-1960, no date or publisher given).
141
Elizabeth L. Arthur, The History of the New York State Grange: 1934-1960, no date or publisher given, 145.
Rippon-Butler 49
will soon reach that production level if they aren’t already there.142 Milk dealers and the federal
government saw the economies of scale that they pushed on the dairy industry as smart business.
Small farmers suffered, however, as higher volume and more homogeneous production was
encouraged, which often came with higher capital costs.
Figure 12 Milk movement between pooling plants in
1957 (Class III Milk, 1960)
(3) COMMODITIZATION&AND&CAPITALIZATION &
How does a food become a commodity? How does a way of life turn into an industry?
These two changes are not transformations in the sense that one identity must be lost for the
other to apply – a food is still a food even when it has been commoditized, and industrialized
farming is still a way of life – but something crucial has changed. Commodities and industries
are regulated and homogeneous, they are influenced by supply and demand economics, and as a
result they link together many sectors of society in a complex web of cause and effect. Over the
last century and a half, milk in New York has transformed from an animal by-product into a
highly regulated commodity industry.
142
The pricing policy was instituted after high milk prices in 2007 and 2008 caused a number of new farmers to
petition Dairylea for milk pickup. Because tanker trucks have to pull into every single farm yard of farms that ship
milk, adding new small farms to the route was not cost effective for the company. Dairylea rewards farmers for
high-volume production starting at 100,000 pounds, $.10 is added to each hundredweight, capping out around $.50
extra per cwt (Ken Krutz).
Rippon-Butler 50
Turning milk into a homogeneous product made sense for shipping companies – they
knew what to expect and could do what they wanted with it. The process was not painless for
producers, however. All products that are sold for a profit lie along a line from differentiated to
commodity. A differentiated product is defined as “uniquely different than those of competitors.”
Producers are called “price makers,” meaning they can claim that their product is better and
“make” a higher price for it. Commodities, on the other hand, are characterized by an industry in
which “all units…are identical, regardless of who produces them.” This means that producers are
“price takers” because they have little or no control over the price they receive – if one producer
demands a higher price, the dealer can simply obtain the same product from a producer down the
road or on the other side of the country.143 As milk has become a commodity product,
homogeneous across its supply base and widely distributed, farmers have lost control of the
prices that they receive as well as the quality of their product.144
The original use of the term homogeneous actually came from the dairy industry. The
process, which involves crushing milkfat globules into small particles that mix evenly in milk
instead of rising to the top in the characteristic line of cream, came out of the necessity of
creating a product that could be easily handled and mass-distributed. Although introduced in the
1930s, homogenization didn’t become popular until cardboard containers began to be used after
World War II, masking the absence of the cream on top.145 By completely removing the fat from
incoming milk and adding it back in at the desired proportions, distributors created a
homogeneous product that could be manipulated into one, two, and “whole” milk varieties, no
143
Don Hofstrand, “Commodities Versus Differentiated Products,” Iowa State University Extension and Outreach,
accessed November 2011, http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/c5-203.html.
144
In an extreme example of commoditization, wholesale milk is now tradable on the futures market, meaning a
trader with no intention of ever dealing in the physical product can buy units of milk by the hundredweight that have
an undefined production source and haven’t even been produced yet. Contract sales now account for 43% of milk
sales (Womach, “Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms”).
145
Anne Mendelson, Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages (New York: Knopf, 2008), 45.
Rippon-Butler 51
matter what its original fat content was. As Anne Mendelson put it, “in effect, ‘whole milk’
could now be whatever the industry said it was.”146 This move completely eliminated any
differentiation in the market place that farmers may have gained by claiming they produced a
superior product. At the same time that the distribution industry took the power away from
producers to determine the value of their product, it also made production more expensive.
Although the expansion of the transportation industry brought higher profits to farmers, it
also brought higher costs, which are particularly hard on small farmers. “You can buy the land,”
Louis Marchaland explained, “but then you’ve got to have the buildings to put your cattle in…at
this point it’s really prohibitive.” Equipment, such as bulk tanks and tractors, which farmers were
essentially forced to buy in order to keep up with industry standards of production, have become
an increasingly large part of operating costs. In 2007, the market value of land and buildings on
the average New York dairy farm was $882,775 and machinery and equipment cost another
$232,409.147 These numbers don’t account for the cost of cattle and labor or the expense of
fixing machinery when it breaks. When Janet and Clifford Stewart bought their farm they paid
less than $20,000. Today, a single tractor can easily cost $70,000.
The same modes of transportation that opened up milk markets for dairy farmers cleared
the way for residential development, making land further from cities increasingly valuable. A
1942 article on the rural-urban fringe problem remarks that although the urban infiltration into
the countryside began with train access, the “the real exodus of residences and of commercial
establishments generated by traffic did not come until the automobile and hard-surfaced roads
146
Anne Mendelson, “The Astonishing Story of Real Milk,” Mother Earth News, October 2011, accessed November
2011, http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/real-milk-zmrz11zalt.aspx.
147
“Selected Characteristics of Farms by North American Industry Classification System: 2007,” U.S.D.A. 2007
Census of Agriculture, http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/index.php.
Rippon-Butler 52
provided means of swift, unchanneled, individual transportation.”148 City dwellers were attracted
to the countryside by the bucolic scenes while industries were drawn by the “availability of
transportation, cheaper land, lower taxes and less control over land uses.”149 Land is typically the
largest single investment for a farmer and in many cases provides collateral for farm loans,
which allow farmers to purchase equipment or meet operating costs.150 As land values continue
to rise, so do taxes, making it difficult for farmers to expand their operations.151 Small farms
generally don’t have enough income to support two families at once without expanding, leaving
the retiring farmer vulnerable to the temptation or necessity to sell out to other farmers or
developers.
THE&VALUE&OF&THE&SMALL&FARM &
Volatile prices, milk surplus, and high costs of production have all arisen in part out of
the expansion of dairy transportation networks. Small dairy farmers, especially those unwilling
or unable to get bigger, are particularly challenged by these developments. Why not simply give
in to the economies of scale that drive small and inefficient producers out of business? Although
farm numbers are on the decline, dairy is still a large part of the New York State economy,
landscape and lifestyle. Dairy farms keep 8.4 percent of the State’s land in farming and account
148
George S. Wehrwein, “The Rural-Urban Fringe,” Economic Geography 18 (July 1942), 221.
Wehrwein, “The Rural-Urban Fringe,” 222.
150
Farm real estate is the major asset on the farm sector balance sheet, accounting for 84 percent of the total value of
U.S. farm assets in 2009. “Real estate” accounts for land and structures (Cynthia Nickerson, et al., “Trends in U.S.
Farmland Values and Ownership,” Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (February 2012),
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB92/EIB92_ReportSummary.pdf).
151
New York State agricultural land values have gone up 7.8 per cent between 2002 and 2007, reaching $1,920 an
acre in 2007 (Terry L. Kastens and Kevin C. Dhuyvetter, “Higher Land Values?” Department of Agricultural
Economics Kansas State University, Presented at 2007 Risk and Profit Conference, August 16-17, 2007, accessed
March 2012, http://www.agmanager.info/events/risk_profit/2007/Papers/8_Kastens_Dhuyvetter_Land.pdf).
149
Rippon-Butler 53
for two and a half million of its more than seven million acres in agriculture.152 Dairy
consistently ranks as New York’s top commodity product, bringing in 50.3 percent of the State’s
farm receipts and 7 percent of total U.S. dairy value.153 According to the U.S.D.A. Census of
Agriculture, New York State had 5,237 dairy farms in 2007, nearly 60 percent of which were
classified as small family farms.154,155 Beyond these numbers, small farms provide a social value
that is less easily quantified. I argue that small farms make up a critical contingent of the industry
because they are better suited to New York’s environment and help preserve the agricultural
infrastructure that all farms need to survive.
First, what does it mean to be a small dairy farm? The U.S.D.A. Census of Agriculture
defines small family farms as those with sales of less than $250,000 a year.156 Douglas Harper, a
historian who has written about farming in Upstate New York, separates farms into two
categories based on more subjective characteristics. “Craft” farms, by his definition, are those
where the farmer makes milk like a craftsman makes furniture – the individual performs all the
tasks in the production system, and thus has comprehensive knowledge of the operation.
“Factory” farms, on the other hand, are those that incorporate advanced division of labor and
mass-production technology to control work with machines.157 Although I use the numbers from
the U.S.D.A.’s definition, I identify viscerally with Harper’s categories when I think of the value
of the small farm.
152
“Summary by Farm Typology: 2007,” Table 64, U.S.D.A. 2007 Census of Agriculture, accessed April 2012,
http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/index.php.
153
New York ranks as the third highest-producing dairy state in the country behind California and Wisconsin (“State
Fact Sheet: NY,” Economic Research Service, U.S.D.A., last updated January 17, 2012, accessed April 2012,
http://www.ers.usda.gov/statefacts/NY.HTM).
154
Specifically, the farms were designated as “dairy cattle and milk production” operations (“Summary by North
American Industry Classification System,” U.S.D.A. 2007 Census).
155
“Summary by Farm Typology,” U.S.D.A. 2007 Census.
156
Ibid.
157
Douglas Harper, Changing Works, 265.
Rippon-Butler 54
RESOURCE&USE&
In his book on farming in Upstate New York, Douglas Harper explains how the dairy
industry has evolved in ignorance of its ecological environment:
Economic irrationalities have led us to milk cows thousands of miles from where
their food is grown and to treat their manure as hazardous waste rather than as
replenishment for fields. Our innocence, however, leads only to a temporary bliss;
an agricultural system based on vastly more caloric investment than it produces
will eventually crash.158
This statement, while applicable to all farms, is especially true of large dairy farms. As the size
of New York farms has increased over the years, the land available to them has decreased,
leading to intensification of manure application and cropping.159 Farmers are not inherently
perfect stewards of the land with complete ecological understanding, and mechanization has
further exacerbated the disconnect between profit and environmental stewardship.
Small farms tend to require less intense resource use than large dairies and fewer
acres to operate. These farmers spread manure on a weekly basis rather than storing it in
a pit for months, where it becomes liquid and noxious. Some large farmers have to drive
miles from their farm in order to spread this manure or harvest enough crops to feed their
highly concentrated herds. As large farms run up against environmental constraints that
prevent them from getting larger, the role of small farms in keeping acres, however few,
in agriculture becomes increasingly important. This is especially crucial in New York
State where development pressure is high and large blocks of land are hard to come by.
158
Douglas Harper, Changing Works, 58.
Between 1997 and 2002 alone, New York lost an average of 70 acres of farmland a day, totaling 127,000. A loss
this severe causes manure to be applied at “disposal rates rather than agronomic rates (consistent with current soil
nutrient levels and plant needs), or at inappropriate times, such as right before or during a rain event, causing the
manure to run off (Michael Schade, “The Wasting of Rural New York State: Factory Farms and Public Health,”
Citizens’ Environmental Coalition & Sierra Club, (2005): 4).
159
Rippon-Butler 55
Keeping farm numbers up helps preserve the agricultural infrastructure, which is another
key factor in farm survival.
INFRASTRUCTURE&
When I asked Evelyn whether there was any hope for a new generation of farmers
entering the industry, she remarked, “The amount of money that you would have to have in
capital to get a farm…I don’t see how you could even pay the interest on it, to say anything
about paying it back.” As dairy farming becomes more capital intensive, small farms keep the
scale at a manageable size for new farmers to enter the business. Simply put, small farms mean
more farms, which support farming infrastructure in an area. More farms generate more
equipment sales, and require more veterinary hours and breeding services. Larger farms fill their
own tanker trucks with milk and hire cheap labor, often from outside the community, if not the
country.160 As Evelyn sees it, the need to preserve small farms is a food security issue as well;
“We have to keep our farms small enough so we’re not dependent on just one farm. One farm
could go under and where would we be?”
What Evelyn is expressing is resistance to the extreme extrapolation of commodity
production in a capitalist economy – one company, one product, one mode of production.
Although capitalism and efficiency are highly valued in American society, perhaps another set of
values should be taken into consideration. Small family farms help preserve the democratic and
social principles that the country was founded on. Until the late twentieth century, the
Jeffersonian ideal of owning land and a business was relatively achievable through farming.
Since that time, society has welcomed systems of production that produce cheaper and more
160
Miriam Jordan, “Got Workers? Dairy Farms Run Low on Labor,” Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2009,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124890678343891639.html.
Rippon-Butler 56
uniform goods – making businesses like the small family farm uneconomical. Perhaps it is time
to reconsider the definition of expense and the role that small farms can play in providing milk at
a low social and environmental cost.
The bottom line is that small farms will play are an important part of New York land use
and economic income from agriculture. Small dairy farms make up approximately 32 percent of
the New York State land devoted to dairy farming and contribute 14 percent of the sales in the
dairy industry.161 New York does, of course, need both large and small farms. Large farms
propel agricultural policy and produce the majority of the milk that Americans drink. If small
farms are unable to survive, however, New York faces a decline of more than half of its dairy
farms, which means a loss of more than half of its farm families.
POTENTIAL&SOLUTIONS&
How can these families be kept in farming? In an article on the challenges faced by
farmers in the Northeast, Valerie Imbruce suggests that “small farms persist because they can
adapt, albeit not easily nor without risk or failure, to changing markets, changing technologies,
and changing environmental parameters.”162 These adaptive solutions will need to come from
farmers, citizens, and government action. No single solution will save the small family farm.
Improved farm efficiency, value-added products, direct-marketing, regional supply chains, land
conservation, and policy will all be part of the future of dairy farming in New York State.
161
In 2007 there were 802,838 acres in “small dairy farms” out of the total 2,535,298 acres in dairy farms in NY;
“small” farms contribute $344,495,000 in sales to the $2,280,218,000 in total sales for NY dairy farms (figures from
a special tabulation done by the National Agriculture Statistics Service for author, April 2012, and “Summary by
Size of Farm” U.S.D.A. 2007 Census of Agriculture).
162
Valerie Imbruce, “To Market! To Market!” Web log post, Science Progress, January 19, 2010, accessed
December 2010, http://scienceprogress.org/2010/01/to-market-to-market/.
Rippon-Butler 57
FARM&EFFICIENCY&
In a study on the potential future of small farms, Tauer and Mishra conclude that the cost
of production decreases with farm size because small farms are using available technology less
efficiently than large farms.163 As milk prices fluctuate, only the highest efficiency small farms
will be able to compete with the cost of production achieved by large farms, and inefficient small
farms will be forced out of business.164 All farms should be encouraged to increase efficiency for
environmental as well as economic benefit, but small farms are in particular need of help. Some
small production farmers, like those that Sarah Belcher reached out to in the early twentieth
century, resist improved efficiency in production because they feel they are being told how to run
their businesses. Others simply don’t have access to information or the ability to take time away
from the farm to learn. Improved high-speed Internet connection in rural areas, a current federal
initiative, is one solution to the access issue.165 Extension services focused on record keeping,
monitoring, and understanding of financial concepts will help farmers understand the business
concepts underlying efficiency improvements. On-farm and peer-to-peer intervention may also
be an effective method of impressing the importance of improving efficiency on small farm
owners.
REGIONAL&SUPPLY&
One way to help small farms compete with the lower costs of production on large farms
is by improving efficiency in the distribution sector. Long supply chains create high overhead
163
In 1999, small farmers faced an average cost of production of $16.95 per hundredweight while large farms
operated at $13.61 with a much lower percentage of profit lost to inefficient use of available technology (Loren
Tauer and Ashok Mishra, “Can the small dairy farm remain competitive in U.S. agriculture?” Food Policy 31
(2006): 458).
164
Although the most efficient small farms had lower costs of production than the average large farm, they could
still not compete with the highest efficiency large farms (Ibid.).
165
Peter Stenberg, Mitch Morehart, and John Cromartie, “Broadband Internet Service Helping Create a Rural Digital
Economy,” Amber Waves, U.S.D.A. Economic Research Service, September 2009, accessed April 2012,
http://www.ers.usda.gov/amberwaves/september09/features/broadband.htm.
Rippon-Butler 58
costs that are transferred predominantly to the farmer. Separating the market that large and small
farms compete for through reorganization at the distribution level could help small farms lose
less of their already fragile profits to transportation costs. Shipping companies could use milk
from large farms to continue supplying distant markets while targeting smaller farms for regional
distribution. This would even out profits based on the inevitable differences in cost of production
while still encouraging efficiency on both large and small farms.
Small farms can self-select for this type of distribution by choosing a local distribution
company, but the idea of organizing milk distribution by farm size within large distribution
companies has yet to be approached. Part of the reason, of course, is the organizational headache
of picking up milk from small, disperse farms and convincing large farms to accept the disparity
in transportation costs. Regional distribution systems – with processing plants closer together,
increased cooperation between companies, and smaller trucks – could be part of the solution.166
Another way farmers can take control of the distribution chain is to escape it entirely through
direct marketing.
DIRECT&MARKETING&
In 2003, Seth McEachron returned from business school to his family’s farm in Upstate
New York with a plan to begin processing and distributing milk on site. By 2008, the first bottle
of Battenkill Valley Creamery milk came off the line in their new processing plant.167 The
decision to include direct marketing in the farm’s business plan was made in part to escape the
volatile and frequently depressed prices of the wholesale market and in part out of a desire to
166
Five Acre Farms is a distributing company dedicated to distributing farm products within 275 miles of where
they are produced. Milk from New York State farms is one of their key products (Five Acre Farms,
http://www.fiveacrefarms.com/, accessed April 2012).
167
“History,” Battenkill Valley Creamery, accessed April 2012, http://www.battenkillcreamery.com/history/.
Rippon-Butler 59
provide a fresh, delicious product to the local community.168 The company has certainly
succeeded on the second objective – at the 2010 State fair, their product was recognized as the
highest quality milk in New York – the first time that a direct marketing dairy has won this
award.169
Rick Welsh, a sociology professor at Clarkson University, remarks that, “the rapid
increase in direct marketing, and the financial viability of farms involved in it, demonstrate that
farmers have practical and profitable alternatives to industrialized production.”170 He goes on to
explain that the viability of these efforts will depend on the success of farmers' organizing
efforts, citizen groups' efforts to petition the state to intervene on behalf of farmers, and the
ability of the direct marketing sector to grow substantially without losing the characteristics that
make it attractive to farmers and their customers, such as taste. The dairy industry cannot survive
on individual production and direct marketing alone, however. While many farmers have
successfully begun to market their goods and the demand for directly marketed products seems
to be growing, it is not always economical – even Battenkill Valley Creamery sells about 60
percent of its milk each week to a wholesale cooperative to help even out supply and demand.171
Value-added or niche products may be another part of the solution for small dairy farmers
looking to diversify their products in the market.
168
Drew Kerr, “Return of the Milkman: Two Area Farmers Begin Delivering Dairy Products Direct to Doorstep,”
The Post Star, May 20, 2010, accessed April 2012, http://poststar.com/news/local/article_497e41d0-6459-11df91d2-001cc4c03286.html.
169
Kerr, “Battenkill Valley Creamery.”
170
Rick Welsh, “Reorganizing U.S. Agriculture: the rise of industrial agriculture and direct marketing,” Henry A.
Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture (1997).
171
The State Department of Agriculture and Markets shows that small dairy plants total almost 80 in New York
State in 2010, a doubling over the previous two years (Chris Churchill, "Pint-size Dairies Pumped," Times Union,
December 1, 2010, accessed April 2012, http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Pint-size-dairies-pumped849450.php).
Rippon-Butler 60
VALUEDADDED&PRODUCTS&
Many dairy farms in New York State have turned away from relying on the fluid milk
market and begun processing their own cheese, butter, or yogurt. Like direct marketing,
however, many of these products are sold in restaurants and farmers markets that rely on local
demand and are subject to legal restrictions. Selling raw milk is one way that farmers across New
England have attempted to differentiate their product and many states have relaxed their
regulations in the last few years.172,173 Considering the history of the pasteurization movement in
New York, it is no surprise that the state policy on raw milk remains one of the most stringent in
the country – making it nearly impossible for dairy farmers to sell unpasteurized milk in
stores.174 Organic production is another way for the farmer to add value to their product. The
three years that it takes to switch from conventional to organic are prohibitively expensive for
some, though, especially now that returns from organic milk are evening out with
conventional.175 Nonprofit action and government policy may assist the small farmer where
market forces fail them.
172
Raw milk has had a contentious few years in the Northeast. The 2010 Massachusetts battle over the State’s
Department of Agriculture restriction on the delivery of raw milk from farms to consumers via “buying clubs”
ignited consumer fury and ended with cows on the Commons lawn in Boston. Buying clubs are private businesses
that deliver milk from raw dairies on a contractual basis for consumers (David E. Gumpert, “Fight Over Raw Milk
Moves East, Amid Charges of Collusion with Big Dairy,” Huffington Post, May 3, 2010, accessed March 2012,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-e-gumpert/fight-over-raw-milk-moves_b_560863.html).
173
Corby Kummer, “Pasteurization Without Representation,” The Atlantic, May 13, 2010, accessed March 2012,
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2010/05/pasteurization-without-representation/56533/.
174
Cornell Cooperative Extension’s statement on the issue: “Due to the potential liabilities of selling unpasteurized
milk to the public, it is highly discouraged by the State and the Cornell University Department of Food Science.
However it can be legal. Your farm may sell raw fluid milk if you apply for permits and meet several additional tests
and requirements that other milk processing facilities do not have to meet” (“Guide to Farming in NYS: What Every
Ag Entrepreneur Needs to Know,” Cornell Small Farms Program, U.S.D.A., and Cornell Cooperative Extension,
Revised January 9, 2011, Fact Sheet #27).
175
Katie Zezima, “Organic Dairies Watch the Good Times Turn Bad,” New York Times, May 28, 2009, accessed
April 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/us/29dairy.html.
Rippon-Butler 61
LAND&CONSERVATION&
Growing city population initially meant profit for Orange County farmers; now it means
problems. As the New York City population grew throughout the twentieth century, Orange
County farmers suffered – between 1910 and 1992, the County led the state in loss of farm
acres.176 Facing increasing development pressures, Orange County in 1996 became the first
county in the state to adopt an agricultural and farmland protection plan.177 Farmland
conservation involves nonprofit groups raising money – through government grants, community
support, and gifts – to buy development rights from farmers. Farmers use the influx of cash to
help transition the farm to the next generation, buy new equipment, or build new facilities. Land
conservation fosters community cooperation by keeping a critical mass of land free and open for
agriculture against the tide of development. Janet expressed why this is so crucial to the future of
agriculture, “You never saw anybody go out and plow up a blacktop parking lot in front of a strip
mall and say ok now we’re going to put crops on this…Once you’ve lost it, it’s gone…they’re
not making any more farmland.”
The current system of nonprofit land conservation relies too heavily on dwindling and
erratic government funding and an inefficient non-profit organization, however. The
Environmental Protection Fund, created by the New York State legislature in 1993, is a program
financed by the Real Estate Transfer Tax revenue allocated by the Legislature and the Governor
through annual appropriations.178 In a 2010 negotiation outside the normal budget process,
Governor Paterson of New York cut the Farmland Protection Fund by 51 percent, or $11.25
176
The overall number of acres of farms in Orange County decreased by 55 percent, ahead of the 49 percent
decrease across the entire state (Joyce and Bills, “Agricultural and Farmland Protection Planning,” 1).
177
The plan was developed by the Orange County Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board with Cornell
Cooperative Extension. (“Technical Report,” Orange County Agricultural Economic Development Strategy, January
2004, 1).
178
Andy Bicking, et al., “The Environmental Protection Fund: Preserving New York’s Heritage and Quality of
Life,” The Friends of New York’s Environment.
Rippon-Butler 62
million, and the Environmental Protection Fund was cut by 37 percent.179 “With the state
government being in such a turmoil it’s slowed everything down,” Janet remarked. Many
farmers who would like to conserve their land are stuck waiting for funds as the pressure to sell
out increases. Farmland conservation, although so far successful in keeping thousands of New
York’s acres free from development, reveals the need for continued policy support of agriculture.
POLICY&
New York’s recent abandonment of financial backing for land conservation demonstrates
that policy support for agriculture can be tenuous. If implemented effectively and consistently,
however, policy has the power to support the persistence of the small dairy farmer. In Melanie
DuPuis’ dissertation on the role of the state in shaping the dairy industries of New York,
Wisconsin, and California, she asserts that, “politics, the state, economic segmentation and other
institutions” at the regional level have the power to influence the structure of the dairy
industry.180 She explains how the large urban population of New York has encouraged state
policies that shaped the temporal and spatial transportation infrastructure to favor a large, reliable
supply of milk. DuPuis’s thesis lends itself to the tidy conclusion that to sustain diversified,
alternative marketing, low-capital dairying in New York, the state needs an “entirely different
production segment, supported by a different set of state policies, beyond the farm level.”181
One example of what this type of policy might look like is environmental regulation. A
paper published by Winrock International shows that the ratio of the cost to comply with
environmental regulations to total production costs was relatively higher for dairy than other
industries, indicating that environmental regulations can be used to affect where dairy farms are
179
“New York Cuts Farmland Protection in Half,” Farmland Report, American Farmland Trust,
http://blog.farmland.org/2010/06/new-york-cuts-farmland-protection-funding-in-half/.
180
DuPuis, “The Land of Milk,” 262.
181
DuPuis, “The Land of Milk,” 263.
Rippon-Butler 63
likely to be established and persist.182 Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs),
classified as farms with over 200 cows, are now subject to regulations requiring proper manure
management and storage, annual reporting, and inspections.183 These regulations encourage
small-scale production by discouraging operators from expanding their herd size. Recent EPA
regulation, implemented due to rising concern over water usage for hydrofracking in western
New York, requires farms with the capability of withdrawing 100,000 gallons or more a day to
report their water usage.184 This could mean over 200 farms in New York will be required to
monitor and potentially limit their use of local water resources.185 For policy to effectively
support small farmers, however, it is imperative that they have a say.
The disconnect between farmer and policy maker in America is deeply worrisome for the
small farmer. Many policy makers are either looking out for themselves or simply don’t
understand whom they should be looking out for. The farmers who do directly influence policy
are typically those with the resources to outsource their labor while they spend time in assembly
halls and legislatures; there are very few cases of small farm owners involved in policy at levels
above local government. Weak links in bureaucratic logic regarding agriculture, exemplified by
an organization that advertises the health benefits of milk yet touts an eight-cheese pizza, will
begin to appear more frequently as policy makers and community members become more
distanced from the lifestyle of farming. Policy is only part of the solution, however. Farmers
need to remain educated and informed about the policies that affect them, and citizens must act
to protect the agricultural land that feeds them.
182
Carpentier, Herath and Weersink, “Environmental and Other Factors,” 1, 2.
In 2005 New York State had nearly 600 registered CAFOs, the majority of which were dairy farms (Schade,
“The Wasting of Rural New York State,” 4).
184
“Annual Water Withdrawal Reporting,” New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, last
updated 2012, accessed April 2012, http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/55509.html.
185
In an email that my family received from our local Cornell Cooperative Extension agent, farmers with 800 or 900
cows were warned that they might be approaching the threshold (“Milk Cow Herd Size by Inventory and Sales:
2007,” Table 17, U.S.D.A. 2007 Census of Agriculture, http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/index.php).
183
Rippon-Butler 64
CONCLUSION&
“Capacity, once created, is very difficult to reduce.”186 This statement, from a paper
written for the U.S.D.A. on food shipping, articulates the challenge of creating a hospitable place
for small farms in the dairy business. Farms have become more mechanized and industrialized
over the past two centuries as milk became a commodity product, and large producers are
outcompeting small farmers. As DuPuis points out, it is important to remember that the dairy
industry is far from homogeneous and that “agricultural diversity is not a remnant of past
traditions but a resource in itself.”187 The story of dairy industrialization can “mask” the diversity
of production strategies that exist, trivializing them as “earlier and inferior” examples that don’t
fit with the story that assumes the “get big or get out” mentality has forced all the small
producers from the marketplace.188 The fact is, small farms like my family’s still exist and for the
most part have resisted the growth that our neighboring farms embraced. The tiny Farmall-656
that my grandfather bought in the 1960s still works the fields right alongside our brand new
round baler. Simply because our farm size hasn’t increased in fifty years doesn’t mean we aren’t
farming in the present or that farms our size won’t play an important role in the future of the
dairy industry.
As the history of how changes in the transportation industry have affected farmers
illustrates, New York dairy farmers are influenced by factors as disparate as a group of
breastfeeding mothers in New York City and government rations on rubber. Another key theme
has emerged as well: the power of individuals. Sanitation, pasteurization, evaporation, trains, and
trucks were not developed exclusively for use in dairy commerce, but enterprising individuals
186
Brian McGregor, “Innovations in Shipping Food Products, Past and Future,” Agricultural Marketing Service,
report for the U.S.D.A. conference on Technological Changes in the Transportation Sector – Effects on U.S. Food
and Agricultural Trade (2000): 30.
187
188
Rippon-Butler 65
such as Robert Hartley, John Mullaly, Nathan Strauss, Thaddeus Selleck, Gail Borden, and A.C.
Fisher changed the entire industry by adapting them to use in dairy. While government policies
are an important factor in the fate of the New York dairy farmer, individual initiative and
innovation will play a major role.
Transportation has allowed consumers to forget about the real connection between them
and the producer. We need to reestablish this relationship; advocate for land to be kept in
agricultural production; educate and excite young farmers; and most importantly, improve the
tools that these farmers have to work with and give support to small dairy farms. Although land
pressure from suburban expansion continues to increase, the demand from local food is also
increasing. This may provide an opportunity for farmers to take back control of their product in
the marketplace. Although transportation has been a factor in making it difficult for small farms
to survive, it can also be part of the solution. In a report on challenges and opportunities that
agriculture will face in the twenty-first century, the U.S.D.A. states, “transportation can play a
pivotal role as either a barrier or contributor to local economic growth in rural areas.”189 The
transportation network needs to be reformed to give small farmers fair access to markets. We
can’t expect them all to bottle and market their own milk, produce a niche product, or rely on
nonprofits to keep their land in production. Although protecting property from development
rights is an important part of the battle, as my dad liked to say to me when I was leaving to intern
at the land trust, “what actually keeps land in production is farming it.” Ultimately, the future of
farming is in the younger generation. According to Evelyn, “[The children] are the ones that
know the industry from the bottom up, whether they’ll ever become farmers that’ll be another
thing, but they could be, and as long as the opportunity is there, there will be young people who
want to farm.” It is up to the current generation to keep this opportunity there.
189
“U.S. Agriculture & Transportation,” 15.
Rippon-Butler 66
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.
Many thanks to my advisors at Yale – John Wargo, Kathryn Dudley, James Scott, Paul
Sabin, Jeffrey Park, and Amity Doolittle; to my parents, who have encouraged me to think
critically while still getting my hands dirty; to my friends and classmates who have provided
valuable editing and endured many conversations about milk – Rebecca Krumholz, Isabel
Elliman, Nathan Hardesty-Dyck, Frances Sawyer, Katherine Latham, and numerous others; to
my fellow EVST seniors; to Eric Larson, for taking the time to ask questions that always helped
direct my research; to the Yale librarians; to Meegan and Teri, as well as the other staff at the
Agricultural Stewardship Association; to the Washington County farmers who gave me countless
hours of their time; to the many farmers in the Waikato Region of New Zealand who helped me
to see New York State farming from a new perspective; and to Ethan French and Don Butler,
two farmers who provided thoughtful feedback and invaluable support throughout this project.
!
!
!
Rippon-Butler 67
APPENDIX
!
&
Urban Design Lab map of the New York Regional Foodshed area; source Multi Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium:
National Land Cover Database; fromMichael Conard and Kubi Ackerman, “Regionalizing the Food System for Public Health
and Sustainability,” NESAWG Conference Presentation, Albany (2010).
Rippon-Butler 68
!
&
200.0!
8,000!
150.0!
6,000!
100.0!
4,000!
50.0!
2002!
1998!
1994!
1990!
1986!
1982!
1978!
1974!
1970!
1966!
1962!
1958!
0!
1954!
2,000!
Year&
Number!
Average!Volume!
0.0!
Average&Volume&Processed&(million&
pounds)&
10,000!
1950!
Number&
Number&and&Size&of&Milk&Bottling&Plants&Operated&
by&Commercial&Processors&
Source: data compiled by the Economic Research Service of the USDA (last updated July 2005,
accessed January 2012).
Source: http://ycharts.com/indicators/milk_price
Rippon-Butler 69
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INTERVIEWS!
Evelyn Braymer, Summer 2010.
Donald Butler, April 2012.
Ken Krutz, Dairy Marketing Service (Dairylea), December 2010.
Louis Marchaland, Summer 2010.
Carleton and Corinne Philpott, March 2012.
Clifford and Janet Stewart, Summer 2010.

Moving Milk - Greenhorns

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