Vol. 79/No. 4      February 9, 2015

Conditions today are markedly different, farmers told Militant correspondents Ilona Gersh and Dan Fein, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Chicago, who visited this area Jan. 17-18 along with Randy Jasper, a grain farmer from Muscoda. The market is glutted and demand has nosedived. Some dairy farmers in the Northeast have begun to spill excess milk down the drain.

“I can’t stop farming because I have invested so much. I still have payments to make, I’m tied down,” said Steve Schmitz, 63, who has been dairying here since 1974 with a herd of 135 cows.

Schmitz invested in modern machinery and techniques. They milk 12 cows at a time by machine. He just started to experiment with how to produce better milk by cross-breeding Holsteins, the traditional milk cow in the area, with Montbeliarde cattle.

The cost of feed and machinery and the prices set by the milk-processing conglomerates squeeze dairy farmers from both ends. “Farmers are at the mercy of others who set the prices that I pay and receive,” Schmitz said. “The only reason to farm is for the love of the land.”

“I can do this because I’m young,” Tim Eness, 37, told the Militant. “Dairy farming is hard work. When I’m planting in the spring or harvesting in the fall, I put my boots on at 6 a.m. and don’t take them off until 10 p.m. In the winter and summer it’s easier, but it’s been a few years since I had a day off.”

Eness began farming 20 years ago on land he rents from his father. He has a herd of 100 and some bulls he uses for breeding. He grows corn and hay for the cattle and soybeans for sale. He buys old tractors and equipment and maintains them himself.

Because he is more self-sufficient, he said, the cost of running his farm is lower than for many. But the cost of farming has skyrocketed for him too.

“The cost of low-end seed now is between $170 and $300 a bag. When I started farming, seed cost $30 a bag. My fertilizer 15 years ago cost less than $5,000. Now I pay $20,000 and get less,” Eness said. “Three years ago beans sold for $15 a bushel. I just sold my beans for $9 a bushel.”

Eness and his wife have five young children. She helps him with the milking, he said, and also works at the local optometry shop. “That’s where we get our family health insurance. I make do. I like farming and I like working outdoors.”

Farmers pushed out of dairy
Kevin Jasper was a dairy farmer in Muscoda for 15 years, but decided to sell his cattle last year and rent out the dairy and his house. “I was going broke, and the kids moved out,” he said. Jasper now works part-time for the county plowing snow and removing brush. He also does some bartending. He rents almost 1,000 acres of land to farm with his father Randy Jasper. They grow corn, soybeans, and hay. Randy Jasper has his own small farm nearby.

“The farmer who rents my land told me he got his check two days before Christmas. He said the price of milk per hundredweight dropped $8,” Kevin Jasper said. “We have no say in the matter. I’m glad I got out when I did.”

Milk futures predict another drop by April, which would bring the price farmers get down 46 percent since September 2014.

“Twenty years ago there used to be dairy cows in almost every barn along this road,” Kevin Jasper said. “Now, there are three dairy farmers here. It’s hard for a small farmer, the banks and farm equipment dealers prefer to deal with big dairies.

Randy Heims, 61, gave up dairy 10 years ago and now grows corn, soybeans and alfalfa, and raises cattle for beef.

“My body parts started giving out from all the stooping,” Heims said. “I had a knee replacement. Another one’s coming down the road.”

“My wife, Diane, works full-time on the farm,” he said, “so I have to take the first $20,000 off the top and put it away for health care. That’s the cost of insurance, deductibles, and co-payments for one year. A lot of farmers’ wives work just to get health insurance.”

Heims tries to minimize the amount of land he tills each year to protect it from erosion. This part of Wisconsin is full of hills, he explained, and runoff from melting snow and rain can rob tilled soil of nutrients because there is nothing to hold it in place.

“We’re only here for a little while,” Heims said, “but we have to take care of the land for the next generation and the farmers 200 years from now.”
 
 
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