Dairy farmers bring message to Capitol

DES MOINES - Katie Stoll hopes her 8-month-old daughter, Lilly, grows up to take over the family dairy operation.

She also hopes the 180-cow family dairy farm she and her husband, Matt, operate near Cascade in Jones County survives another eight months let alone until Lilly is ready to start farming.

"Our last milk check, the base price was $10.50 (per hundred pounds)," Katie Stoll said at a rally outside the Iowa Capitol Tuesday. "Last summer it was over $20, so it's pretty easy to see how you can't make any money when your input costs are the same and your milk checks have been cut in half."

Consumers who are paying between $3 and $4 for a gallon of milk don't understand that dairy farmers are losing money, Stoll said. She estimates Stoll Farms could break even at $16 to $17 a hundredweight.

To put it in perspective, Stoll's mother-in-law, Carla Zumbach of Monticello recalled that the base price was $10.50 25 years ago.

Zumbach, Stoll and a handful of others who rallied at the Capitol don't expect the Iowa Legislature to fix the problem, but want lawmakers to understand what Iowa dairy farmers are facing.

"They get busy doing what they do every day and farmers get busy doing what they do every day and don't realize what's going on," Zumbach said.

One who understands is Sen. David Johnson, R-Ocheyedan, a herdsman on a 200-cow dairy farm. He wanted to introduce legislation providing a tax credit to family farmers planning to pass their dairy operations on to the next generation to encourage them to modernize their facilities. As he spoke, the Senate was approving Senate File 483 to limit tax credits.

"It's a bad year to try to add tax credits," Johnson said.

For Andy and Erin Nagel of Allerton it has been a bad year to expand their dairy operation.  They've been milking cows for about four years - long enough to build their herd up to 100 cows and borrow money to build their own dairy operation. The herd now is down to 50 cows and construction has stopped until they - and their banker - get a better read of the couple's future. Their dairy farming friends are dealing with bill collectors, Erin said. Some are dropping health insurance to reduce costs. The Nagels, both in their late 20s, pay about $1,000 a month for coverage of themselves and their twin sons.

Chris Peterson of Clear Lake, the president of the Iowa Farmers Union, has seen this before. Ten years ago, he said, it was family hog farmers who were "getting flushed out of the system."

Imported dairy products from Mexico have taken a bite out of the market, too, according to Dave Knipper of Marion, who estimated some producers are losing between $75 and $100 per cow per month. If Iowa milk producers don't survive, "we'll have to rely on milk from who knows where with who knows what in it," said Knipper, a sale rep who works with dairy farmers across much of Iowa.

Francis Thicke, a Fairfield dairy producer, warned of the growing concentration in the dairy industry, Dairy Farmers of America, he said, controls 40 percent of the market now. Thicke, a Democrat thinking about running for Iowa secretary of agriculture, called for enforcement of federal anti-trust regulations and urged farmers to take control of their dairy cooperatives.