Back 20+ years ago when I was dating my husband, it was very hard to drive down a gravel road and not see black and white cows in the pasture (especially where he grew-up has the World's Largest Dairy Cow Statue). But now in 2024 as I sit at my desk in the dairy office, watching the cows being milking my heart is extremely heavy. There are 28 Grade-A farms left in the state of North Dakota...28! Back when I was dating my husband, there was over 150+ registered dairy farms in the state. From smaller, old-fashioned style legacy dairy farms that had 20 cows in a stanchion-style parlor (bringing the milking equipment to the cow) to farms with hundreds of milking-cows. Slowly as time has gone on, the dairy farms started selling the cows. Somewhere along the line having a dairy farm just got too hard; whether it was the financial obligations because the profit margins just keep shrinking, or maybe the time commitment it takes to milk those cows every single day, or maybe the kids grew-up and left to pursue other career options, or maybe the local milk plant or creamery decided to close, or whatever the reason. The sad truth is that the dairy industry is dying and I don't see the trend stopping.
For years we have talked about the status of dairy in North Dakota and its rapid decline. No one wants to lose dairy in the state, not just because the amount of positive economic stimulus it provides to the surrounding communities, but also North Dakota is fiercely loyal (thank you!) to agriculture and most want to support their local farmers; but no one really knows what to do. If I had a quarter for every time that someone came up to me and said, "If there is anything we can do, just let us know" especially from ND State Legislators when we have been there to testify for a Bill that impacts dairy. But how do I answer that? What can they do? How can they help? I don't even have an answer to that, I really don't. I have been holding my breath for the last decade hoping those who say they fight for dairy and agriculture would come up with a solution to help the farmers. But if I knew how to answer that question, I would have told them years ago so that our current reality NEVER happened. Last September, the Prairie Farms Milk Plant (the plant that we sold our milk to) in Bismarck, ND completely blindsided everyone and without notice permanently closed. We had literally just expanded our farm putting million of dollars of infrastructure in by adding a new milking-cow barn, heifer lots, a new shop, feed facilities, and everything needed to expand from 750 milk cows to 1,000. Our plant had always assured us that it was profitable and so we had absolutely no reason to believe that the security of our plant would ever be in jeopardy. Well obviously, nothing is guaranteed anymore and boy, have we learned that the hard way. Our new barn wasn't even fully operational when we were told by the milk truck driver that he just lost his job and the plant was closing effectively almost immediately. Say what...you must be joking, or lying, or I'm dreaming...that can't be true! Now what??? We are now shipping our milk out-of-state taking a huge financial hit and not really sure how we are going to pay our bills this month. On top of shipping out-of-state, our farm had to start our own trucking company to be able to ship that milk along with the other farmers that were effected by the plant closing. Dairy farming has always been a struggle from the long hours to the commitment to our animals, but now it is gut-wrenching. It was hard enough just to run a dairy farm and now a trucking company on top of it. We have always fought the good fight doing everything we can to close that negative deficit in margins over the years by diversifying our business running a custom corn chopping crew, scaling back on costs, using old equipment to just try to make it through, to selling heifers when prices are high just to pay the feed bill. None of those are going to be enough to help us now. I can't even joke anymore and say, "Drink more milk" because guess what, you can't even drink locally grown milk in the State of North Dakota anymore, they are shipping from surrounding states. There is one milk plant left in North Dakota, Cass Clay, so that would be the only brand that has ND homegrown milk. It completely blows my mind. How can ND people not be able to buy ND milk? The plant we are shipping to isn't a fluid milk plant, its a cheese plant, so eat more cheese? I do have to say that my son, Dawson Holle who is the State Representative for District 31, passed two dairy bills last legislation. The legalization of the sale of raw milk from farmers direct to customers has helped dairy. Consumers can get access to homegrown raw milk and it seems like those farms are hopefully doing well.
So do we need another milk processing plant in North Dakota? Absolutely. I know there are some people trying to work on that possibility, but how aggressively and how quickly can we build a plant to service the remaining dairy farmers in ND? Can we hang on that long? I have no answer, so I'm just going to put this out there for awareness. Did you know the Bismarck plant closed? Did you know the milk your drinking is probably from Nebraska? Do you know how bleak the world is for farmers right now, especially dairy farmers? This year we are suppose to have our bi-annual 'Breakfast on the Farm' and I am having a really hard time trying to find the energy to put an event together to celebrate dairy in June for Dairy Month. Seriously, how would that go? Come to our farm, enjoy our not-North Dakota grown dairy products, we don't really know how you can support the local farmers, have a good look around because this farm is going through a lot of transitions and we are fighting to keep our head above water?
As a 5th generation dairy farm, are we going to be forced to stop our legacy that many generations have poured their blood, sweat, and tears into? I don't know. But, I do know that if something doesn't change, more North Dakota dairy farms are just going to become another statistic.
