The Dairy Decline

Expanding operations isn’t the answer—or, given land constraints, even an option—for every dairy producer who wants to thrive. So some of the state’s producers have begun processing their own value-added—particularly organic—dairy products.

Take Cedar Summit Farm, for example, which sells its milk and cream in old-school glass bottles at Lund’s, Byerlys, and food co-ops. In 1969, Florence and Dave Minar bought the dairy started by Dave’s grandfather just north of New Prague in 1926. By the early 1970s, they decided to farm without using chemicals on the crops they were growing to feed their 60 or so cows. The Minars turned their cropland into pasture because they believed it was better for both the land and the animals’ health. “We thought it was better to let the cows get their own feed for seven months of the year than bring the feed to them,” Florence Minar says. “We never thought about getting bigger. We thought if we want to make more money, we need to make a value-added product.”

Today, Cedar Summit bottles its own milk and processes its own yogurt and ice cream from about two-thirds of the milk produced by its 160 cows. It sells what milk it doesn’t process to PastureLand in Dodge Center, a small organic dairy cooperative run by four Minnesota producers who together milk a total of 550 cows. PastureLand’s four owners receive a base organic milk price of $22.75 per every 100 pounds of milk they ship, almost twice what conventional producers get, says Jean Andreasen, the co-op’s general manager.

Andreasen also says that entering the processing business is not necessarily the solution for everyone. “Our farms focus on grazing, which creates a better quality of life for the producers and their animals,” she says. “The Minnesota dairy industry, however, is not geared up to work with small groups anymore. That’s the trade-off for us.” Unlike Cedar Summit, PastureLand does not own its own processing facilities, and due to the vast number of plant closings in the state, PastureLand has had difficulty finding a plant willing to work with the quantities of milk its members produce.

Florence Minar sees some irony in the situation. “There are more and more farms going out of business,” she notes. “At the same time, the popularity of farmers’ markets is growing at an enormous pace.”

Number of dairy farms

1995    {11,497}

1996    {10,622}

1997    {9,611}

1998    {8,867}

1999    {8,344}

2000    {7,740}

2001    {7,035}

2002    {6,500}

2003    {6,005}

2004    {5,664}

2005    {5,413}

Number of active dairy plants in Minnesota

1996                   97

1998–2002      89

2004                   86

2006                   75

Source: Minnesota Department of Agriculture