Clark County Residents Discuss Life on Small Farms

Friday, February 12th, 2021 -- 3:01 PM

Can family dairy farms survive? Over three recent conversations, 18 residents of Clark County, Wisconsin, talked about life on the farm and in rural communities dependent on farming. The recorded sessions were hosted by Riley Hebert of Central Wisconsin Broadcasting on behalf of the Local Voices Network. This story is based on those discussions.  It was written by Philip Bennett of Frontline in Partnership with PBS Milwaukee.

When Maria Bendixen was 16 years old, the barn on her family’s dairy farm caught fire. She was showing cattle at the county fair when the news reached her. As she raced home, the farm in flames, she saw behind her a caravan of trucks and trailers from the fairgrounds, neighbors and strangers coming to help.

Maria:  “What I remember most vividly about that was driving back from the fairgrounds to my farm, knowing that it was on fire, and seeing behind me all of the trailers and trucks from all the people at the county fair that had brought their trailers to bring their cattle to the fair."

"They didn't know where they were going to take our cows. They just knew they needed to go somewhere to get milk. And I remember just seeing that train back there and realizing what a community, agriculture really is and how much they care about each other. I think that was really the day that I was like, "I'm going to work in this field somehow."”

Today, Bendixen runs a company in Clark County, Wisconsin, called Cowculations Consulting, helping farms become more profitable. Meanwhile, bankruptcies and financial ruin have burned through the dairy industry, driving thousands of families off their farms.

Across Wisconsin, economics and demographics paint a discouraging portrait of the future of family dairy farming. Farms are going under at an alarming rate; nearly half have disappeared in the last 15 years. And younger people are simply going away, leaving rural communities and shrinking towns. The average age of farmers in the state is 58.

Spend a few hours listening to people who live in Clark County and you hear a lot about what’s ailing small farms: falling prices, overseas or industrial scale domestic operations, reduced consumer demand, punishing hours and labor shortages, an eroding cultural connection to the land, the allure for grown children of better opportunities in urban areas.

But you also get a more nuanced picture from younger farmers and their families. They talk about the community ties and independence that keep them in farming, their ideas of how to bridge a widening generation gap and their hopes to sustain a rural way of life, even as agriculture undergoes a radical transformation.

Eliza Ruzic is a dairy nutritionist who owns a 65-cow farm in Clark County with her husband. She says raising children on a farm balances the hardships and uncertainties of the work. She “can’t imagine raising them any other way.”

Eliza:  “The last couple of years in the dairy industry, there's been a lot of times, I don't think there's been a farmer elder that hasn't thought, oh, maybe I should do something else, because it's just been really hard financially."

"It's a lot of hard work, mother nature throws a ton of curve balls at you, but then I watch my kids come on to the barn every night and play in the hay mill and build hay forts and play with the calves and take projects to the fair."

"I can't imagine really raising them any other way and actually being able to instill a work ethic and values in them. I'm not saying that you can't, I think it would be a lot harder. So yeah, raising my kids on a farm has probably been the biggest thing for me.”

But, echoing others, Ruzic’s not sure that she’d want her children to remain in farming once they grow up. “It’s just so hard,” she said.

Eliza:  “So part of me leans towards Amy where I want to tell my kids, "Don't farm. It's just so hard." It's a great way to raise your kids, but at the same time there are a lot of days we say like, "Why are we doing this to ourselves?""

"The larger farm down the road is going to be able to feed those people, and we've talked about; do we get bigger to be more sustainable? But my husband doesn't like to manage people. He likes to manage cows and he likes to manage crops and he likes being his own boss."

"So I think what is going to keep small farms are those types of people that just have the internal drive that they want to be their own boss, and they want to take care of the animals themselves and take care of the crops themselves. But unfortunately those are becoming fewer and farther between.”

According to reporter Rick Barrett of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, about 360 dairy farms went out of business in Wisconsin in 2020, a trend that has accelerated in the last decade. Clark County sits in the middle of the state and at the epicenter of the crisis. Cows outnumber people, and there are more dairy farms than in any other county in the state. Hundreds of millions of dollars flow into the local economy from those farms.

In conversations, farmers and family members talked about the conflicting emotions that come from having deep, personal connections to a precarious business and the pressures to preserve a way of life. Fatalism and humor mixed with resilience and determination.

Melissa Kono is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who works in community development and is raising a family on a farm. “Work-life balance,” she said, is not a farming staple.

Melissa:  “I am married to a farmer. That means I'm also married to a farm. Depending on the day, I don't know which one I love or dislike the most, but it's challenging because I do wish that there was a little more balance and support, especially for farm families.  Not only has it affected me personally, but a lot of what we do in extension is working with farm succession programs."

"So I've had the honor of talking to the older generation, who's thinking about passing on the farm to the younger generation and all the challenges that are involved in that, financial concerns, but also work-life balance, which a lot of us struggle with no matter what our profession is, but I think that that's especially true for farmers. I mean, not ever having a day off, let alone a weekend off, can really take its toll.”

For some, becoming a dairy farmer meant deciding to return home after leaving the area for school or work. Matthew Tyler earned an associate’s degree before moving back to his family farm to work with his father, drawn by a sense of obligation and opportunity. Knowing he’ll one day run the farm “scares the crap out of me every single day.”

Matthew:  “Yeah, that kind of did play a pretty big role. Wondering what would happen to the farm, if I didn't come back or what would happen with the farm. So yeah, that thought crosses my mind every single day."

"Knowing that I am the next generation, I am the next person to inevitably take over the family farm. It scares the crap out of me every single day, knowing that someday all that responsibility is going to be on my shoulders."

"But then again, at the same time, it also kind of excites me knowing that someday I will get that responsibility of delegating work, doing all the work and making sure everything gets done."

"And kind of when that time comes, it's kind of my time to make some changes to the things that I learned in college on how to possibly make our operation more efficient, make things go a little faster, may make our profit margins a little bit larger."

"So at the same token, it's scary along with kind of exciting to know that someday, yeah, that the weight of this farm is going to be on my shoulders. But again, that's kind of exciting and all of that. And someday this will be mine.”

Ericka Rossani, the head of human resources for a food production company, said the drain of younger people to cities and suburbs is hollowing out rural communities. According to Barrett of the Journal Sentinel, nearly half of Wisconsin’s counties are losing population.

Ericka:  “But definitely one of my biggest concerns is just the attraction of more populated areas, taking our young people. It's more exciting to live in a city."

"So seeing that younger generation, leaving these areas and moving into bigger cities or into other states, that for me is a concern because obviously we need people to work on the farms. We need people to work in logistics around here between businesses. We need people to work in my factory.”

Amy Gerhardt, whose parents are dairy farmers, teaches agriculture at Neillsville High School. Given the demands of farming and its economic challenges, she struggles with whether to encourage students who live on farms to follow the family tradition. “But we need farmers, and we need good farmers,” she said.

Amy:  “That is a conundrum that I wrestle with sometimes. I see how hard my parents are still working. If they had "regular jobs" would be long retired and living their life out probably in Florida or something, but because they're farmers, they're still working full-time."

"So sometimes it's really hard for me to look at a student such as Michael and encourage him to go home and farm with his family, knowing it's going to be a really tough job; seven days a week, no matter the weather, no matter how much you're getting paid. It's a conundrum because there's a part of me that wants to say, go get a job where you have some insurance where you get the weekends off, that kind of stuff.

"But we need farmers, and we need good farmers. And so that's the other side of the coin. For me is, I know my goals, got great role models and his parents. I know he's going home to a farm that feeds a lot of people, and is a great representation of agriculture in Clark County."

"So I wrestle sometimes; do I encourage kids to farm or do I encourage them to find a job where they don't have to struggle as much? I don't always know the answer, but I tell any kid that wants to go home and farm with their family to follow their heart. Don't do it because it's what your parents are expecting, do it because it's what you want too.”

Teachers and parents said they notice that even in rural Clark County, a generation is growing up with spotty understanding of farming, animals or where food comes from. Jessica Schier is an elementary school teacher who moved back to Clark County after college because she wanted to live in a rural community and help it move forward.

“It does worry me that there are so many young people that are becoming so far removed from agriculture that they don’t know what goes on or where anything comes from,” she said.

Jessica:  “That's something that's on my mind all the time. Thinking about how just even in the last year, how many small dairy farms have not been able to stay afloat."

"That's probably one of the biggest reasons why my husband and I came back to this area. We tried the city life while we were in college and decided that wasn't for us, we wanted to be back closer to home. We wanted to maybe not run the farm, but we wanted it to be able to help out."

"We wanted to raise our family here in this area, so we could continue that. Another reason why I wanted to be a teacher in a small school district, so I could teach younger students, even if they don't live on a farm that, that's still something that they can be a part of the agricultural field to keep that alive."

"Because it does worry me that there are so many young people that are becoming so far removed from agriculture that they don't know what goes on or where anything comes from. So I hope that through... In this area, that through education, we can keep the small family farms, the rural life alive."

"And the more that we educate, the more that we can maybe interest them. The more that we will hopefully be able to have these small family farms around. That's my goal in life with my daughter is she's on the family farm every day with my parents, with her uncles. And she's outside."

"I mean, she's one and a half and she knows all the farm animals. She knows the jobs that need to be done on the farm. So just teaching kids young and hopefully that will help us to, like I said keep the rural life alive and thriving.”

On many family farms, thinking about survival means considering big changes: getting bigger, diversifying products or the use of the land, automating. For Maria Bendixen, who runs Cowculations Consulting, the surest path to sustainability is growing. Across the state, small farms are becoming larger or selling to operations that already are.

When she thinks about why her job is important, “it’s more about the people than the farms.”

Maria: “For me, I think the best thing for most farms when we look at profitability is really to get bigger. I mean, there's a lot of strategies, but getting bigger is always one that we talk about."

"I think that as farms get bigger, it actually creates some opportunities for families to be involved in farming and save some of the things that Amy's talking about, with no weekends off. I mean, if we work together and have a larger farm where, okay, I can take every third weekend off because someone else is in charge of that portion of it, as long as we keep that community aspect and that aspect of; I'm still taking care of cows that are going to humble me once in a while, I'm still understanding what the land does for us and how important it is.”

But there are other paths, too, Bendixen said, from growing non-traditional crops like hemp to going organic to experimenting with direct marketing. “The real driver of profitability is to find the one that you’re not optimizing,” she said.

Maria:  “I look at the numbers on a lot of dairy farms and some crop farms and some organic farms and I mean, all different kinds, because numbers are numbers. They don't lie and they're standard. When I look at profitability, there's five ways to improve profitability. We can get a better price."

"That might be organic. That might be better milk quality, that might be hemp, a different crop that I'm growing off of that ground, lower costs, which farmers are really good at this for the most part; where can I buy the cheapest seed? What's the best deal on fertilizer? Those kinds of things."

"I can produce more, which is most farmers favorite strategy. I'm just going to get more milk out of the same cow. I'm going to get more corn out of the same field. And there's reduced death, and there's get bigger. So every strategy that we come up with fits one of those categories."

I think that the real driver of profitability is to find the one that you're not optimizing. And so it's different for everybody, what that strategy is. If you look at direct marketing best to get her better price strategy. Another thing you'll notice about those strategies, they all pull on each other."

"The answer is going to be different for everyone, because if I get a better price I might not be reducing costs. I might need a whole nother person to go to the farmer's market for me. I might need a whole processing plant that's going to really increase my debt to get that done.  So it's really a puzzle that every farm has to solve individually, and I think we need to respect people's decisions and how they decide to do that.”

It’s not just farm prices that hold back the local economy. Residents cited poor infrastructure, as well as shortages of affordable housing, health care and workers. Rural areas are more often cut off from the digital networks that connects workers to jobs and businesses to markets.

Skye Goode works in community services in Clark County and is a hunter. She talked about numerous “dead zones” across the county. “I can’t fathom how that’s possible in 2020.”

Skye:  “Oh, just cell service and internet connection and everything that we've had to experience since March 17th, it really opened my eyes to just how rural we are and how off the grid we are. I'm using a hotspot for my cell phone for this meeting because I can't get internet at my property."

"I'm six miles South in Neillsville and I've called how many different internet providers? And they came and tried it out and they can't get service out here. And that baffles me that I can't get internet. I'd be willing to pay whatever, but they can't get it. And it really frustrates me because it's 2020. When I go to the spell of the end of the county, or even by Spencer, Marshfield, wherever there's all these dead zones that you cannot make a call."

"And I can't fathom how that's possible in 2020. So I would really hope to just not... We've shown that the world can happen on Zoom. School can happen. A lot of our jobs can happen. We don't really need to go back to the way it was because we have the capabilities of doing tele-health or doing things virtually. But if we don't catch up with that like good internet connection, then I don't know how we would make this work longterm.”

Asked what they would say to politicians or public officials about the future of dairy farming, residents had similar responses: come spend 24 hours working on a farm. “And basically in this economy do it for nothing,” said Matthew Tyler. “I think it would really be eyeopening.”

Matthew:  “Come out every morning, five o'clock in the morning, work your butt off, milk cows, feed the cows, go in the fields, get feed for the following year, turn around, we'll milk cows again. And basically in this economy do it for nothing. I think it would really be an eyeopening. I know seeing a lot of political representatives, they have commercials about how they support family farms or how they support local farms. That's all good."

But how many of them really understand what is actually going on? Sitting down and talking about finances and how farmers have sleepless nights wondering if tomorrow is going to be the day that the cows leave or what's going to happen."

"And kind of realizing how bad things are or how bad things can get on the farm. And just showing them what we go through every day and how some of the changes that farmers are having to go through, help us and hurt us. Some are pains, some seem easy."

"And so just showing them what these simple changes that they signed the name on your paper, what that makes us go through out here and just showing them what their decisions affect us tremendously.”

These discussions were part of a project by Milwaukee PBS and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in collaboration with FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative. They were hosted by the Local Voices Network, a non-profit that facilitates community conversations nationwide. Listen to the complete conversations.

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.