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Wisconsin farmer fears he’ll have to sell dairy herd after losing milk buyer


Pat and Linda Rodriguez chose the name for their 40-acre homestead, Aisling Farm, on their aspirations and their Irish-Scottish lineage. After a lengthy search, they found their dream farm near Viroqua 16 years ago — and branded it Aisling, which is Gaelic for dream.

The couple now fears that dream could be dashed, since their milk buyer, NFO, notified them last week that it would terminate their agreement on June 30. If they don’t find a buyer by July 1, they will have to sell their 40 dairy cows, Rodriguez said.

Even though he said he has been losing $30,000 a year in recent years, he wants to keep the farm because he will have it paid off in 2020.

“I won’t be rich by any stretch of the imagination,” he said, but getting rid of the loan payment will help stanch the bleeding.

The Rodriguezes, who have six grown children, have fiscal lifelines through Linda’s disability payments through Social Security, food stamps and being on Badgercare until they recently lost that because of changed eligibility formulas, Pat said.

The difficulty in finding another buyer, he readily acknowledged, is that “nobody is taking milk on right now.” Depressed milk prices are bankrupting many family operations and are cited as a contributing factor in the increasing number of suicides among farmers.

Other dairy farmers in the region and throughout the country have experienced canceled contracts in recent months, forcing them to scramble to find new outlets — sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing.

NFO, the acronym for the National Farmers Organization, is based in Ames, Iowa, and is unlike many buyers, who also process the milk into various types of milk, cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt and other dairy products. Instead, it is a marketing service, acting as a conduit from between producers and processors.

Rodriguez, whose herd was organic and whose milk NFO sold to Organic Valley for several years until he had trouble getting suitable feed, switched to conventional milk production. Selling to Organic Valley no longer is an option, he acknowledged.

With a 40-acre farm and a grass-fed herd, he said, “We buy a lot of feed … and it was almost impossible to source good feed.”

Aisling Farm is Rodriguez’s third career, after he had been a mechanic initially and then became a teacher for eight years in the Chicago area.

After his parents divorced and his mother remarried, his stepdad had a farm, so Rodriguez took agriculture classes and was in Future Farmers of America at Big Foot High School in Walworth, in southeast Wisconsin. However, with nobody else in his immediate family involved in farming at the time, he got an associate degree in auto repair at a community college after high school.

Since some members of his mother’s family had farmed as far back as the 1630s, Rodriguez said he still felt the pull, and he felt the pull nearly 20 years ago.

“I’m the first generation to go back to farming,” he said.

“Before we started, I wanted to take a shot, but I knew the learning curve would be harsh,” he said, adding that he studied for two years at the Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers in Madison.

Finding a farm they liked proved tedious, and the search included many day trips to check out possibilities and their surroundings until they found the small acreage near Viroqua.

The farm was in poor condition when the couple bought it, so it took three years of work until they could begin to sell milk 13 years ago, he said.

Having struggled to make a go of it, and with a dedication to agriculture that included cross-breeding to develop more efficient milk producers in his herd, Rodriguez is frustrated not only to lose his buyer but even more so that NFO did not offer a reason in the letter — just a few short sentences he received via registered mail.

Numerous calls to NFO’s Ames headquarters and its Fond du Lac office where his milk checks originated have provided non-answers or phones that have gone unanswered, he said.

“I think this is outrageous,” he said. “Whatever the reasons were, no reasons were given. I find that appalling.”

 

A representative at one NFO office said she would have someone return a Tribune call about Rodriguez’s case and whether it is isolated or one of several. However, the call wasn’t returned, and messages left with several other NFO representatives went unanswered.

“This is not the way to treat people in a time of crisis — in such a cavalier fashion,” said Rodriguez, who also noted that the number of farm bankruptcies in the Western District of Wisconsin is the highest in the country. “Aside from farmers out there killing themselves like it’s going out of style, a support network is not reaching them.”

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta released a study reporting that people with jobs in agriculture — including farmers, farm laborers, ranchers, commercial anglers and lumber harvesters — take their own lives at higher rates than any other occupations.

The suicide rate for agricultural workers in 17 states, including Wisconsin and Minnesota, was nearly five times higher than in the general population, according to the report on 2012 statistics, the most recent available.

Low market prices, coupled with the typical year-to-year stress farming entails, lead to depression that evolves to suicide as angst mounts, officials say.

The $16 a hundredweight Rodriguez was receiving for his Class III milk — used to make hard cheeses — was inadequate, he said, adding, “Most anyone can sort of make a half-assed cash flow at $17.”

But that price point has been elusive, with U.S. Department of Agriculture figures for Class III milk barely clearing $15 last month.

On the spot market, buyers are able to pay $3 under class, and Rodriguez said his most recent paycheck was for $13.47 a hundredweight, he said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture figures that the average cost of production is $23.86 a hundredweight, and “profit begins north of $24,” Rodriguez said.

“I’d be willing to say, ‘Rodriguez is a loser’ and walk away,” he said, “but the answer is in supply and more an issue of a community helping each other.”

Source: La Crosse Tribune


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