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'It's too much work and you don't make money'

By Carrie J. Sidener
Lynchburg News & Advance
Friday, October 20, 2006


By the time commuters thicken the morning traffic on U.S. 221 through Forest, the White family has been at work for hours.

On their 280-acre dairy farm, chores starts at 5 a.m., when the 100 cows get their first of two milkings for the day. Days filled with farm chores - tending crops, mending fences, a second milking and more - stretch far into the evening.

It’s been that way pretty much since 1959, when Ralph and Darrell White’s grandfather started the farm.

But change is, literally, upon them.

White’s Grade A Dairy Farm quickly is becoming an island in the middle of expensive housing developments, businesses and traffic spilling out from Lynchburg along U.S. 221.

The farm, like other Virginia dairies, is feeling the pinch from dwindling profits and increasing costs. Many dairy farms already are no more, as the lure of rising land prices eventually wins out over the struggle to maintain the farms.

“Everything’s gone, everything,” said Darrell White. “There used to be a dairy at Poplar Forest. There used to be a dairy at Blue Ridge. There used to be dairies everywhere. It’s too much work and you don’t make much money.” Darrell White can see the encroaching development from his fields. Overlooking stalks of corn taller than the machine that harvests them sit houses valued at more than $500,000.

“Urban sprawl is something we have to deal with,” Ralph White said. “I’d like to keep the dairy going, but I’m not so naive to not know that this is so valuable. Somewhere along the line, that is a decision this family will have to make.”

Ralph White said he hopes he will never have to make that choice. He hopes his son Jeffrey won’t have to, either.

The 17-year-old wants to make sure the farm stays in the family. Jeffrey White said he won’t let the land become a subdivision.

“It’s sad in a way, but you can’t blame people for finding something easier to do,” Ralph White said.

During the past decade, Ralph White has seen growth transform the area around his lifelong home.

“It would make us real sad if it (the farm) were to be developed,” he said. “But we have to be realistic. … This place has really exploded. Farmers have been dealing with the prices going up for their land. I can’t blame them. The returns they are getting in are much more than farming. It’s the cold, hard facts.”

In addition to the dairy cows, the Whites have 80 acres of corn, 50 acres of small grains, 40 acres of hay and 60 acres in pasture.

And a pile of work each day, all of which is handled by Ralph, Darrell and Jeffrey White, with help from Arnold White, Ralph and Darrell White’s father.

On a recent day, all four Whites worked to get the winter’s feed supply into silos and long plastic tubes that each hold 200 tons of feed.

Darrell White drove the open-bed truck through the fields toward a machine that grinds the corn - stalks, ears and all -into little chunks and then blows them into a huge V-shaped metal container.

Then 80-year-old Arnold White flipped a switch, dumping the hopper of ground-up corn into the bed of the truck. The vehicle rocked back and forth as the sound of six tons of corn falling drowned out the radio.

The chopped-up corn, called silage, is what the Whites use to feed the dairy cows during the winter months, when the fields aren’t suitable for grazing.

Running a dairy is hard and potentially dangerous work, Darrell White said.

“Everything here will kill you,” he said. “It is a dangerous place to work.”

Growth in Forest has made part of their job even more difficult.

The family has two main tracts of land about two miles apart, divided by U.S. 221, and increasing traffic has made it harder to get equipment from field to field, Ralph White said. That’s why they don’t move machinery back and forth during the morning and evening commute.

Knowing that his land is surrounded by more and more homes, Ralph White said he tries to be conscious of his neighbors - making sure, for instance, that he doesn’t spread manure when churches are holding Bible school or on holiday weekends.

“The neighbors have to see it this way,” Ralph White said. “We are trying to make a living, too. This is not a zoo. This is not a park. It’s a business that we are trying to make a living with.”

That’s become even harder over the past year because of falling milk prices.

“That is what’s hurting (farmers) the most now,” said Scott Baker, Bedford County Cooperative Extension agent. “It’s an issue of grave concern to the Virginia dairy industry. … If the prices don’t rebound, we will continue to lose dairies.”

That’s why the Bedford County Board of Supervisors passed a general resolution last month calling for the governor to work with the General Assembly, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide some sort of assistance program for dairy farmers.

“Milk is sold at the same price today as it was in 1973,” said dairy farmer Johnny Watson, who presented the resolution to the commissioners. “We are at the mercy of the price of milk. The pricing system is out of whack.”

Baker said the Virginia Milk Commission’s regulations resulted in a significant drop in the price compared to last year.

The Milk Commission was created in 1934 to oversee the production, price and sale of milk, said Edward Wilson, deputy administrator for the Milk Commission. It created a system that predicts the milk sales annually in most of Virginia. Based on that prediction, it then sells to dairy farmers what it calls base, which dictates dairy farm production, Wilson said.

Raw milk, or milk prior to pasteurization, sells for about $1.57 per gallon in Central Virginia.

“Prices are down now as bad as I’ve seen them in 15 years,” Wilson said. “There’s an oversupply.”

Wilson attributed the oversupply to an increase in the price of cheese and other dairy-related products. That’s when more farmers bought cows, increasing the milk supply.

About 10 percent of dairies in Virginia have closed since January.

There are 13 dairy farms left in Bedford County. Ten years ago, there were 23.

“They are probably the fastest segment of agriculture leaving us,” said Bedford County Administrator Kathleen Guzi.

Reduced milk prices coupled with an increase in the cost of running a farm is forcing some out of business, Darrell White said.

“Everything is expensive,” he said. “Equipment is expensive. The price of diesel goes up and we don’t make any more money.”

Fuel prices have doubled in the two years, which directly affects the cost of petroleum-based fertilizers. And the equipment it takes to run a farm is becoming more sophisticated and expensive.

The harder it is to make a profit, the more family farms will fall to development, Darrell White said.“It’s sad to see these farms get developed, but I don’t hold it against them,” he said.

As more and more family farms go out of business, the effect trickles down to the existing farmers, Ralph White said. With fewer farmers buying supplies and feed, the cost for supplies and services increases.

Ralph White used to call a local repairman to fix his milking machines. Now the repairman comes from more than two hours away.

Bedford County helps farmers stay in business by taxing farms on the use of the land, rather than its development potential, he said. The land is taxed at a much lower rate than if it were to be used for development. But if that land is sold, the farmer has to pay back taxes.

“It does give some sort of incentives to keep farming,” Ralph White said. “We are not naive. Farmland preservation is an honorable cause.

“Natural resources should be preserved, but the land becomes so valuable for alternate uses.”