NFO-268 (AV10770): US Farm Report: Neighbors Helping Neighbors

hi everybody and welcome to us farm report my special studio guest this week is mr. Rick Avila who is assistant director in the dairy commodity department at nfo Rick always pleasure to have you on the show thank ladder being here bill we will also be visiting with another guest mr. dick you'll a young dairy farmer who lives near Utica New York in Herkimer County dick you'll a fine nfo member has quite a story to tell about a rather disastrous fire that he suffered and how he has recovered from that disaster speaking of dick eul's disastrous fire Rick he did have to recover and go back into the dairy business now it would seem to me in this day and age that going into the dairy business would be a very expensive proposition it sure is bill I think that you know young gentlemen coming out of school high school or college were hit all at one time was the total cost of going into the dairy business we would have very few young men into coming into agriculture in dairying and especially in the eastern states especially the total cost usually as prorated over a number of years because a young boy gets into high school and he's in 4h and he develops a few animals and pop handlings out a few more so he's got a nucleus to start from and we find the dairy business pretty much still handed down father to son the average age of dairy farmers in quite a few areas across the country is up in close to the 60 year mark well pop sort on a down hill he likes to taper off and junior can come in with the sweat that pops put in for the number of years and sort of take over here he can and without this a hundred and thirty or forty or fifty thousand dollars I don't want to frighten you with those figures but this is what it costs if a young man wanted to get into the dairy business in the neighborhood of between 150 and $60,000 total investment in land machinery and livestock in terms of his potential in terms of the money he potentially can make the money that he is paid based on today's prices for his commodity would you say it's a good business proposition well it certainly takes a hearty stock of young man to to really be that adventuresome I'll say to to take a gamble and if you're willing to work 18 19 20 hours a day for as long as three hundred to three hundred and ten fifteen days every year I would say yes it's worth the gamble as far as dairying today but if you're looking for a business strictly as a business and you're looking at agriculture and dairying especially as a business i would say that many people would be completely frightened off with the returns that they receive even at today's prices mm-hmm compared to the total investment in the and the labor input and well like your disastrous fire or weather conditions and things like that they have to put up with because the actual monetary returns and of course this is what we're feeding our families with and we're planning on the future with have not reached that potential of other businesses non agriculture businesses I'm referring to the return is somewhere in if you don't consider your labor input around 6% return or 5% return on your investment but that's putting in 300 days a year free gratis and I don't think there's too many employees or employers that do that not too many young people like to take a look at the future in that light today no sir they don't bill I I don't want to be misleading and paint a completely gloomy picture as far as young people into the dairy business there are some bright spots on the horizon what's nfo doing about it well I think for the first time that the the awareness of the American farmer and especially the dairy farmer that there there is a rejuvenation within the spirit of the of the farmer not to be tied down completely seven days a week to to his farming operation that he can acquire knowledge and marketing principles and practices and he can get out and find out really what is involved in developing a good sound agricultural picture as far as dairy marketing and this the NF o-- has giving the the dairy farmers throughout the country with the vast number of meetings and seminars and discussions that we hold all over the United States in relation to get involved in your marketing don't let someone else do it for you do it yourself you wouldn't send somebody out to sell your prize cow for you you do it yourself and this is the same thing with that product it's your daily bread it's your income get involved in it and and get your own return that you feel is necessary to stay in business I guess the dairying agriculturally is perhaps the most confining part of it isn't it this is this is very sad and very true I think that if the farmer himself realizes that that he is pretty much burdened with being tied into a sort of a constrictive labor type situation and that he has to build in his own protection because the discouragement of working seven days a week is it's going to be there you can go or sustain yourself maybe period of ten years but after a while it gets tiresome oh and I've known people that haven't had vacations in all their lives they've melt continuously since 1939 yeah and they're they're getting up and they're tired so we've got to build into a program of pricing and marketing that cost of labour which would include hiring someone at today's standards not as $1 an hour but at today's standards so that we give this farmer that reprieve so that the young man who's coming in and he sees that does a tired worn-out Haggard individual he said no that's not for me but he can see a different picture on the horizon and this is what we're attempting to do through our contractual arrangements that that young man said well I'm not going to be Ward out worn out at 45 like dad was I'm gonna be on the go I'm going to be a businessman I'm going to have hired labor and I'm going to be able to pay them and I'm gonna set up now when I'm young and work with an organization that has these principles in mind to get back to dick you'll in Herkimer County New York the milk of that area goes to NF O's collection point at st. Lawrence New York which brings the subject up of the collection point well Rick what kind of progress has n fo enjoyed in the establishment of no collection points around the country bill the the collection point idea or concept is not new it's been tried several times but with the structure within the organization that we have which we operate on a nationwide basis where buyers who buy on that same basis over a wide area we're able to service these buyers through our collection points it's extremely difficult as a salesman to go out and sell a product if you have to theorize when you can get the production together if you bring it together in a collection point and have a market for it the buyer will say yes I want a hundred thousand a day or I want two hundred thousand pounds of milk it's there it's available it's ready and willing to move now if you have to go out and say well it'll take me three weeks or three months to get this production put together for you he's not as willing to sit down and say well I'm ready to go with you at that point so consequently we have our production and we're doing this over a very very wide area from Idaho to Massachusetts and New Hampshire we have some new collection points up in that area and it's though to me the revitalization of the industry of our dairy industry because when you see these farmers working shoulder-to-shoulder to not only bring their production together but actually to get these facilities ready to handle that production and also maintaining quality getting involved in all these concept it's really it's really a very enterprising situation for dairy farmers and it has rekindled an effort for them to to be involved in marketing their production well Rick the collection point such an integral part of your dairy strategy at nfo has made it possible for you to have a very good effect on depressed milk areas and have at the same time no harmful effect on high-priced areas would you explain that this very true bill the collection point concept is not new and and moving production from one area to another has been done over considerable period of time by many organizations the main thing that we must consider in the in the is the timing of the movement mm-hmm a lot of the production that's in the heavy producing areas for states in in the north north central and eastern part which is New York and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Minnesota and the production from these states is needed now today in areas of the south and the southeast and we are attempting to fill the needs of these areas with bottle milk their milk use for bottling without flooding those markets and depressing farmer prices Knoll areas and by working with the handlers in the areas who call an fo and sort of pull rate their orders for milk from us that we can fill on a day-to-day basis have backups of life or various other markets the cheese markets extremely good right at the present time and there can be a lot of money generated back to farmers this is a concept of the of having the versatility being able to move east west north or south with this production and the farmers in instead of taking what is left price in their local area if it all went into manufacturing products we can gear to the needs of the dairy industry today with the use and the flexibility of the collection claim and raise price the same time yes Rick dick Ewell is an old acquaintance of yours is he not he certainly is well you know something I'm going to give you an opportunity now to get reacquainted with your friend dick you why don't you join us and let's visit with dick on his a dairy farm at Herkimer County New York dick the reason for the new barn and the change of the appearance of this place was a disastrous fire in June of 1968 tell us about that well we my wife and I were milking we had all the cows in the barn and the kids come down from the house and said to hey ma was on fire now when I looked in there and everything was in flames from upstairs up we didn't smell it because the updraft went up through the hay mouth and by the time we got the cows out the barn was flat we had quite a mortgage on the farm that we was on the barn was gone we didn't know what to do whether to build back or sell order why we looked into it a little bit and we would never be able to get our money back out of it to even pay off the mortgage that we had and yet we couldn't quite see putting all the money into us well noubar know you were out of business for all practical purposes we weren't we sure we're how big a herd were you milking at that time we were milking about 50 cows and so what happened well the neighbors all come in the next morning and quite a few of the nfo members and we move the cows down to another nfo member down the road and we milk them in his barn and snap morning and then another neighbor let me have his heifer barn to milk the cows in the summer until we could make up her mind what we was gonna do we went on about three months and we still couldn't make up our mind quite for sure what we wanted to do it was gonna cost us thousands of dollars to rebuild and all of a sudden one day Don Foster and some of the other NFL members pulled in here was about 20 of them and they said you get on the phone start ordering some lumber we're gonna build you a barn and this is the way we started and they went to work they made them many made up our mind for us how long did it take your crew of nfo neighbors and yourself to put up the new barn no we started it was a 20th of August when we started in 11th of November the cows are in the barn I see how many nfo friends and neighbors helped you on it well it would be hard actually say how many because there was probably 150 200 of them all together but it was from times it was anywhere from 5 to 20 year everyday and I understand that their wives came over and cooked meals right we hoped right along with the fellows right we set up when they did they brought some concrete blocks and things and set up a pit out here and room straight hamburgers hot dogs for dinner and they brought salads every day when they come they just kind of rotated everybody helped a little bit well now dick this is a barn of 40 by a hundred and seventy right and how much money do you suppose the nfo labor force saved you on rebuilding well we had this figured right out in the contract price and they saved between five and six thousand dollars good old neighborliness hasn't really gone and not really these are just like brothers and sisters to us when they come it bring tears in your eyes every day when you see them coming up the road really it there's no way there's no way in the world to explain it it's just something that happened and we can't get over it yeah it put you back in business it kept us in business right fact what has been your progress and growth here dick because since that disastrous fire you've added the land haven't you we've had to we really couldn't make it on what we had here and we thought the answer was to get bigger so I've rented land from farm above me first and that didn't seem to be the answer we still wasn't getting the income that we wanted so I went ahead and rented the farm down below me down here didn't think we can see that one right off in the distance right there's two silos there and a big barn with a modern equipment you know and then I went ahead and I ran in some land down below on a corner here and I run it from the farm on the other side me over here to keep young stock on well dick is getting bigger the answer not really yes is we've mentioned here once before I don't know if we mentioned it since you've been here on Mike but getting bigger you hit takes more labor and all we've done we've got bigger we thought this was the answer to get bigger to receive more money to be able to get ourselves out of that and as we've got bigger and more modern machinery that we've got farther in debt and it's taken more work to do it with need a bigger labor force and we can't find the labor to do it well the answer is price as you say right and where do you feel the hope lies for getting that price national farmers organization they have collective bargaining and this is the only answer for agriculture what does nfo done for you in terms of price in the last year all right we've start right out with all my feed my green and everything I get through nfo at discount prices this is one start that we've got all my beef tall cows and calves go through nfo marketing program where we receive well on a call from 25 to 40 dollars a column or then a non-members getting mm-hmm this is a help my main product is milk and through I've been the two or one federal hearing that we saved 18 cents on 55 percent of our production 18 cents a hundredweight that they was going to take away from us and the NFL fellows went down and testified way we couldn't afford to lose at 18 cents and we come out on top on that hearing they didn't take it from us so this is a big savings right here alone about a thousand dollars worth on my own operation we are working on our area here now that selling milk under a contract it's going to put more money into the members pocket where does your milk go well I sell it right now to Herkimer creamy which they delivered to down in New York City of bottled in in New York City now that you've accumulated this additional land and now that you've grown how many acres are you farming altogether 450 and how large is your cow herd we have at the present time 60 cows and well I guess there's about 45 or 50 had a young stock this livestock of yours is outstanding I think that they just look great they are there real good cows this was another factor that why we didn't sell them right after the fire even though we didn't know what we was gonna do with them they're cows that we've worked all our life on to breed them up I started right from 4-h and FFA ran up through and raised them to get the production that we've got we've got a 15,000 don't hurt average now about half of them are registered and we just hated to see them go you have a real good replacement program going don't you yeah we think it is we raised quite a few and we aren't afraid to call but one of the reasons we aren't afraid to call it because the nfo beef program we can get a good price for the beef when we do call and anything it isn't up to par they just go off the barn yeah now on your land you're raising corn and the corn looks good this year what's it gonna make a hundred bushels yet most of the corn that I've got will go into the silos for feed for the cows but the corn that I will pick I have got hopes of it going between 95 and 100 bushel but most of it will be chopped and right into the silos for feeds right now what else are you raising on your land well we have alfalfa and clover hay which the first cutting goes in the silo on this and then the second third cutting is dry hay for the college well now at this time we have looked at your alfalfa and hay field and it looks beautiful this time of year how many cuttings have you had so far we've had one we're ready to cut the second now and with a little rain and warm weather we'll have one or two more cutting hmm now you're also of raising some oats aren't you right these oats fed to the cows and all their campaign and mixed up into my own grain I see the grain that I get through the nfo I get corn and wheat from them and I mix these oats in it you know finish off my ration dick speaking of machinery as we were a while ago you have no small investment in machinery here do you have any idea how much you have invested and machinery alone between 50 and 60,000 dollars and unfortunately it's outdoors it's sitting outside but this is because you just don't have any place to put it isn't it this is right I bought milk thing here and expanded a little bit again I bought the milk station down the road here over the hill a little bit and I store some machinery in here but just isn't large enough we lost a lot of my storage space when the barn burnt I had a to stall car garage here in a small machinery barn and we just haven't been able find the time or the money to rebuild them so you see the machinery door well yours is truly a family farm operation isn't it that's right she helps you all the time in feeding right in the barn and you have four children that's right I guess all four of them help too well one's pretty small but she does come down she tries to help how old are they day the youngest is three and then five and a half and seven in town yeah well the older three at least are helpful they do quite a bit save us a lot of stops they do a lot of light work smaller work but it's work that we don't have to do isn't it almost an impossibility to hire good health it's impossible I've run ads in the paper for a hundred and a half a week and never even got a call on to them it's just tough to get any bright it is well let's talk a minute about the barn itself now this is a 40 by 170 foot dairy barn as we said earlier could you describe to us exactly how you're milking operation works right the cows that's one story conventional stanchion barn because they're put into the stanchion for milking and they're fed in the stanchions and then in the wintertime they're in the barn all the time without a mont once a day for exercise but they're fed and melt in the stanchion now when we start milking we have to sanitize all equipment before we start for a quality product and then the cows orders are washed and sanitized and then they're milked with a tail type milker now this smoker from here if the cow is done we dump the milk into a pail are dumping station which goes through a glass line into the vault tank and cool there now we have a total investment of just milking equipment and bulk tank alone of about six to seven thousand dollars right here it's in the USDA the public helps and everything is getting a lot stricter and tighter than they were and it's costing more money to keep things up so that you do have a quality product I believe in a quality product I wouldn't want to send anything to mark you tell you wouldn't want to drink on my own channel right and it costs money to do this you used to be able to get way with lawn gnome equipment or Ken now that everything has to be stainless steel and as you know stainless steel cost money and if we have to keep changing our equipment to modernize and and meet the public health it cost us hundreds of dollars every time we do with this and yet our price don't seem to come up any well when this mill goes into your tank dick it's immediately cooled down to what 40 degrees or cooler 38 to 40 I try to keep mine a little bit cooler 37 38 and when the mill cools down to that temperature that it shuts off is that right shuts off and now when it's transferred into the truck tank the truck that takes it off of your farm there is a little if any temperature rise in that so very little but the tractor trailer that picks it up or the truck whichever it might be is an insulated box on the back end of the truck and it's kept at the same temperature I mean it's unloaded within barely five six hours and into another cooling VAT you know while we've been here today we have noticed a fine-looking truck with nfo painted on it quite prominently who does this truck belong to and what's it used for well van foster he's an NFL member from Herkimer he boat two years ago we was having problems with truckers picking up our beef production and moving it into our NFL plant so the NFL members here in Herkimer County come up with the money some of them several hundred dollars and loaned it to dine to buy this truck with and Dan runs the truck four or five sometimes six days a week picking up the production in New York State he starts right here in Herkimer County and he'll go away up as far as a Canadian border we've just had an invitation from your ten year old to come in the house for coffee and I think I'm ready how about you how the crew is to maybe the crew is I'm not I don't like coffee I'd really I really don't I don't think it's milking time now and so we'll let you go to work and we'll go in and have some coffee may I thank you for your hospitality today fine it's glad to have you here thank you so much and that's dick you quite a guy isn't he certainly is Bill and I don't have to tell you now how impressed he was with the humanitarian attitude of his fellow nfo members in that part of New York State when he did have that fire they came to the rescue Ric if I were a dairy farmer and not a member of NF oh and you were trying to sell me on joining NF Oh what in a few words would you say to me bill today with the tremendous investment that the young people are faced with in developing into the dairy business it does only seems fitting and fair that they should receive a just return for their labor and their investment and there is only one way that I can see or buy these young people can solidify their future can develop into the leadership that we need in agriculture not only today but tomorrow and that's where to express themselves in terms of marketing and bargaining the to go hand in hand just to market is futile but to market and bargain and they have to do this and become involved themselves not allowing someone else they have to do it through their own initiative and the only organization that I have been able to come across who allows the American farmer to establish from the base concept of American business other words a price tag for his production so that he can sustain himself and feed his family and pay his taxes and develop into a future leader and businessman is the National Farmers Organization and he himself can accept or reject the terms of sale for his commodity and put that value on his labor and his management ability and not allow someone else just to pay him sort of what's left over and this is my appeal and I think that farmers in America today are are ready to express themselves in exactly these terms contract wise through their own efforts based on working together all across the nation in the nationwide organization to price their production based on a cost of production and a reasonable profit look thank you very much it's a pleasure to have you on our show it certainly was my pleasure to have been here but thanks so much my special studio guest this week on us farm report has been mr. Rick Avila who is assistant director in the dairy commodity department at the national farmers organization of course our on-the-spot guest was mr. dick you'll of Herkimer County New York us farm report is seen on this station each week at this same time until we meet again so long everybody