Dairy farmers gather to back aid for beginners

By Lawrence Schumacher

St. Cloud Times

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

ST. PAUL — Jeff Kunstleben took over his parents' dairy farm 18 years ago and remembers how hard it was for a new farmer to make ends meet.

"When I was starting out, a $5 bill at the end of the week looked like a pretty big deal," the Albany farmer and head of the Minnesota Dairy Producers Board said.

Kunstleben and other Minnesota farmers gathered Monday near the Capitol to support plans they say would make it easier for beginning dairy farmers to survive those tough first years and other ideas to encourage small and sustainable livestock farming.

Rep. Mary Ellen Otremba, DFL-Long Prairie, and Sen. Becky Lourey, DFL-Kerrick, plan to introduce bills that would offer beginning dairy farmers a bonus of $1 per hundred weight of milk produced, not to exceed $10,000 a year, for up to five years.

The idea comes from a coalition of farming groups that includes the Minnesota Farmers Union, Minnesota National Farmers Organization, Land Stewardship Project and Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota.

The priorities they unveiled Monday also include more money to research alternative livestock farming methods, strengthening limits on corporate farming and strengthening local government control of zoning and agriculture permitting.

Pawlenty plan

The plan is partly a response to a task force's recommendations.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who created the livestock advisory task force, has said he will pursue the recommendations at the Legislature this year.

His recommendations are geared toward improving the economic prospects of large livestock farms, not the small farms, said Doug Peterson, Minnesota Farmers Union president.

"We need to remember that 96 percent of cow herds have less than 200 cows," he said. "We need to increase the number of livestock farms, not just the number of livestock."

Livestock farming generated almost $4.3 billion in cash receipts in 2001, or about 53 percent of the state's annual sales from all forms of agriculture, according to Pawlenty's task force recommendations.

The economic effect in Minnesota was $10.7 billion, which supported 28,000 jobs directly and 78,000 more indirectly.

Pawlenty came last summer to Clearwater to talk about proposals to encourage investment, streamline regulations and support academic research from his 14-member task force, which included representatives from the livestock industry, farm lenders, producer groups, universities and state government.

This fall, he proposed tax credits for livestock farmers who want to invest in their equipment and infrastructure.

Going small

Minnesota's agriculture policy is pushing toward a system where only big producers will survive, Kunstleben said.

"Large milk producers get a credit for high volumes, and that's unfair," said Kunstleben, who said his dairy farm has 40 cows. "One large farm can't support a whole community. It takes lots of farms to do that."

Otremba, whose district includes Long Prairie, West Union, Grey Eagle and Osakis, said giving new dairy farmers a similar, though smaller, credit could help spur more family farms and strengthen rural economies.

"I'm excited to have something to give a little extra profit to the coming generation of dairy farmers," she said. "Large dairy farms are already getting $1.50 more per hundred weight than small farms. In some ways, we're helping to even the playing field."

Lawmakers said they did not have a price tag for the proposal.

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