No Milk Today

Agriculture is California's number one industry, despite the Silicon and Telecom valleys hype, with sales at over 15 billion a year and 250 commodity groups. Of that 250, milk has the highest annual sales value. Milk production dominates agriculture in Marin, with 65% of agricultural land used for dairy ranching. Milk produces over 30 million in revenues a year.
Twenty percent of the Bay Area's milk comes from Marin dairies. But the picture is changing. Skyrocketing land values and the tedium of dairy ranching are contributing to third and fourth generation farmers who are opting out of the game. Between 1949 and 1982, approximately 783,000 acres, one quarter of the Bay Area's farmland, was lost. Since 1959 Marin has lost 32,000 acres of agricultural land. The 1944 census showed 1,800 ranches in Marin -- today there are only 285 left. In 1950 there were 200 dairy ranches in Marin -- by 1972 there were fewer than 100. They dwindle in number every year, and now there are only 46 left.
During the past four years, nine Marin dairies have gone out of business, and in the past 12 months, four more were sold or converted to sheep and cattle ranching. Contributing factors, apart from a new generation uninterested in dairy ranching, include higher costs and lower profit margins. When ranchers require more land for their operations, they discover it isn't available or is far too expensive to contemplate.
A lot of ranchers could navigate all these concerns if it weren't for the increasingly stringent regulations, particularly in the environmental sector. The rules have become much tougher, and are constantly changing. This makes it nearly impossible for ranchers to comply without extreme economic hardship, and while the regulations are good for the county and the environment, many times they are the cause of ranches failing.
The Satori ranch went out of business after the California Department of Fish and Game placed the ranch on probation for wastewater runoff contamination. Controlling wastewater runoff is one of the biggest environmental concerns for dairy ranchers. It can be economically ruinous to control, but cow manure produces toxic chemicals that enter streams, creeks and groundwater. The last have a huge potential hazard environmentally. Most of the damage is caused through rainwater runoff, and the runoff caused by cleaning the dairy facilities. Tomales Bay is routinely contaminated during the winter months with fecal coliform bacteria, which can make animals and humans critically ill.
There are environmentally safe solutions, but they are expensive. A 'free-style' barn, designed to control runoff, can cost $100,000. The price of milk is down, the cost of feed and materials up. The bottom line has shrunk too much for many people to handle.
Dale R. Hopkins, an Environmental Specialist with the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, has little patience with ranchers who refuse to realize the importance of the regulations. He states, "The environmental regulations have not changed in the last 25 years; rather, they are now being more commonly and consistently enforced. The regulations are not complicated; keep cow manure and rainwater contaminated with cow manure out of creeks and bays.
"We understand the economic pressures producers are experiencing, but strongly believe that compliance with environmental regulations is just as essential to the overall health of the industry as it is to the environment, and should not be used as a scapegoat for a far more complex and changing economic situation."
Many of the ranchers leave for greener pastures out of bitterness with the fluctuating environmental regulations. Because the eco-balance is so fragile in Tomales Bay, the regulations are constantly changing to preserve that balance. The Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) tries to achieve a compromise between keeping the dairy ranchers in business and maintaining the ecological balance. MALT Land Steward Lisa Bush documents and monitors the condition of easement properties and assists landowners with problems such as water quality monitoring and weed control. The remaining ranchers work closely with the Resource Conservation District to develop better ways to reduce soil erosion and degradation of their lands.
Perhaps more importantly, MALT is attempting to help keep land in agriculture by offering landowners a way to capitalize on the increased value of their property without having to sell or subdivide the land. MALT purchases agricultural conservation easements from landowners, on a voluntary basis, with values and prices based on an independent appraisal of their property.
If a landowner wants to realize the 'development value' of the land without selling or subdividing, he or she can sell an agricultural conservation easement to MALT and keep the land. In addition to being for the 'development value' of the property, the sale of an easement can lower estate taxes significantly. Since 1980, MALT has acquired conservation easements on 40 properties totaling 26,604 acres.
Despite the efforts of MALT and the Resource Conservation District, Marin is losing dairy ranches at an alarming rate. When it does, milk production will necessarily move north and east, to less valuable land. Not much will stop the exodus now, given the value of land in the bay area. But balancing the federal regulations so ranchers better know where they stand will help those who wish to remain, to do so.