Oregon Public Broadcasting

One good thing about a recession, prices tend to go down. In Idaho, milk prices have dropped more than any other agricultural product. And that's not good for dairy farmers.

While the rest of the country is in a recession, the dairy industry is in a full blown depression. Boise State Radio's Adam Cotterell looks at how Idaho farmers are affected by the dairy crisis.

That's a calf sniffing and that's a calf licking a microphone, and that's a dairy farmer sprinkling some grain in trough.

He's James Gatfield and this is the dairy he built with his father and brother when he was a teenager in the mid sixties.

James Gatfield: “We're one of the few....

Gatfield and his brother milk 50 cows twice a day everyday in this little valley between Horseshoe Bend and Emmett. It's near where the town of Montour used to be when there was such a place.

Up the dirt road a mile from the dairy, Gatfield and I sit on folding chairs in front of the house his father built in 1941 on the foundation his grandfather laid in 1911.

James Gatfield: "This was the original homestead right here.”

Gatfields have been farming this piece of land for a century, but not for much longer.

James Gatfield: “My brothers...."

 Gatfield says things have been getting harder since the early eighties. Competition with big agribusiness and rising prices for everything from machinery to feed has made small family farms rare. But now Gatfield faces a new crisis, one he shares with every other dairy farmer in Idaho.

In 2007, farmers were selling milk for more than $20 per hundred pounds. Those prices fell off a cliff last fall, now they're staying below $10 per hundred pounds. That's well below the cost of production. So every dairy farmer in Idaho is losing money every day.

Gatfield says he's doing better than most.

James Gatfield: “We're really just treading water....”

For Gatfield it's hardly worth doing the work, but you can't just stop milking cows. Others are finding Gatfield's dairy barely worth the effort as well.

James Gatfield: “Dairy Gold....”

Dairy Gold, has to send a truck out to collect the milk every other day, and Gatfield has the only dairy in 30 miles.

There used to be a lot of small dairies in this valley, but not any more. They disappeared one by one even as Idaho's dairy industry was booming.

Over the last two decades the number of big feed lot dairies has steadily risen in Idaho. But Gatfield thinks it's these big operations that face the most danger in the current crisis.

James Gatfield: “We don't buy any feed....”

There seems to be some truth to Gatfield's assessment. At an Idaho Dairymen's conference in Boise last Thursday, farmers from all over the state listened to economists lecture on the dairy crisis.

The economists said it's national in scope but it's far worse in the west than the east. The reason they give is the east still has a lot of traditional smaller dairies.

Adrian Bore listened to those lectures. Like James Gatfield, Bore has a family-owned dairy, but that's where the resemblance ends.

Bore owns three facilities in the Magic Valley near Jerome. They milk about 5000 cows a day.

Adrian Bore: “We're operating in the red....”

And it's the same throughout the Magic Valley, Idaho's top dairy producing area. Again Adrian Bore.

Adrian Bore: "I'm hearing the same thing from all my....”

It's not just farmers who are desperate for prices to go back up. Sorento Lactalis cheese factory in Nampa is one of the largest milk buyers in Idaho.

Jean Claude Renoe came from France to manage production. I talked with him over the roar of the processing machinery.

Jean Claude Renoe: “Today at $9....”

 The low milk price benefits consumers, but not by much. While farmers are only getting paid half what they did a year ago the price of a gallon of milk in Idaho supermarkets has only dropped about 75 cents.

A year ago a gallon averaged about $3.02. Now it's about $2.34.