Dairy Farms Continue Decline
US - Milk prices are doing the Maryland dairy farm good again, but it might be too little to sustain an industry that has seen significant losses in the past decade.
10 October 2007
2 minute read
| A group of cows waits to be milked at the Harcum dairy farm in Mardela Springs. The Harcum farm serves as one-half of the entire Lower Shore cooperative, sharing the sole dairy production in the region with Glad Mar Dairy Inc. in Pocomoke City. |
The price for the raw milk vacuum sucked from the Harcum family's 170 cows twice a day is up to $22 per 100 pounds. It's a jump of almost 50 percent in the last two years when prices dipped as low as $12 for the same amount. It's brought the family farm back from the red, and pleased the bankers who stuck with the farm due to its generations of business, said Blan Harcum and his son, Blan Harcum Jr.
While the farm is in better financial shape, much of Maryland's industry has already called it quits. The Harcums' 180 cows are the last in Wicomico County. Twenty-five years ago, there were 17 operations. Now the Harcum farm serves as one-half of the entire Lower Shore cooperative, sharing the sole dairy production in the region with Glad Mar Dairy Inc. in Pocomoke City. Both operations work with the Land O'Lakes company making butters, cheeses and other dairy products.
The problem are production costs. Feed, fuel and seven-day operations has made dairy operations undesirable.
"When people could go elsewhere and earn a better wage, why mess with this," Blan Harcum Jr. said.
Licensed dairy farms in Maryland have dropped from 6,700 in 1965 to just 587 in 2007, according to data provided by the Maryland Department of Agriculture. The state has also lost 20,000 cows, or about 25 percent of its current total, in the last decade and Maryland's milk production has fallen 4 percent since 2005, according to the state's latest agriculture report.
Source: Delmarva Daily Times
