Oser Communications Group

20 The Cheese Guide BY LORRIE BAUMANN Terry and Paula Homan, husband and wife and Co-Founders of Red Barn Family Farms, think they've found a cheesy solution for foundering Wisconsin family dairy farms. Their solution goes like this: find farms where the cows are treated like members of the family, put both cows and kids to work, and then ask members of the public to pay a fair price for premium quality dairy products. It's a scheme that has worked around the world for generation upon generation, but it's been faltering recently in the U.S. and in Wisconsin in particular. Terry Homan grew up on a Wisconsin family farm and earned his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1996. From the vantage point of his veterinary practice at farms across the state, he began noticing that Wisconsin's small family farms were disappearing. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service, there were 9,000 fewer Wisconsin farms with less than a thousand acres in 2012 than there had been just five years earlier in 2007. Many of these farmers simply retired as they aged, but many others left the business because their sweat wasn't diluting enough of the red ink. The total acreage of Wisconsin farm land dropped by about half a million acres between 2007 and 2012. More recently, the number of Wisconsin farms dropped by 100 and 100,000 acres of farm land were lost during 2015, according to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. The volatility of dairy prices has a lot to do with that. In 2007, Wisconsin dairy farmers were getting an average of $19.30 per hundredweight of milk, but in the five years previous to that, the average milk price had topped out at $16.90 in 2004, and in the next five years, they'd drop to $13.10 in 2009 before crawling their way up to $20.30 in 2011 and then sliding back down to $19.40 in 2012, according to USDA statistics for Wisconsin. A hundredweight of milk is about 11.6 gallons, so at $20 per hundredweight, the farmers were getting $1.72 a gallon for their milk, but at $13.10, they were only getting $1.13. Getting family dairy farmers off the milk price roller coaster that was costing them their farms was going to mean figuring out a way to put more money in their pockets, and that depended on finding retailers and consumers willing to pay a premium price for milk from family farms. The Homans founded Red Barn Family Farms, which is, at its heart, a brand that stands for the notion that consumers looking for food that aligned with their own values might be willing to take the rubber bands off their wallets to get milk with exceptionally good taste, produced by cows living long, healthy bovine lives on real Wisconsin family farms. To get that milk, they went looking for some family farmers who shared the values underpinning the oath that Terry had taken when he became a veterinarian, when he swore to use his knowledge and skills for the benefit of society through the protection of animal health, the relief of animal suffering, the conservation of livestock resources and the promotion of public health. They didn't have far to go in Wisconsin, where nearly 12 percent of the state's workforce makes a living in agriculture. "These farms are small. The owning family does the majority of the work handling the milking of the cows," said Terry. "Personal knowledge of each animal as an individual, and therefore the care of each animal as an individual, is important.... When the same person is caring for that animal, they know the individual traits of each animal, as opposed to every animal being treated as the same widget." He offered to pay the farmers a premium for their milk if they followed a few strict rules promoting good animal husbandry, had their farms certified by the American Humane Association and passed laboratory tests for milk quality. "Our goal is never to be negative – to be very positive. Our Red Barn Rules incentivize excellent animal husbandry rather than incentivizing more production," Terry said. "On one of our farms, during the winter, the cows go outside for exercise during the day, provided it's not a blizzard. [The farmer] will go out several times a day and open the barn door for the cows that are ready to come in. That's a day-to- day example of individual care. You know the animal individually, with its individual traits; you will pick up more quickly and easily when something is wrong." saving Wisconsin family dairy farms one premium cheese at a time

• Cover