New Jersey dairy farms face an uncertain future

The number of dairy farms in Burlington County has decreased from about 400 to little more than 100 in the past 50 years.

By: Scott Morgan
   It was a rhetorical question — "Do you want a statistic?" Bill Pettit was going to say it no matter what, and when he did, it landed like an aircraft that just fell out of the sky.
   In 1950, when he got married, there were 76 dairy farms in Springfield Township, including the one belonging to this particular retired dairy farmer and current township mayor; there were 400 dairy farms in Burlington County.
   Today there are four in the entire county. And then there’s this:
   "There’s not a single cow in Springfield Township," Mr. Pettit said. "That’s what happened. Not just in Burlington County. Everywhere."
   Granted, it has been 55 years since Mr. Pettit started his dairy farm and at least two decades since he left the National Board of Directors of the Holstein Association and his seat as chairman of the New Jersey Farm Bureau Dairy Commission, but the times for dairy farmers in New Jersey have certainly changed. In the past decade, according to the state Department of Agriculture, New Jersey has lost half the dairy farms it had in the early 1990s, leaving the state’s total at 114.
   If you search through DOA reports, you find a couple of sobering reasons — the high cost of business and volatile pricing in the federal milk marketing system. Talk to Mr. Pettit and he will add tighter restrictions on manure spreading and rising land values to the list.
   But whatever the reasons, New Jersey’s dairy industry has atrophied, its farmers and livestock long gone to the wider, greener pastures in New York and Pennsylvania and, as in the case of Mr. Pettit’s children, Minnesota. There is still a sizeable dairy presence in Warren County and parts of Sussex County, but in Burlington County, where once there were thousands of heads of cattle, the industry has shriveled to only a few hangers-on.
   The state’s response officially began last month, when the DOA announced the formation of the Garden State Dairy Alliance, an ambitious project with a three-year launch schedule and a simple twofold goal. According to the DOA, the Dairy Alliance seeks to offer the state’s dairy farmers and supporting industries information and technical resources for the production of milk products and the promotion of the industry.
   According to DOA, the alliance’s resources, co-opted with the Department of Agriculture, the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station and the Rutgers Cooperative Extension, will assist dairy farmers in maintaining herd health, ensuring milk quality and general marketing and promotion designed to rekindle the industry. Part of the marketing strategy, the department states, is the promotion of the "Jersey Fresh" brand on milk products produced in the New Jersey.
   The effort to revive the state’s flagging dairy industry comes at a point at which New Jersey’s dairy farms produce 133 million fewer pounds of product (and generating almost $27 million less in revenue) annually than they were in 1991.
   Charles Kuperis, the state’s secretary of agriculture (and one-time dairyman), said the Dairy Alliance is the state’s "next step in making sure New Jersey’s dairy producers have the support they need to keep the industry viable."
   But locally, there seems to be little celebration of the alliance, no doubt due to the fact that so few dairy farms are left within even a half-hour’s drive of Springfield. Despite it’s once-mighty reputation as a dairy powerhouse, central New Jersey is largely cow-free these days. While there are four farms left in Burlington County, there are none in Mercer, none in Monmouth and none in Ocean counties.
   Despite the DOA’s best intentions to help revive the dairy industry, Fritz Wainwright has doubts it will do any good around here.
   "I don’t know if it’ll help or not," said Mr. Wainwright, whose Clover Valley Farms on Florence-Columbus Road is the last remaining dairy farm in northern Burlington County. Mr. Wainwright added that he has not been approached about the alliance, but thinks it will have no effect on his business one way or the other.
   In case you’re wondering, by the way, Mr. Wainwright is not entirely sure how he became one of the county’s last dairymen standing. His answer to the question was characteristically understated: "I really don’t know. You’ve got to love it to stay with it."
   Mr. Pettit has a slightly — very slightly — rosier view of the alliance’s value.
   "I think it’s good," he said, "but don’t look for dairy farms to increase in New Jersey." In fact, Mr. Pettit predicted that in five years, the county could be entirely out of the milk business and that not so long after that, even Warren County’s stronghold on dairy production could dry up or move farther west, "where dairy is still a business."
   Still, Mr. Pettit said he is willing to give Mr. Kuperis the benefit of the doubt.
   "Charlie’s a good man," Mr. Pettit said. "Nothing wrong with him. And if he’s championing this, I’ll cheer him on."