Editor’s note: This commentary is by Stephen Leslie, who along with his wife Kerry Gawalt, co-manages Cedar Mountain Farm and Cobb Hill Cheese, located at Cobb Hill Co-housing in Hartland. He is an author at Chelsea Green Publishing and a member of Extinction Rebellion Upper Valley.
A just transition for dairy farmers means we take into account the social, physical, mental and financial well-being of farmers and farmworkers even as we engage in a rapid transition to organic regenerative practices. We must have regenerative culture if we are to have regenerative agriculture, neither can function in a healthy way without the other. This transition must happen as swiftly as possible in order to stave off the worst effects of abrupt climate change and loss of biodiversity and to have any hope of habitat restoration.
My wife and I moved to our farm at Cobb Hill co-housing in the fall of 1999. We inherited a hard-scrabble hard-bit dairy farm. The forest had been high-graded, the pastures were terminally over-grazed, and the recently established hay fields had been in continuous corn for decades. The previous farmers worked as hard as they knew how to be a profitable “modern” dairy and tried as many new innovations as they could afford — but the cards were stacked against them.
The unavoidable fact is that all the soils in our region have been under assault since the arrival of European settlers to these shores. It is estimated that fully one half of Vermont’s soils have eroded away since the 18th century. Contrary to popular myth, New England was not a place of poor, thin and rocky soils. The Amerindians evolved their culture under the bowers of a rich and varied tapestry of old growth forests with deep layers of duff and humus rich subsoils. The forest adapted to and built soils on every type of parent rock and topography, from mountaintop to lowland coastal swamp.
Vermont is known around the country and the world for its vibrant local food movement. But the small farms that cater to CSAs, farm stands and farmers markets, restaurants and co-ops, make up a fraction of the land under agricultural management in the state. There are the large truck farms using conventional management. Orchards are a significant sector. But the biggest player by far is still the dairy industry. Of the 1,200,000 acres classified as devoted to commercial ag in Vermont (including nurseries and Christmas tree farms), approximately one third of that land is utilized by dairy farms.
The dairy industry has been on the ropes since the farm crisis of the early 1980s. Back in 1975, when you could still earn a middle-class income as a Vermont dairy farmer, we had 5,000 dairies. Today we have the same milk output but only 660 farms left. The volume of milk produced in the state is only 1% of the national supply. If Vermont farms shuttered their barn doors tomorrow it wouldn’t make a dent in that supply.
The word from the feds to the dairy industry has always been get big or get out. We had a different vision for dairying in Vermont. We were part of the first wave of farmstead cheese companies in Vermont — cheesemakers who produce their product from their own micro-herd of grazing cows. We also started up a horse-powered CSA. By using organic land management and intensive grazing, we have seen our land gradually returning to a state of health. Our resident forester has been managing our woods for timber and habitat regeneration. Although we are the only full-time farmers, other co-housing residents manage enterprises on the land, including maple sugaring, raising lambs, beekeeping, shitake mushroom production, fresh eggs, and homemade soap. This diversification adds to the diversity of land use here and offers the public more reasons to visit our farm stand.
Our model isn’t perfect — it is a work in progress. But we are increasingly aware that the main task of the farmer (or any land manager) should be the restoration of the carbon cycle in our soils and all the resulting beneficial landscape functions that are associated with the practices that lead to soil health. The nutrient-dense food products that result are a “bi-product” of building healthy soil.
If organic regenerative agriculture is to play a significant role in the Vermont Legislature’s binding pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the dairy sector will need to undergo a “just transition” and adopt healthy soil management practices. Some of the best agricultural soils in the state are currently managed by the dairy sector. These soils have been systematically degraded through conventional management and are in bad shape — often with soil organic matter at 1% or less. But they also represent our greatest opportunity for regeneration and subsequent drawdown. In the process we can also bring resiliency back into our food system and restore vital ecological functions to our landscapes. A regenerative farm renaissance would also bring a boost to Vermont’s tourism industry (currently the leading source of income). Imagine our hills and valleys graced with a tapestry of organic regenerative diversified farms and regional food hubs.
A diversified Vermont agriculture adopting healthy soils practices could become suppliers to an entire new wave of cottage industries in the region manufacturing food products, beverages, medicine, fiber, building materials, etc.
A just transition must offer a bridge to conventional production dairy farmers. We must first honor the tenacity and commitment of these people for still being in the farming business at all. Incentives and training (carrots) are a favorable approach over regulations (sticks). Incentives to farmers should include payment for ecological services such as the sequestration of carbon and increased resilience in the face of both flood and drought. Successful pilot projects and farmer-to-farmer training are proven methods for accelerating the adoption of healthy soils practices among the legacy farming community. Just transition also means supporting retirement-age farmers in transitioning their farms to new and young farmers.
In 2019 the average farm income in the U.S. was negative $1,200. We cannot expect farmers who are forced to have annual operating debt and long-term debt (on infrastructure and assets) to be innovators and risk-takers. Dairy farmers have to invest enormous amounts of capital in equipment, infrastructure, inputs, and labor. They have seen profit margins flat-lined going on 50 years — while all these costs have sky-rocketed. Meanwhile, equipment manufacturers and purveyors of copyrighted seeds, fertilizers and pesticides rake in record profits.
If all the milk produced in the state remained in the state it would be way too much. So clearly, we could supply our regional needs with a lot fewer dairy cows. If our farms are liberated from the oppressive yoke of the agri-industrial commodity system and we make the shift to a regional food supply, we could potentially free up a large percentage of the 83,000 acres currently devoted to corn — to be planted to a wide diversity of crops, including grain and legumes for human consumption, fruits, vegetables, tree and perennial crops and intermittent grazing. Much of the 265,000 acres currently devoted to hay and haylage could have grazing ruminants reintroduced, along with rotations of swine and poultry — and sivlopasture plantings to enhance productivity, landscape function, and biodiversity. In the process, the food dollars of region’s eaters would go to the region’s farmers, ensuring healthy nutrient-dense food for the population, a living wage for farmers and farmworkers, and restored healthy ecosystems for our children’s children.
In short, the convergence of the climate crisis and the dairy crisis present us, citizens, eaters, and most especially farmers — with an opportunity to begin the grand adventure of transitioning our farms and forests to organic regenerative healthy soil management. Vermont has the potential to become a national leader in this international movement.
