Dairy Continued from Page 1
But for now, they’ve decided to invest in new technologies and installations to modernize the dairy, which he said had “fallen a little bit behind.” Along with rising milk prices, the improved efficiencies and management changes he’s made, he said, have allowed the dairy to be more profit- able this year. The surging cost of water and fertilizer needed to grow forage crops such as alfalfa hay and corn silage remains a challenge, Barroso said. Other feeds such as grain corn, soybean meal and almond hulls must
touch offered at farmers markets will keep bringing people back. He said he appreci- ates personal tips from growers on how to make the best meals with their produce. “They give you a flavor profile,” Simi said. One vendor, Soo Kim, offered some tips after selling him Nameko mushrooms, which were grown in a Vacaville greenhouse. “He (Kim) said these mushrooms have a butterscotch taste. He said they would be great in pasta,” Simi said, adding, “Sometimes it may cost a little more to buy from your local farmers market, but it’s always better.” Norman Choy, who was at Arden Fair selling zucchini, tomatoes and other items from his in-laws’ Orangevale farm, said peo- ple appreciate buying produce that “hasn’t been in a train or truck for four days.” “The customers like to keep their money local,” Choy said. “And they trust the fruit because they talk to the guy who grew it.” For the Neils, a favorite Arden vendor is Chris Hoover, who sells fruit from his 70- acre farm in Placerville. “He’s a big San Francisco 49ers fan and so are we,” Nancy Neils said of Hoover. “We appreciate talking to him. We like his products.” be purchased. Most feed-price increases have grown by double digits for buyers in the western U.S., according to Rabobank. Barroso said delivery of feed commod- ities such as corn, which come by rail, has “been a disaster.” He noted there were four or five days last month in which he had to do without corn due to unexpect- ed rail-service disruptions. He was forced to adjust his rations to feed more forage, which negatively affected milk production. The heat has dropped production by an- other 8%, he added.
Wearing a 49ers cap, Hoover ran back and forth under his blue canopy, attending a steady stream of customers. One employ- ee helped him. Soaring gasoline prices concern Hoover, who grows tree and vine crops, including apples, cherries, blueberries, mandarins, peaches and pears. He and his roaming crew of several workers are on the go, driving four trucks almost daily from his spread to farmers markets throughout Northern California, then back again. “I’m spending $400 to $500 a week for gasoline for my truck,” he said. “For all my trucks, it’s costing about $2,500 a month.” Still his enthusiasm didn’t dim as a recent farmers-market workday wound down. Thirty-five minutes before close, Hoover took things up a notch. “Everything is now $1 a pound,” he boomed, like a carnival barker. “That’s right, folks, you heard it. Everything is $1 a pound. That’s a heck of a deal.” Hoover repeated his spiel until the mar- ket closed for the day, having succeeded in bringing farmers and the public back together once again. (Edgar Sanchez is a reporter based in Sacramento. He may be contacted at edgar.chez@yahoo.com.) Airoso said he, too, has maintained his milking-herd size because “it’s really hard to get smaller when you have inflation.” With all his costs going up, he said, shrink- ing cow numbers would create less income for the farm. “The cost of doing business keeps ris- ing,” he said. “The cost of technology keeps rising. If you want to be futuristic and be thinking ahead, you’ve got to be able to afford that kind of stuff.” (Ching Lee is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at clee@cfbf.com.)
acres last year due to water shortages. That means he has much less feed in reserve. With water cutbacks constraining the amount of feed dairy farmers can grow, they must now buy more feed, Tulare County dairy farmer Joey Airoso said. He has had to idle about 18% of his acres this summer due to lack of water. In his region, water shortages have put “a lot of pressure on everybody in dairy, especially the counties in the south,” which have zero surface-water allocation, he said. Groundwater regulations have also limited how much water farmers there can pump. “A lot of people in our area…have ground that you can’t farm, because there’s not enough water to farm it,” Airoso said. “When people can’t farm all the ground, it creates more of a demand for the feed that’s grown locally, such as corn silage, alfalfa.” He said even though the current milk price is covering his increased costs, that may not be the case for all dairies, partic- ularly those that must buy all or most of their feed. “All things considered, the margins would be positive,” he said. “When you overlay the water situation over the top, it becomes negative.” Contente said even though he has maintained his cow numbers, milk pro- duction has dipped because of the recent heat wave. Heat stress also hampers the reproductive performance of cows, which affects a dairy’s profitability and produc- tion, he added. “Combination of a lot of factors are put- ting a lot of pressure on the industry, even though we have these beautiful, beautiful (milk) prices,” Contente said. Barroso in Merced County also has not changed his cow numbers. Operating what he described as “a smaller dairy that’s been around for 40-plus years,” Barroso said his family has “absolutely” considered leaving the business and the state.
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including thousands of state employees, from offices to work-at-home setups, se- verely impacted farmers markets. In 2019, the capital city had four success- ful weekday farmers markets downtown. Three of the four closed in 2020 and 2021 as critical crowds of lunchtime customers vanished, said Dan Best, coordinator of the Certified Farmers Markets of Sacramento County, or CFMS. Today, CFMS has two weekday markets and four weekend markets, including the one at Arden Fair Mall, which currently boasts almost 100 farmer vendors, many of them organic growers. Arden Fair has hosted the Sunday mar- ket since March 2021. Before that, the mar- ket was under the elevated Interstate-80 Business Loop until a freeway expansion project forced the vendors to move. The market is expected to return to the freeway location this fall, once construc- tion finishes, Best said. Though the Arden Fair location drew steady crowds, Best said, attendance there is 25% lower than the former site. Jim Simi, who shops at the Arden market with his wife Elizabeth, said the personal
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