Dairy Farmers May Lose Farm but Not Faith

DAIRY FARMERS MAY LOSE FARM BUT NOT FAITH:
ELCA ADDRESSES RURAL CRISIS
by: Melissa O. Ramirez

They are a husband-and-wife team with a handful of dairy cows in western Wisconsin. While their marriage is a 45-year romance, Larry and Rachel Ecklor's dairy farm has been everything but an affair to remember.
Wearing mud-spattered boots, Rachel Ecklor declares that "the day of the family farm is gone forever, with corporate farming taking its place. Most of the family farms around here are now out of business, with the exception of a big farm about a mile away."
Rachel and Larry Ecklor operate their own dairy farm in Hillsdale, Wis. They are one of two families still operating dairy farms in the small-town area. In the late 1980s, there were 13 dairy farms in Hillsdale.
Posted on the roof of the Ecklor's barn, facing the black-top road, is a verse from the Bible book of Romans: "We know that all things are possible to those who believe."
"There is a verse from the Bible that best describes my life," said Rachel. "'Trust in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. And in all thy ways acknowledge him and he will direct thy paths.' I don't know what the paths are, but I know to be faithful to him."
In 1989, Rachel and Larry Ecklor auctioned 50 of their Holstein cows in order to pay debt. After the auction, they managed to retain a few dairy cows to help pay bills. High farm operation costs, declining milk prices and a barn fire in 1991 have hurt the Ecklors financially.
Since then, "it's been hard because we've never gotten back up to a barn full of cows. When financed to milk 50 cows, one should have 50 cows milking. We just never have ... it's been hard," said Larry Ecklor.
In 1995, the Ecklors sold off another part of their dairy herd to help reduce their debt load. On Aug. 27, 1999, "we sold our dairy herd once again," said Rachel.
"Larry and I thought that with the increase in cattle prices at the time, we should be able to sell all the livestock we have accumulated since 1995 and pay off the remainder of the personal property debt, plus another debt of $25,000. The auction in 1995 did not pull in the money we had anticipated. There are other costs we have not dealt with since the barn fire in 1991," she said.
"It has been hard to keep watching our life's work sold in order to keep things paid. But we've learned that, throughout life, it's not the materials things that keep one happy or successful. Larry and I are still together, along with our four children and 16 beautiful grandchildren," said Rachel Ecklor.
Today, the Ecklor family milk only four cows to help pay current bills. Larry also works part-time in a neighboring farm. "I do night milking. Sometimes I help put up hay. When they need me, they call me. I've got work there. I'm capable of doing other things, too. I'm licensed for driving tractor-trailers. I can get a job if I really have to ... that gives me confidence," he said.
"Through all the years we've farmed, God has taken care of us. I know that God will take care of us now. I don't know how. I don't know what is going to happen from one day to the next, but God will take care of us. He always has," Rachel said.
The 5.2 million members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have pledged to stand with family farmers, their families and rural communities. The 1999 ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Denver, Aug. 16-23, passed a resolution that calls for prayer, education, governmental advocacy, and support groups that help farmers and rural residents. The resolution also reaffirms the ELCA's commitment to small-town and rural congregations through the work of various churchwide units, and it asks the church to respond to the farm and rural crisis in the United States.
"We have a responsibility as people of God to be raising food in order to feed people," said the Rev. Robert D. Berg, bishop of the ELCA Northwest Synod of Wisconsin, Rice Lake.
"I think it is a call for us to be concerned about the land, to be concerned about the farmer, the one who actually plows the field and plants the seed and looks to God for the rain and the sun. The church needs to be about the business of that particular relationship," Berg said.
"We have gone through a crisis and we have lost a significant number of farmers. We are still losing farm families but not at the rate we were because we have lost so many in the northwest part of Wisconsin," said Berg.
According to Berg, the milk-marketing system in the United States is a "very complex matter." He explained that for more than 50 years, Eau Claire, Wis., was the "hub or center" for establishing prices for milk. "The further out you farm from Eau Claire, the more you receive for your milk. That is the system existing today."
Dairy farmers in the upper Midwest have sought reforms in the system that sets prices for fresh milk, contending they are penalized simply because of their location. "There is work being done right now in the U.S. Congress to bring some reform to that milk-pricing system," Berg said.
The Rev. Paul Landstrom, retired pastor of Augustana Lutheran Church, Cumberland, Wis., believes that the problem farmers faced in the 1980s and 1990s remains the same today -- farmers are not able to set a price for their product. Farmers "just take what's available, which is pretty low," Landstrom said. "Some solutions the U.S. Congress have made are make-shift. They really haven't addressed the basic issues, such as how a farmer receives a fair price for his product."
According to Landstrom, dairy farmers in the last 10 to 20 years were under exceedingly high stress because of the continual drop of milk prices and prices for other farm commodities.
"We were sending signals to the church that it needed to do some advocacy for rural people, because rural people were suffering severe stress. Nothing seemed to be happening as far as awareness, understanding and care from urban people at that time," said Landstrom.
"In the last decade at Augustana Lutheran Church, we went from having a congregation made up of approximately 13 farm families to two. Right now, it is down to just two active dairy farm families," Landstrom said.
While dairy farmers like Rachel and Larry Ecklor scarcely manage to hang on, there are exceptions. Gina and Roy Grewe have a dairy farm in Cumberland, Wis.
"We milk anywhere from 120 to 140 cows in two computerized milking parlors. We have automatic identification, so we keep track of how much our cows milk," said Roy Grewe. "We also have more than 150 cows in a stall-free barn. We raise all our heifers and convert our barns into heifer facilities. We put all our feed into bulk silos," he said.
Unlike the Ecklors, the Grewe family is new to Wisconsin. "We've only been in Wisconsin for five years. We're from western Washington state," Roy Grewe said.
"We haven't been through drought and we don't have many acres of land. We buy a fair amount of our feed, so we do not rely on what we grow. I think that kind of hedges our expenses a little bit. Plus, we've had pretty good weather since we've been here," he said.
Roy Grewe contends that farming is hard, no matter what. "It is a lot of work. There are a lot of farmers who work really hard and still can't seem to make it. I think a lot of farmers run into problems when they are milking fewer cows in a stall barn. Plus, inconsistent milk prices are a factor in farming. If they could figure out a way to set the price and pay everyone fairly, so that farmers know where they were, it would make all the difference in the world. When they leave the price of milk varying the way it does, it creates a higher debt load for farmers," he said.
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