Purdy dairy farmers continue
family tradition
April 29, 2020
Three-year-old Emery Wormington watches his dad, Jared Wormington, attach milking equipment to cow.
Sheila Harris
According to University of Missouri extension agent, Regan Bluel, during the six years she’s been in her position, the number of commercial dairy farmers in Barry County has dropped significantly.
“I’d be hesitant to give numbers, though,” she said.
Fourth-generation dairy farmer, Jared Wormington, of rural Purdy, has milked cows since he was old enough to stand on a five-gallon bucket.
“By the time I was a teenager, I was sick of it,” he said. “I told myself I wasn’t going to follow in my dad’s footsteps and get locked into the same cycle when I got older.”
“I did try some other things when I got out of high school,” Wormington continued, “but when Karla (my wife) and I began thinking about marriage, I knew I’d need stable income to support a family. That’s when dairy farming started looking better. It’s what I knew how to do. I bought 20 cows and began milking them at my dad’s place. Then I leased land from my grandma. After our wedding and honeymoon, I moved the cows up the road to that pasture, and started milking in the barn my grandpa once used.”
Wormington hasn’t looked back. Every day, he gets up at 5 a.m. and begins herding 80 cows toward the milk barn, a task which he makes sound easy.
“The cows know the way,” he said.
Wormington now has two sons of his own. The oldest, three-year-old Emery, already goes to the milk barn with him. Whether he’ll become a dairy farmer when he’s an adult will depend, in part, on the economic stability of the dairy industry.
“I don’t pay much attention to the national news, nor do I know of any farmers around here who’ve had to dump their milk,” Wormington said. “I’ve not had to dump any on my farm, although I expect my next milk check might be smaller.” Wormington is a member of Central Equity, a co-op that purchases milk from dairy farmers located within the four-state area of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
Duane Kaiser and his wife, Colleen, milk 80 cows on another fourth generation dairy farm near Purdy. The Kaisers also sell milk into Central Equity’s co-op.
“I’ve not had to dump milk on my farm, either,” Duane Kaiser said. “Part of the reason is because Central Equity is a smaller co-op with more diverse market options for their milk. For them, the logistics are a little easier.
“With larger co-ops, like Dairy Farmers of America, who have long-term contracts with specific bottlers and processors, it’s a little more complicated,” he explained. “DFA has milk producers all over the nation, and contracts with large processors who are only set up to make specific products. Sliced or shredded cheese, for example. When restaurants and schools suddenly closed, some of those processing plants couldn’t use the milk they once needed, so fluid milk had to be diverted to bottling facilities.”
Kaiser went on to say, “Instead of people buying dairy products served in restaurants, they started buying more milk from grocery stores. It flew off shelves all over, so grocers started putting limits on purchases. That compounded the problem. It wasn’t that we had a shortage of milk; we had a bottle-neck at the bottlers.”
According to Regan Bluel, during the panic-buying of a few weeks ago, fluid milk sales were up 40 percent from a year ago.
“Last week, they were still 20 percent higher than the same time last year,” she said. “Obviously, this is a trend we hope will continue.”
Bluel calls the fluid milk bottlers at Hiland in Springfield “heroes.”
“They’ve been working around the clock bottling fluid milk,” she said.
According to Duane Kaiser, Central Equity Co-op farmers haven’t run into the same problems getting their milk processed.
“The problem we have is competing with larger co-ops like Dairy Farmers of America,” he said.
“Back when I was younger,” Kaiser, who is now 62, said, “we had a lot of markets for our milk. Almost every town in southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas had a milk processor. But all that’s changed. Companies have consolidated. Now, the nearest and largest processing facilities are Kraft and Hiland in Springfield, supplied largely by DFA.”
“Because DFA is the biggest milk co-op and they extend throughout the U.S., most of the milk in the U.S. is produced by DFA co-op farmers, and that milk goes to select, large bottlers and processors,” Kaiser explained. “To keep up with huge demand, DFA expects a lot from their farmers. They want large farms in their co-op, farms that can produce larger quantities of milk than smaller family farms can contribute. That’s what’s happened to the dairy farming industry in Barry County, specifically, and in Missouri as a whole. You either have to meet DFA’s demands for upsizing and up-producing - if you want to and can afford it - or you participate in a smaller co-op, which sometimes has its own advantages, as we’ve just seen.”
“People don’t realize it,” he continued, “but we’re a very food-insecure nation. This little blip in the supply chain kind of gave us an inkling of what could go wrong. When most of the nation’s milk is produced and processed by only a handful of co-ops, if there’s a glitch in the chain, we’ll have problems like the one we just saw. I’m not talking only about the dairy industry either. The beef industry is another example. Right now, most of the beef we buy in grocery stores is processed by only about four companies in the nation. Capitalism is doing to our food supply exactly what communism did to it in the Soviet Union.”
Tom Mareth, another milk producer from rural Purdy, is a member of the Dairy Farmers of America co-op. Mareth, who milks 300 cows, took over his parents’ dairy operation in 1990, after Wells Aluminum closed up shop in Monett. He managed the dairy farm while his wife, Mendy, pursued a career in nursing.
Tom Mareth readily admits to the truth of much of what Duane Kaiser said.
“Dairy farming is a hard business to stay in these days,” he said. “DFA wants large farms that produce a lot of milk. 300 cows might sound like a lot, but that number’s nothing compared to some farms in the U.S. that have 3,000 or more cows. Before I built my newer confinement barns, I toured a farm in Minnesota that had 5,000 cattle. My farm’s small by comparison.”
Mareth, whose son, Adam, has since taken over the dairy operation, said it would be almost impossible for a young man to get into dairy farming from scratch these days.
“If you’re not taking over a family farm, you’d need a lot of cash up front to get a loan to start one up,” he said. “And, there aren’t very many people with that much cash who would want to do this kind of work. Barry County can’t really support the type of larger farms Dairy Farmers of America is wanting, anyway.”
Duane Kaiser guessed there are now probably about 19 farmers still milking in the county. Bluel agreed his guess probably isn’t far off.
Mareth can reel off the names of at least eight families who used to milk within a few miles of his farm, and are no longer doing so.
“Forty years ago,” he said, “Barry County probably had about twice as many dairy farmers as we have now.”
When asked what he foresees for the future of his dairy operation, Kaiser was slow to answer.
“I don’t know,” he replied, quietly.
Jared Wormington was philosophical.
“We’ve had hard times before,” he said. “God’s always made a way. I’ll keep doing what I do - paying attention to the things I can control, like the quality of my milk.”
“The farm’s a good place to raise kids,” he continued. “If the economy falls apart, at least we’ll have beef to eat and milk to drink.”
According to University of Missouri extension agent, Regan Bluel, during the six years she’s been in her position, the number of commercial dairy farmers in Barry County has dropped significantly.
“I’d be hesitant to give numbers, though,” she said.
Fourth-generation dairy farmer, Jared Wormington, of rural Purdy, has milked cows since he was old enough to stand on a five-gallon bucket.
“By the time I was a teenager, I was sick of it,” he said. “I told myself I wasn’t going to follow in my dad’s footsteps and get locked into the same cycle when I got older.”
“I did try some other things when I got out of high school,” Wormington continued, “but when Karla (my wife) and I began thinking about marriage, I knew I’d need stable income to support a family. That’s when dairy farming started looking better. It’s what I knew how to do. I bought 20 cows and began milking them at my dad’s place. Then I leased land from my grandma. After our wedding and honeymoon, I moved the cows up the road to that pasture, and started milking in the barn my grandpa once used.”
Wormington hasn’t looked back. Every day, he gets up at 5 a.m. and begins herding 80 cows toward the milk barn, a task which he makes sound easy.
“The cows know the way,” he said.
Wormington now has two sons of his own. The oldest, three-year-old Emery, already goes to the milk barn with him. Whether he’ll become a dairy farmer when he’s an adult will depend, in part, on the economic stability of the dairy industry.
“I don’t pay much attention to the national news, nor do I know of any farmers around here who’ve had to dump their milk,” Wormington said. “I’ve not had to dump any on my farm, although I expect my next milk check might be smaller.” Wormington is a member of Central Equity, a co-op that purchases milk from dairy farmers located within the four-state area of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
Duane Kaiser and his wife, Colleen, milk 80 cows on another fourth generation dairy farm near Purdy. The Kaisers also sell milk into Central Equity’s co-op.
“I’ve not had to dump milk on my farm, either,” Duane Kaiser said. “Part of the reason is because Central Equity is a smaller co-op with more diverse market options for their milk. For them, the logistics are a little easier.
“With larger co-ops, like Dairy Farmers of America, who have long-term contracts with specific bottlers and processors, it’s a little more complicated,” he explained. “DFA has milk producers all over the nation, and contracts with large processors who are only set up to make specific products. Sliced or shredded cheese, for example. When restaurants and schools suddenly closed, some of those processing plants couldn’t use the milk they once needed, so fluid milk had to be diverted to bottling facilities.”
Kaiser went on to say, “Instead of people buying dairy products served in restaurants, they started buying more milk from grocery stores. It flew off shelves all over, so grocers started putting limits on purchases. That compounded the problem. It wasn’t that we had a shortage of milk; we had a bottle-neck at the bottlers.”
According to Regan Bluel, during the panic-buying of a few weeks ago, fluid milk sales were up 40 percent from a year ago.
“Last week, they were still 20 percent higher than the same time last year,” she said. “Obviously, this is a trend we hope will continue.”
Bluel calls the fluid milk bottlers at Hiland in Springfield “heroes.”
“They’ve been working around the clock bottling fluid milk,” she said.
According to Duane Kaiser, Central Equity Co-op farmers haven’t run into the same problems getting their milk processed.
“The problem we have is competing with larger co-ops like Dairy Farmers of America,” he said.
“Back when I was younger,” Kaiser, who is now 62, said, “we had a lot of markets for our milk. Almost every town in southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas had a milk processor. But all that’s changed. Companies have consolidated. Now, the nearest and largest processing facilities are Kraft and Hiland in Springfield, supplied largely by DFA.”
“Because DFA is the biggest milk co-op and they extend throughout the U.S., most of the milk in the U.S. is produced by DFA co-op farmers, and that milk goes to select, large bottlers and processors,” Kaiser explained. “To keep up with huge demand, DFA expects a lot from their farmers. They want large farms in their co-op, farms that can produce larger quantities of milk than smaller family farms can contribute. That’s what’s happened to the dairy farming industry in Barry County, specifically, and in Missouri as a whole. You either have to meet DFA’s demands for upsizing and up-producing - if you want to and can afford it - or you participate in a smaller co-op, which sometimes has its own advantages, as we’ve just seen.”
“People don’t realize it,” he continued, “but we’re a very food-insecure nation. This little blip in the supply chain kind of gave us an inkling of what could go wrong. When most of the nation’s milk is produced and processed by only a handful of co-ops, if there’s a glitch in the chain, we’ll have problems like the one we just saw. I’m not talking only about the dairy industry either. The beef industry is another example. Right now, most of the beef we buy in grocery stores is processed by only about four companies in the nation. Capitalism is doing to our food supply exactly what communism did to it in the Soviet Union.”
Tom Mareth, another milk producer from rural Purdy, is a member of the Dairy Farmers of America co-op. Mareth, who milks 300 cows, took over his parents’ dairy operation in 1990, after Wells Aluminum closed up shop in Monett. He managed the dairy farm while his wife, Mendy, pursued a career in nursing.
Tom Mareth readily admits to the truth of much of what Duane Kaiser said.
“Dairy farming is a hard business to stay in these days,” he said. “DFA wants large farms that produce a lot of milk. 300 cows might sound like a lot, but that number’s nothing compared to some farms in the U.S. that have 3,000 or more cows. Before I built my newer confinement barns, I toured a farm in Minnesota that had 5,000 cattle. My farm’s small by comparison.”
Mareth, whose son, Adam, has since taken over the dairy operation, said it would be almost impossible for a young man to get into dairy farming from scratch these days.
“If you’re not taking over a family farm, you’d need a lot of cash up front to get a loan to start one up,” he said. “And, there aren’t very many people with that much cash who would want to do this kind of work. Barry County can’t really support the type of larger farms Dairy Farmers of America is wanting, anyway.”
Duane Kaiser guessed there are now probably about 19 farmers still milking in the county. Bluel agreed his guess probably isn’t far off.
Mareth can reel off the names of at least eight families who used to milk within a few miles of his farm, and are no longer doing so.
“Forty years ago,” he said, “Barry County probably had about twice as many dairy farmers as we have now.”
When asked what he foresees for the future of his dairy operation, Kaiser was slow to answer.
“I don’t know,” he replied, quietly.
Jared Wormington was philosophical.
“We’ve had hard times before,” he said. “God’s always made a way. I’ll keep doing what I do - paying attention to the things I can control, like the quality of my milk.”
“The farm’s a good place to raise kids,” he continued. “If the economy falls apart, at least we’ll have beef to eat and milk to drink.”
