Maine farms have reason to celebrate

Maine’s farmers gathered Tuesday in Clinton – where cows outnumber people and 12 percent of Maine milk is produced – to celebrate their success at keeping Maine’s dairy industry alive while other New England states are failing.

The Wright Place, one of Maine’s largest dairy farms, hosted Maine Farm Days, an annual trade show on a working farm. The Wright Place milks 650 cows, grows crops on 1,800 acres and ships more than 15 million pounds of milk a year to Oakhurst Dairy.

Maine Farm Days will continue today from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tours of the farm are available, as well as a petting zoo, agricultural equipment, a craft fair, and pony rides.

Other events include tractor pulling, farm safety program, a noon milking contest, concessions and a children’s learning center.

But it was networking and strength that Maine’s dairy farmers were looking for Tuesday.

“Farmers in other states are scared to death,” Dale Cole, president of the Maine Dairy Industry Association said Tuesday. “They have no plan.”

Vermont, for example, lost 75 dairy farms in the past 60 days.

“Maine is the shining star of New England because of our dairy program,” Cole said.

A three-tiered subsidy program in Maine provides payments to dairy farmers when the cost of milk dips too low. Before the subsidy program was installed in 2003, milk prices paid to farmers plummeted to a Depression-era low and Maine lost 900 farms in the past 20 years. The subsidy program has slowed that exodus and Maine’s dairy farm population stabilized this year at 354.

The good news, said Julie Bickford, the industry association’s executive director, is that even though the numbers are down, Maine is actually adding new farms.

“And the ones that survived are so strong,” she said. National estimates indicate that the cost of production for Maine dairy farms should have risen by 4.1 percent last year when in reality it rose only 2.5 percent for large farms and 1.9 percent for small farms. This is being attributed to Maine’s farmers’ efforts at efficiency and diversification.

Speaking to dairy farmers Tuesday at Maine Farm Days, Gov. John Baldacci said that more than $9 million in support has been paid to Maine farmers since 2003 and he praised the farmers for their cooperation and dedication.

Baldacci said Maine’s dairy industry has a $700 million annual economic impact in the state.

“That is what makes Maine different. That is why we are growing,” Galen Larrabee, a Knox dairy farmer said Tuesday. “We aren’t making money but at least we aren’t going behind.”

“The tier program makes a huge difference,” Bickford said. “It shows that our farmers have been thinking ahead. Farmers recognized that the down times are more frequent and lasting longer and they are planning how to prepare for that.”

Bickford said today’s dairy farmers are diversified and creative. “Ideally, they would just like to dairy, but farmers are in this because it is what they want to do. The tiered program has dramatically slowed the exodus of farms in Maine.”

Bickford said this is the “worst time ever for Maine’s dairy industry,” with low milk prices and meteoric rise in the cost of fuel, feed and other inputs. But with the tiered support, Maine’s farmers – unlike those around New England – have been able to survive.

“Maine is in an enviable position,” she said. “Dairy farms provide open space, shore up the rural economies and are an economic engine.”