Posted on 02/25/2006 1:01:13 PM PST by NormsRevenge
CHINO, Calif. (AP) - Watching his 18-month-old grandson waddle past a herd of cows on the family's 80-acre dairy farm, Sybrand "Syp" Vander Dussen feels certain about one thing.
The boy, the youngest in a long line of dairymen, will one day follow in his footsteps.
The question is where.
For nearly 60 years, the Vander Dussens have milked cows. Suburban development edged them first from a farm near Los Angeles and is now squeezing them from land in once rural San Bernardino County.
In a state where the lines between rural and urban are disappearing, homes and cars are winning out over farms and cows.
The flight of dairies is nearly complete in Southern California, marking what could be a turning point in California's long-held dominance over the industry.
Soaring land prices and tough, new environmental regulations have many dairy families such as the Vander Dussens thinking about leaving the only state they've ever known - where their parents and grandparents sought the American dream.
Caught in the grip of urban sprawl, Vander Dussen is a shoot-from-the-hip realist. He knows his options are limited and pulling up roots may be the only way to survive.
"Dairies have gone from darlings to dogs within five years," he says. "Everyone attacks us, nobody wants us."
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As a boy of 4, Vander Dussen and his family arrived in Southern California in 1947, fleeing World War II devastation in Europe.
Raised on a dairy farm in Holland, Syp's father turned to what was familiar - first leasing land for a dairy and later purchasing seven acres in southeast Los Angeles.
As suburbs spread in the mid- to late 1960s and land values spiked, the family packed up and headed 35 miles east to a place they thought they could expand their dairy operation without fear of sprawl.
A fertile valley nestled below the San Gabriel Mountains, the Chino Basin straddling San Bernardino and Riverside counties was home to orchards and other crops and had the nation's largest concentration of cows per acre in the late '70s and early '80s.
When his father retired in 1969, Vander Dussen took over the family's property, now home to more than 6,000 cows. Amid his sea of Holsteins, Vander Dussen hardly notices the smell.
Now 63, he chuckles at the memory of his father thinking of the area as "Timbuktu." All these years later, the steady march of progress has found them.
"It will all be gone in two years," Vander Dussen said, driving past acres of bulldozed dairy land. "It's done. It's too bad."
There were once over 450 dairies in the area. Today that number is 150 and falling. Dairy remnants - former buildings reduced to piles of broken concrete - litter the area like cold graves as they wait to give way to tract homes, which sprout like weeds in the area.
Now considered one of the most attractive areas in Southern California for residential and commercial developers, the city of Chino has a motto of "Where Everything Grows." It no longer applies to crops.
Of the dairies still standing in the area, between 70 and 80 percent have been sold or are in escrow, according to Nathan deBoom of the Milk Producers Council. Some dairymen are being offered up to $550,000 an acre - a strip they may have purchased for $3,000 some 40 or 50 years ago.
At those prices, it's hard to say no. Staying would mean being surrounded by homes, neighbors complaining about the smell and perhaps most of all, the feeling of being unwanted.
"We're seeing this transition of cows to cars, pasture to pavement," deBoom said. "It's kinda the story of Southern California."
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Some longtime dairymen or their widows have decided to walk away. For those like the Vander Dussens who want to relocate, the future is uncertain.
The Central Valley is now home to most of the state's multibillion-dollar dairy industry. The eight-county stretch of fertile land in the middle of California has nearly 1.4 million cows at 1,500 dairies.
Twenty years ago, a move north would have been relatively easy. But dairymen point to a number of factors that in recent years made the Central Valley less attractive.
Groups like the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment have been active in holding dairies accountable for current conditions in the Central Valley, which has some of the most polluted air in the nation. Concerns center on cow emissions, ranging from manure to rumination, that are released into the atmosphere and react with other pollutants to form ground-level ozone.
The group cites statistics - one in six children in the Central Valley take an inhaler to school because of asthma - and have filed lawsuits seeking to compel new or expanding dairies to complete extensive and expensive environmental impact reports.
Dairies "were given a free pass to pollute, and they still have the attitude that the air is their toilet," said Brent Newell, staff attorney for the center.
The situation changed dramatically when a state law went into effect in 2004 requiring dairies to adhere to air pollution standards, just as commercial and industrial businesses do. They had previously been exempt.
To operate a dairy in California, a dairyman now needs a dozen different permits, according to Michael Marsh with the Western United Dairymen. In places like Texas and New Mexico, dairymen need one or two, he said.
"Folks would like to stay here in California," Marsh said. But "a significant number of them, after trying repeatedly to relocate farms in the Central Valley, have instead made the decision to go ahead and move their families out of state."
Marsh and others, including Vander Dussen, say dairies have been unfairly targeted.
"Dairies are not bad for the environment. Dairies can control the problems and the complaints," Vander Dussen said. "We cannot control the environmental onslaught."
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Milking cows has been a way of life for the Vander Dussen family for longer than any one of them can remember.
At 14, Vander Dussen's son, Mark, was sent to breeding school to learn how to artificially inseminate cows.
"I would have done it at 13 but he wasn't tall enough yet," the elder Vander Dussen said.
Now 39, Mark Vander Dussen co-owns the family's farm. He's been preparing himself for the possibility of a move for some time.
"I'm not sad," the younger Vander Dussen said. "I think we'll be doing something somewhere. We're just not sure where."
To stay in California would cost the family $21 million to purchase 3,000 acres in the Central Valley. They would need an additional $15 million to construct the dairy. Because their farm is in a future flood zone, the family only expects to receive about $19 million for their land.
But a few states away in Texas, the Vander Dussens could purchase land for $1,700 an acre and build a dairy for half the cost. The total price would be around $12 million.
The family will likely head east.
"The alternatives are too attractive," Vander Dussen said.
If they leave, they will join an estimated 60 dairy families that have left the state in the past two years from the Chino area. Industry experts predict the trend will continue.
To Tom Alger, a second-generation dairyman, Texas makes sense.
"The land is cheaper. The cost of doing business is a lot less," Alger said. "We think we can make it there."
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That's what worries some in the $5 billion California dairy industry. They fear those leaving now could be the first in a seismic shift of production out of state.
"If the regulatory burden continues to outpace the producers' ability to stay in business, they will just continue to leave," said Marsh of the Western United Dairymen. "It will mean a smaller industry. But it also means a loss of a significant number of jobs."
For now, the state Department of Food and Agriculture is not concerned. Milk production in California has steadily increased by 4 percent each year despite some farmers deciding to leave the state, according to department spokesman Steve Lyle.
"When you look at the numbers, you see the dairy industry as a whole - not just viable but burgeoning," Lyle said.
If the Vander Dussens decide on Texas, they will likely end up in the Panhandle, a stronghold of agricultural tradition.
Dallam County lies in the northwest corner of Texas - 60 miles long by 40 miles wide and home to about 6,000 residents. The number of large dairies is expected to more than double in the next few years as farmers flood the area from California, Wisconsin and elsewhere, according to Dallam County Judge David Field.
"We are just the ideal location," Field said. "There are very few people out here. It's wide open spaces."
The hope of many, including the Vander Dussens, is that it's just remote enough. But the move will be hard. Vander Dussen likes California. The weather is perfect for raising cows, he says.
But he's frustrated by the indifference. He sees local hardware shops closing and mom-and-pop gas stations forced out of business by chains that come with urban sprawl.
"Nobody cares," Vander Dussen said. "The dairy business is being scrutinized, and being permitted and lawsuited away. Nobody cares."
Yeah, it sure is a shame to see the traditional american farmer treated that way {/Sarcasm}
So9
Hypocrites.
You mean the grocery store doesnt make it themselves?
There's no shortage of milk. To the contrary since the 1930's milk price supports have subsidized a huge surplus of milk and dairy products.
I agree with you, but we will both be flamed and labeled as being against property rights for taking this position.
Great, take the money and run.
Of course my favorite stories are about the poor oppressed homeowners whose taxes go up a lot when their property triples in value. Either sell at a massive profit or shut up and quit complaining.
IF...anyone paid $3k and acre 50 years ago....they paid too much. And $550k an acre now...sounds too cheap.
I actually know this family. One of the sons moved to NM about ten years ago. He and his wife have seven sons themselves!
Just posting to say: like your tag line!
Still some wide-open space here in Mississippi. The
land is getting a bit pricey though, but compared to
CA is small potatoes. There are some problems with
taking care of cattle here that probably don't exist
in CA. Protecting animals from insects that cause
problems for them comes to mind.
Shut up and sell already.
He thinks it's only farmers who see their way of life being eliminated, and I'm getting pretty GD tired of their complaining. There are fewer software engineers in Silicon Valley this year than there were in 2000, how's that, Syp? Those jobs ain't coming back before anybody old enough to have had them in the first place is retired.
Why not just take the money, invest it in something conservative and never have to work again? Makes sense to me.
I'm doing the math, wow.. as a kid, we got eminent domain'd on the old farm by an interstate freeway and state highway expansion, we never saw that kind of money, damn! wWe only had 160 acres , probably half tillable or as pasture land, maybe more
If we saw 100,000 much less 88 million from that affair, we were lucky.
I'd be packing Elsie and her friends affairs up as fast as I could.
"Great, take the money and run."
Are you a politician?
productive dairyman
This is a dirty shame. Developers buy up land and then use property rights rherotic to destroy whole communities and enviornments. I don't like it one bit or the dumbass pols who site back and allow it.
Well, there is a lot more to it than that.
There are lots of daries shut down in rural Southwest Va there the pastures are invaded by briars and cedars, the precusors to woodlands. there are no megahouse tracts there.
The cost of operation exceeds the return. There have been big gains in productivity that edges out the marginal dairy producers.
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