New Federal Ag Data Highlights Continued Struggle for the Dairy Industry

Feb 16, 2024

By Catherine Wheeler

The number of farms, both across the country and in New York State, is continuing to shrink, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2022 Census of Agriculture.

The ag census, which was released this week, is reported every five years. It collects data from producers on demographics, economics and land use. It's used to paint a picture of America's ag industry.

Across the U.S., the number of farms went down by 7%.

But it was even worse in New York. The state lost about 2,800 farms, or 9%, between 2017 and 2022.

A big slice of that was in the dairy industry. While dairy is the largest sector of state agriculture, the ag census says about 1,900 dairy farms in New York shuttered over a five-year period.

Christopher Wolf, an agricultural economics professor at Cornell University, says the numbers don’t surprise him. It’s been happening for decades.

"I don't know how much it stood out to me," he said. "I think most people were probably surprised maybe by the amount of consolidation that happened, particularly in the dairy industry."

Wolf is referring to the fact that while the number of dairy farms decreased, the number of milk cows in New York increased by nearly 3,000.

He says dairy farms consolidate because there’s a high fixed cost for milking cows. The equipment is expensive.

"You can spread those fixed costs over more units, so it doesn't cost twice as much to build the milking facilities for 1,000 cows as it does to build them for 500 cows," Wolf said.

That consolidation chips away at the economies of agricultural communities, like parts of the North Country, he said. St. Lawrence County is the third largest milk-producing county in the state.

"New York has got all these rural areas where the dairy farms are a major driver of the local economies," Wolf said. "So if they exit, it has not only implications for the farm family but for the local feed mill, for veterinarians and for all these other kinds of support industries, is that then go away."

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”