Why Small Dairy Is Disappearing—and How Farmers Are Fighting Back
Dairy companies love to capitalize on the idea of a family farm. It’s why milk cartons and other dairy packaging often feature rolling green hills; lush green pastures; and smiley, happy cows. Decades ago, these picturesque vistas may have better reflected reality. Today, however, the idyllic family farm is a relic of a bygone era.
June is National Dairy Month, and we’ve got to talk about industry consolidation. Between 1997 and 2017, the United States lost nearly 70% of all family-scale dairies. Today, about 83% of all milk sales come from just three dairy cooperatives: the Dairy Farmers of America, Land O’ Lakes, and California Dairies Inc. What does this mean for small-scale dairy farmers? They feel like they need to “get big or get out.”
“Family-scale dairies are collapsing at an alarming rate, and those that manage to hang on face rising costs, negative returns and mounting debt, while consumers are sold an illusion of pastoral, sustainable milk products.”
—Rebecca Wolf, Food & Water Watch Food Policy Analyst
At The Transfarmation Project®, we’ve seen this firsthand. Our work with former dairy farmers is marked by similar stories. Our farmers experienced financial strain and a lack of control, which ultimately drove them to transition their operations. Together with Transfarmation™, they converted to growing specialty crops!
Dairy Barn to Greenhouse: The Barker Family
Olusanya Farm is a Black-owned farm committed to employing local workers and growing healthy food for the community. When Phillip and Dorathy Barker purchased the property in 1981, it was a cattle farm for beef. Hoping to diversify their operations at that time, they built a dairy barn with the help of their five children.
“We were very good dairy farmers,” Phillip said. “Our production was very high, even with smaller cows. That allowed us to continue to pay our bills and stay on the farm.”
But the Barkers were unhappy in the dairy industry. Phillip felt that his relationship with the milk company and factors outside his control heavily influenced his decisions: “I couldn’t get away from the farm loan debt. They had control of everything, really.”
The Barkers began growing vegetables on a small scale, but when Hurricane Fran tore down their barn, they faced with a difficult decision. They could rebuild and invest in another 100 cows, which would cost roughly half a million dollars, or they could call it quits. The Barkers decided they were done with dairy.
They brought in a cold-storage unit and began removing the tanks from the dairy parlor to construct a kitchen for washing, packing, and grading their produce. They continued their transition by working with Transfarmation.
“I looked at [the dairy barn] at one time as a white elephant. Now I see it as a structure … that the next generation can use and make it even better.”
—Phillip Barker Sr.
By the beginning of summer 2024, the Barkers had completed construction, converting most of their dairy barn into a greenhouse. Their crops include ginger, turmeric, microgreens, basil, rosemary, and aloe. In their indoor mushroom space, they’re growing oyster, shiitake, and lion’s mane mushrooms.
Milk to Mushrooms: The Hamilton Family
Paul and Paula Hamilton ran a dairy farm together. Their operation had been in Paul’s family for three generations. The Hamiltons’ dairy farm operated for 69 years with about 40 to 50 cows. With little warning, their farm was phased out over a three-week period.
“I don’t think the average person understands where their food comes from. When you tell them the average dairy has [hundreds to thousands] of cows, they are appalled. When we had cows, my husband could tell you whose cow was whose mother, and he knew when a cow was not acting right. When you’re milking that many cows you can’t know that stuff.”
—Paula Hamilton
“We just didn’t want to expand, which signed our death warrant,” Paula said. “We fought it every way possible; we had attorneys and everything. There was nothing we could do.”
After their dairy closed, Paula attended Farm Aid to tell their farm’s story. There she observed a demonstration on mushroom farming. She began researching what mushroom farming would take, and it seemed a good idea.
Paula found Transfarmation through her mushroom research and connections made through Farm Aid. In 2023, she applied for the Bo Halley Research and Innovation Grant for their pilot project idea, Hamilton Farms Mushrooms.
Today, Paula is successfully growing several varieties of specialty mushrooms, including oyster, lion’s mane, and enoki. She also offers a variety of value-added products, such as spice blends, soup mixes, and dehydrated mushrooms.
A strong and vocal farmer advocate, Paula also encourages her peers to have “off-ramps” in the face of losing their farms to corporate consolidation. She was even recruited for a focus group at her local farmers market because she has a reputation for proactively seeking to help farmers in similar situations.