by Warren Shaw

Dracut – This week is National Agriculture Week, celebrating farmers and their contributions to our society and economy.

Dairy farmers are the unsung heroes of our agricultural landscape, working 365 days to provide consumers with a nutritious and affordable product. But the contributions of dairy farmers extend far beyond producing dairy products. Dairy farmers play a crucial role in sustaining our local economies, caring for our natural resources, and ensuring food security.

National Agriculture Week is also an excellent time to reflect on the opportunities dairy farmers have in the future.

In 2019, former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue shared his “the big get bigger and the small go out” view of the American dairy industry when describing the challenges dairy farmers face trying to get by on milking smaller herds.

In New England, dairy farms milking 100 to 300 cows still have a chance. This is because dairy farmers in our region – regardless of the size of their herd – have embraced new opportunities for economic success and understand that it can no longer just involve cows.

In addition to milking cows and putting up feed, today’s dairy farmers are considering new opportunities ancillary to growing and producing food. This includes cutting labor costs with automation, investing in green energy opportunities, and getting involved with agritourism.

My son and I are dairy farmers in eastern Massachusetts. Our family’s farm story began four generations ago when we started milking cows and delivering fresh milk to our customers’ doorsteps. Much has changed since then. We invested in a solar array that pays our electric bill and geothermal energy to provide heat and AC in our farm store. Through an arrangement that allows us to supply manure for an anaerobic digester off the farm, we can be a partner in helping to keep food waste out of the waste stream.

We also invested in a modern bottling plant and a large farm store, which enables us to sell most of our products on-site. This includes milk, our own ice cream brand, and beef products. Our store offers many other items, most from here in Massachusetts.

Sadly, one of our dairy barns collapsed in 2023, so we will be in a construction phase throughout 2024. However, we believe that in the middle of difficulty comes opportunity. The replacement barn will be completely automated with several modern-day robotic devices, which will contribute to the comfort we prioritize for our cows.

These are just some of the ways that we are ensuring responsible management of our farm operation, while also contributing to our economic success.

Many dairy farms, including ours, have looked to the future by selling their development rights through the Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR) Program in Massachusetts or through one of the many other available programs. The APR Program helps to preserve agricultural land and prevent valuable farmland from being developed for non-agricultural purposes that could be detrimental to the environment.

Many New England dairy farmers use land preservation as a tool to help pass the farm on to the next generation, upgrade and re-envision their business, and sometimes buy more land resources. The Massachusetts APR program enabled our farm to double the size of our tillable land base, become less dependent on land rentals, and preserve 80 percent of our farmland.

My generation has an opportunity to secure the land base for future generations through agricultural preservation and conservation easements. Fortunately, there are many resources out there to help with financial support.

Economic viability is certainly the lens through which everyone should look at agriculture. As farmers continue to embrace forward-thinking opportunities, improvements to environmental stewardship, caring for cows, and adaptability in an ever-changing market are sure to follow.

(Warren Shaw owns and operates Shaw Farm in Dracut, MA. The 116-year-old family dairy has a herd of 100. Shaw is also the president of the Massachusetts Farm Bureau, the largest agricultural trade organization in the state)