Two of California’s leading organic dairy companies have issued a joint call to extend departure deadlines for dairies operating in the Point Reyes National Seashore.
In letters sent last week to Congressman Jared Huffman and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Clover Sonoma and Straus Family Creamery argued that the current 15-month timeline mandated under the legal settlement reached earlier this year is “untenable” and leaves little leeway for farmers to identify, finance and establish new operations.
“California’s Bay Area is the largest natural and organic market in the country and Sonoma and Marin Counties lead the way,” state the letters, which were co-signed by the dairy supplier Organic West Milk. “Our industry is at a viability tipping point and more must be done to secure our local organic milk supply before we permanently lose more dairy farms and next generation farmers.”
Dairies in the North Bay produce 60 percent of the state’s organic milk supply and about 14 percent of the nation’s. Meanwhile, over the past two decades, more than 32,000 dairy farms have gone out of business in the United States, representing a 50 percent decline, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1950, California was home to some 20,000 dairies; today there are fewer than 1,200.
Clover—one of the region’s dominant producers, with sales of around $240 million in 2021—sources milk from 25 family-owned dairies. Until recently, its suppliers included the Kehoe and McClure Dairies in the seashore. Straus Family Creamery, the first organic dairy west of the Mississippi River, works with 13 farms in Marin and Sonoma Counties, including the seashore’s Mendoza Dairy and Drakes View Dairy, which operates at A Ranch. Organic West Milk distributes from the Spaletta family’s dairy, while the McClelland Dairy at L Ranch once supplied Organic Valley.
“The settlement amount doesn’t get anybody enough money to relocate their farm or their dairy or cattle,” said Albert Straus, founder and C.E.O. of Straus Family Creamery. “It’s enough for them to retire somewhere far from here, but that’s about it. We’ll lose these people from our community—and our farms as well.”
Clover, Straus and Organic West contend that the 15-month timeline is “too short to successfully relocate these farms locally,” especially when factoring in the lengthy wind-down and cleanup period required for a dairy operation. In reality, they say, farmers have had “less than nine months to identify, acquire, permit, modernize, fund, and start new dairy operations.”
Of the six dairies in the park, five hope to remain in operation, said Mr. Straus, including those belonging to the Kehoe, McClelland, Spaletta, Mendoza and Nunes families. He has identified around 40 potential properties for the displaced dairies but that “only one or two of them are in the North Bay, and they’re very expensive.”
For many, the tasks ahead feel gargantuan. Twenty-eight-year-old dairyman William Nunes has spent the last five months searching for a new site to relocate his family and his 250 Jersey cows. He must vacate by October—just five months away—to leave enough time to empty lagoons, disperse manure, dismantle the loafing barn and clear out the property before the winter rains set in. This timeline is what is required to maintain manure management compliance under regional water quality regulations.
“An extension would help us,” Mr. Nunes said, “but we are already bound by a settlement.”
Starting over will be far from easy, Mr. Nunes concedes. And locating a viable ranch demands more than scouring Zillow listings. “You got to know people,” he said. “You pick up the phone, make some calls. This guy knows that guy. That guy knows this guy. This guy’s heard of this. It’s a puzzle.”
Amid vanishing rangeland, Mr. Nunes’s word-of-mouth search has brought him to close to 30 properties as far north as Oregon and Washington, and as far east as the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys. Few properties are available in the North Bay—and fewer still in Marin.
“We’re still looking,” he said. “But truthfully, there’s not much that’s viable.” Although he may not find farmland in a setting befitting a Bierstadt painting, with the Elysian vistas his family has known for over a century, he remains hopeful that he can find a property with sufficient pasture and basic dairy infrastructure.
In his search, Mr. Nunes has enlisted help from the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, which offered to assist families affected by the settlement by reaching out to their 98 agricultural easement partners to see if any had land available to lease. He was one of only two ranchers to do so, according to MALT’s executive director, Lily Verdone.
“Two of the biggest impediments to having long-term agriculture in Marin County are the availability and cost of land,” Ms. Verdone told the Light. “We’ve examined all our easements to see where we could connect ranch owners with people looking to lease. But the majority of our easement holders are leasing land to the full extent and don’t have a need for new tenants coming in.”
The land trust is also collaborating with the housing-focused Community Land Trust Association of West Marin and county officials to develop roughly 50 new housing units on a mix of private and public land for farmworkers and tenants displaced by the settlement.
Meanwhile, the Marin Resource Conservation District voted on Wednesday to draft its own request for a relocation extension.
“We initially believed these families had until next spring, which sounded workable,” said Nancy Scolari, the district’s executive director. “But they really need to be packed up by October, so they are in a real predicament.”
Ken Bouley, director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network, said the time for such a request had passed. “It seems that the time to negotiate the terms of the settlement was during the negotiation,” he said.
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