The minimum wage for those in upstate New York will be increasing to $15 an hour after state lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed to the state budget deal last month. There are plans in place for it to increase even more in the following years. However, increasing wages presents a challenge for some dairy farmers.
“So it’s getting hard and we’re not 100% sure how we’re going to make this work,” said AJ Wormuth, owner of Half Full Dairy.
The price of milk is set by the federal milk marketing order, so farmers have no control over how much they can sell their milk for.
“And we’re just set at a point right now where those prices are falling and they continue to keep dropping,” Wormuth said. “So it makes it really hard to try to manage and run your business when your costs continue to increase and your revenue continues to decrease.”
To combat the recent loss of money, Wormuth says he has had to make some difficult decisions.
“So we cut back on some of what we feed ingredients,” he said. “We try to get more just more efficient with what we’re doing. Like, I showed you some of the collars and the technology that we’re adopting to try to make jobs more efficient people so people can do more with less.”
But he says it’s getting to a point where help from technology and cutting supplies won’t be enough.
“We never like to get rid of anybody if we don’t have to,” Wormuth said. “We just try to find other places to cut. The problem is, is that we’re running out of places and things to cut. You know, we depend on our employees.”
As Wormuth struggles to turn a profit, the executive director of the Workers Center of Central New York, Jessica Maxwell, says the raise in the minimum wage is necessary so workers can make enough to support themselves.
“We saw some of the worst cost of living inflation that we’ve seen in the last half a century, and we need to account for that,” Maxwell said. “People need to be able to survive if they’re going to stay here and work.”
Wormuth says if he could, he would love to pay his employees more.
“It’s not about not wanting to pay anybody or not wanting to take care of them,” Wormuth said. “It’s quite the opposite. They’re kind of our highest priority. But it’s just the economics of trying to cover those mandated costs that keep rising.”
Maxwell says she believes there’s a solution that will benefit everyone.
“If there’s a problem with the pricing structure? Let’s fix the problem with the pricing structure, right?” she said. “Like, why don’t we put our energy there and solve the real problem instead of complaining about it and then trying to solve it somewhere else, which is a false solution.”
The future of the dairy industry is uncertain, and that worries Wormuth. His goal is to leave a thriving business for his family to take over.
“That’s the other challenge when you start to see all these pressures, economic pressures and increase in the mandated costs that are coming is going to have a viable business that they can take over,” he said. “It’s hard. You keep trying to do and find a way and see if you can figure it out.”
