Dairy farms have been some of the hardest hit businesses in the agriculture industry over the last decade, and while the outlook for 2020 was good, the coronavirus pandemic put a wrench in things once again.

What You Need To Know

  • The New York Farm Bureau surveyed 500 terms across New York State back in June about the coronavirus.
  • Sixty-five percent of them said they were financially impacted by the virus.
  • Both produce and dairy took hits as restaurants shut down across the state at the beginning of the pandemic.
  • Some of the revenue streams still have not recovered as restaurants haven’t fully reopened or may not reopen at all.
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The New York Farm Bureau surveyed farmers across New York state and 65 percent of the 500 farms surveyed say they are economically impacted by COVID-19.

“We were finally gonna re-coop some of the losses that we’ve had over the last five or six years. We were looking at a good year. The weather looked like it was gonna cooperate, we were putting in our crops on time, we were gonna have a great crop year — and then corona happened,” said Nathan Chittenden co-owner of Dutch Hollow Farm in Stuyvesant.

Chit Remsen says when restaurants were forced to shut down, dairy farms across New York state suddenly were producing milk with nowhere for it to go.

“It was what happened after it left the farm that needed to change,” he said.

But Chittenden says that’s where things probably went better for dairies than any other agriculture industry, with processors and co-ops working around the clock to get milk products previously bound for restaurants onto the shelves of supermarkets in about two weeks time. Now five months later, the demand still hasn’t caught up to the oversupply.

Dutch Hollow Farms is part of a co-op, so while Chittenden says they’re luckier than independent farms their co-op still asked them to cut their milk production by six percent.

“Our milk wasn’t being disposed of, it was still gonna get shipped but we just weren’t gonna get paid for it,” Chittenden said. “So to make the product and not get paid for it is a humongous economic hit to this business — so we have to figure out a way to make less milk — we actually sold 35 cows yesterday.

Dutch Hollow Farms has Jersey cows, which produce higher fat content and higher protein milk than other milk producing breed, so Chittenden says their milk is often favored over some other farms. But that’s not the only reason he says their family feels fortunate.

“The local people care about the farms in their community, so there was no shortage of people wanting to know what they could do. Not just for my farm but for all the farms in the area,” Chittenden said. “New York is really supportive of its local food system and dairy is part of that local food system.“

And NYFB’s survey found almost 50 percent of farmers were concerned about mental health amid the pandemic but Chittenden says this is another bright spot for Dutch Hollow.

“I’m so fortunate, I can bring my kids to work every day. One of my three kids has been waking up before 6 a.m. every single day since April wanting to come to the farm with me. And whether they’re helping out or just playing, they’re here and they’re a tremendous boost of morale to the entire family,” Chittenden said.

The entire family. Chittenden runs the farm with his two brothers, parents, and other extended family and he says everyone else who works here might as well be family too. They’ve had some challenges, including losing a staff member in the last two weeks, which has been tough on top of everything else.

“I guess sometimes that’s the toughest part about being a family business, is having to work with your family every single day, but on a day that you just don’t feel like you can make it through, it’s also the one thing that gets you through,” Chittenden said.

One thing that may not change for a while is that oversupply of milk with some restaurants not back to the full operation or not reopening again at all. To prevent waste, Governor 

Andrew Cuomo put a mandate into place to get excess milk to food pantries back in April and just a few weeks ago Senator Kirsten Gillibrand announced a bill in the U.S. Senate that would give block grants to food banks to purchase that excess supply of milk and produce from farms.