SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Leading California dairy farms are radically different from today’s Canadian prairie dairy farms and radically different from the way they were 20 years ago.
At the Canola Council of Canada convention in San Francisco, Calif., March 18, California dairy producer Peter de Jong described his farming operation and the transformation it has undergone.
Cloverdale Dairy, which milks more than 16,000 cows, operates four milking facilities and barns and processes and packages milk products.
It distributes them to the military, hospitals, schools and cruise ship lines.
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In 1995, de Jong’s family had just acquired an 800- to 900-head dairy operation. De Jong built a 2,200-head facility in the San Joaquin Valley in 1995, later building a 4,800-head operation.
Four years ago, he bought a 5,400-head operation and last year began leasing a 3,200-head farm.
“It’s a real family business. You think corporate, but it’s brothers, sisters, cousins and friends.”
De Jong’s two brothers each operate 2,000-cow operations.
The extended family operates the sophisticated farming enterprise, but doesn’t plan to keep expanding milking. Feed is hard to get and often has to be imported. Water regulations are tough and getting tougher in California.
“There are lots of regulations. We deal with it on an ongoing basis. It’s never ending,” de Jong said.
Fortunately, the rich farmland of the valley can soak up and use vast amounts of manure, which the family’s barns flush into lagoons and then pump through a pipeline system toward a flood irrigated set of fields.
De Jong said the family thinks its growth will come in the form of increased processing of milk, something it already does.
