cc  >> Hi and welcome everyone  tonight to Wednesday Night at  the Lab here at UW Madison  Biotech Center.  Tonight's speaker will be  Sarah Lloyd.  Sarah is a graduate student in  rural sociology and a dairy  farmer.  She farms with her husband and  his family on a 30-cow dairy  just outside of Wisconsin dells.  She is currently working  on her PhD dissertation  which looks at the  changing world of agricultural  and rural communities.  She will be speaking today about  her research on life  satisfaction on dairy farms.  Please welcome Sarah to  Wednesday Night at the Lab.  (applause)  >> Thank you, very much.  I'm really happy to be here and  appreciate the opportunity to  talk about this research.  And I'll make one correction, we  actually milk about 300 cows. 

 So there's an extra zero.  You said 30 but that's all  right.  So we do milk up towards 300  cows and so I'm  a PhD student.  I'm in my fifth year working on  my dissertation now and I have a  bachelor's in environmental  studies from Brown University  and I have a master's in rural  development from the Swedish  Agricultural University in  Uppsala.  And then I ended up in Wisconsin  where my father grew up and was  living on the farm but not  farming and then I met a dairy  farmer a couple years ago when  this research was already  underway and been married for  about 2 years.  And this is a picture of our  parlor actually.  We farm outside the Dells in  Columbia County.  They expanded their herd from  about 150 to about 300 about six  years ago.  And so we have three families  and about six hired employees  working on the farm.  And I don't milk cows because  then I probably wouldn't be here  tonight. 

 But I do some feeding and some  different things on the farm.  So this research was done  through the Center for  Integrated Agricultural Systems  here at UW Madison.  And we had assistants from the  Center for Dairy Profitability  and the program on agricultural  technology studies.  So thanks to all of them for all  that work.  So I'm going to give you a  little bit of a background about  what's going on in dairy farming  or the dairy industry in  Wisconsin right now, just to  give you a little bit of  context.  And then we'll talk about the  specific research on life  satisfaction.  Is anybody from a dairy farm?  Anybody grow up on a dairy farm?  All right.  Woo-hoo.  Anybody still farming?  No.  Okay, but we've got some folks  with firsthand experience. 

 So I just made kind of a simple  graph, a lot of you might know  this but just to give you some  background.  So as you can see the green line  at the bottom shows you the milk  cows in Wisconsin.  So that's been staying pretty  much constant.  This goes back to '65.  The blue line is the milk  produced per cow in pounds  annually.  So as you can see we've had a  lot of increase in pounds per  cow in the efficiency of one cow  to produce milk.  And then the yellow line is just  total production in Wisconsin  annually in millions of pounds.  Now this red line is actually  measured on the right axis and  that shows you the decrease in  the number of dairy farms in  Wisconsin over time.  So obviously there's been  increase in production but  decrease in the number of dairy  farms.  So that's just kind of keeping  that in mind. 

 We still have, I'll show you  some numbers.  We have just under 14,000 dairy  farms in Wisconsin.  And to compare that, like  California has just over 1900  dairy farms.  So there's a huge difference in  what's going on.  Just to give you a sense of what  the kind of distribution of  dairy farms is in Wisconsin,  that highest bar, these are 2007  numbers which are the most sort  of recent this is from the USDA.  So there's over 5,000 farms in  the 50- to 99-cow category.  We only have, in 2007, there was  only 78 farms of a thousand cows  or more.  So we do have definitely a lot  of farms under a hundred cows.  And the average farm size in  Wisconsin is still under a  hundred cows.  And just to compare that, a lot  of people hear we're the dairy  the state and people get upset  about those California happy cow  commercials because we're  suppose to be the dairy state  and they overtook us in total  milk production and we're really  upset about that. 

 They do actually, these are just  production sales numbers, but  they did produce 2 billion more  dollars in milk in 2007 than  Wisconsin did.  But we have 14,000 dairy farms  and they have 1900 dairy farms  so obviously there's a really  fundamental difference in the  way they're producing their  milk.  And these two column graphs, and  they're a little dark, I  apologize, show you just the way  that we have distributed our  milk production in Wisconsin  which is very different than  what California is doing.  That top kind of lightish blue  bar, in California 72% of all  milk produced in California  comes from farms of a thousand  cows or more.  And only 13% comes from those  size farms in Wisconsin.  As you can see, we have a really  distributed, if you think about  size, distributed milk  production.  And I think that's a great asset  that the state has, and I think  that's something that we need to  really be aware of and thankful  for and think about what that  means for communities and what  that means for rural schools and  all those sorts of things.  So that's just sort of to give  you a sense of kind of what's  going on.  We are the dairy state.    We do produce the most cheese,  and obviously we've got a lot of  farms spread across the state. 

 So it has a lot of implications  for the land and communities and  so that's kind of why we're  looking at this.  So why do we care about life  satisfaction on dairy farms?  So what?  This is my farm.  This is my sister in law --.  There's Tatiana, who's from  Moldova that worked as an  exchange student on our farm.  And then my husband and his  brother doing some work on the  mixer there.  So lots going on on the farm.  All the time.  But why do we care?  Well, as I said the continued  diversity of Wisconsin dairy  industry has really important  implications for the economic,  ecological and social  sustainability of communities  and families and individuals.  And so that's why I think this  is important.  And life satisfaction is a  really important social  consideration in agriculture  and we talk a lot about  ecologically sound farming  practices. 

 We know a lot about the  economics of dairy farming, but  those two things alone won't  fill the whole picture so that's  why it's important that we  understand some of the social  aspects more clearly, and  driving this specific research  was the fact that we have asked  farmers about their quality of  life and their life satisfaction  and we actually in the past got  kind of differing results.  The Center for Dairy  Profitability did a study in  like 2005, I think it was  published, and their results  said that as farmers got bigger,  they were more satisfied.  And then the Program on  Agricultural Technology Studies  did some research and they said  that grass-based dairy farmers  who moved their cows more often  were more satisfied.  So, okay, those are two very  different things going on.  One is getting bigger and  expanding your farm and maybe  hiring more workers and then the  other is maybe staying on a  smaller sized farm and moving  into a grass system.  So we wanted to understand a  little bit more about how can  those two things be since these  are two very different systems  that are going on.  Okay, so what did we do?  We did a survey of farmers in  the spring of 2006.  We sent out 1300 surveys and we  gave people three chances to  answer.  We reminded them and we called  them and we didn't have any  money to give them or even  little magnets but we called  them and bugged them a little  bit.  We got a 44% response rate. 

 Which isn't huge but people in  survey research over time have  found people don't like to fill  out surveys and they do so less  and less now.  We did really try to get, we had  a goal of getting 50% female  respondents.  A lot of farm surveys seem to  get a lot of male respondents  because whenever you try to find  their addresses it often has the  man's name.  So we tried some different  things.  We did get a 34% female response  rate.  So we thought it was a good  start to try to understand some  of the differences between how  men and women are experiencing  life satisfaction on dairy  farms.  This is going to help you  understand our results.  The main thing that we were  looking at is does and how does  life satisfaction differ on  different dairy farms.  And there are kind of four main  systems of dairy farming that  you could kind of categorize in  the state.  And so those are kind of main,  that's our main categorical  variable is the farm system. 

 And so the first one is a  non-intensive pasture use.  So this could be, this is kind  of like your grandpa's grazing.  You put the cows out, you let  them wander around, you feed  them in the barn or probably  close to the barn.  You're not really using the  grass as like food for the cows.  You're just kind of letting them  be outside.  And our average herd size in the  survey was 37 cows.  So these are small farms,  generally not really actively  using the grass as food for the  cows.  Now managed grazing, people  strive to obtain at least 50% of  forage from grass.  Obviously we live in Wisconsin  so the wintertime you're going  to have to feed them with corn  and soy beans and different  things and stored hay and  forage.  But people move, our definition  was people move their cows at  least once a week to a fresh  pasture or paddock. 

 And in fact, the vast majority  of people in the managed grazing  category are moving their cows  once a day or even more.  So you are a grass farmer,  you're really actively managing  the grass.  And then you have the small  confinement, and that's kind of  what you think about in a way of  traditional farm right now our  average herd size was 62 cows.  You're storing your feed in your  silo or in your hay bales and  then you're feeding it to the  cows, you're not using the grass  actively and you're relying on  family labor.  So all of these first three,  family labor is the main labor  in the farm.  And then you have the large  confinement.  The average herd size in our  survey was 691 cows.  They relied primarily on stored  feed.  They differed because they use  modern milking technologies like  the parlor that we showed you  and hired labor is a big aspect.  Once you get over 150-200 cows  you really need to start having  some more hired labor. 

 And obviously people who have 50  cows have maybe a hired man or  something but it becomes more  part of your management.  So that was kind of a long  winded explanation but that will  help you, that's kind of key in  understanding our results.  So we have four main categories  of systems.  And we wanted to see how they  differed.  So we asked them some really  general life satisfaction  questions.  And these five questions, it's  called the Satisfaction with  Life Scale.  It's a standardized scale, it's  used in other research.  And the questions were: in most  ways my life is close to my  ideal, the conditions of my life  are excellent, I am satisfied  with my life, so far I have  gotten the important things I  want in life, if I could live my  life over I would change almost  nothing.  So if you put them all together,  sum them all together, we see  here that the managed grazers  which is the second bar and the  large confinement which is the  bar to the far right, they have  similar scores and there's not  statistically significant  difference between their scores.  There was statistically  significant difference between  those two category scores and  the small confinement and the  non-intensive pasture. 

 And that was a similar result  from a single question we asked  just how do you rate your  family's quality of life.  Which was replicated from some  earlier surveys.  We also constructed a  satisfaction with aspects of  farm and household life.  And one thing I forget to  mention when I was talking about  the survey, we built this survey  on the results of some focus  groups.  So we went out to farm meetings  and organizational meetings and  we talked to farmers to try to  get a sense of how do people  talk about life satisfaction.  What are the different aspects  that come up that would help us  then know what kind of questions  to ask on the survey.  And so based on that, we came up  with a 19-question scale that  asked specific things about  stuff on the farm but also stuff  in the household like what  people do, what responsibilities  they have, taking care of  children, driving to community  events, milking the cows,  feeding the calves and also just  general satisfaction with how  they perceive their farm system.  And again, we came, we saw the  similar results, the managed  grazers, sort of grass farmer,  and the large confinement  farmers reported the highest  significantly higher  satisfaction levels than the  small confinement and the   non-intensive pasture.  So that's what we saw.  And so therefore, if we look at  those past surveys that we  thought were contradictory well  we just sort of said they're  both there, they're both  satisfied. 

 So here's just our general  findings.  So there were similarly high  levels of satisfaction in the  large confinement and the  managed grazers.  But what we had picked up in our  focus groups and what we had  asked on the survey indicated  that those two farmers were  indicating general high levels  of satisfaction but what they  thought was satisfying was very  different.  So they were indicating  different dimensions of  satisfaction.  And that's what we wanted to  look at with our survey because  that's kind of what we thought  was going on.  So we tried to conceptualize a  quality of life or life  satisfaction and we went back  and looked at the literature.  Now there's amazing amounts of  literature on life satisfaction  and you may have heard there's a  lot of books that have come out  recently even in the popular  press about happiness and  quality of life.  So it's a little overwhelming.  There's whole journals just on  how do you measure this stuff.  We kind of came up with the two  basic dimensions of quality of  life that seemed to be out there  in the literature and one is  hedonic quality of life which is  the pursuit of happiness or  pleasure as the ends of driving  human action. 

 It's possession or status-based  most often.  Then you have a eudemonic  quality of life which goes back  to Aristotle.  Which was about well-being and  is about actualizing your own  potential and living in sort of  sync with what you think is your  true purpose or your true  being.  So those are the really classic  categories of quality of life.  And so when we were thinking  about what we found out through  our focus groups and looking at  the literature, we really  thought that we shouldn't really  talk about quality of life, we  need to be talking about  qualities of life.  And we conceptualized the  hedonic as having quality of  life and the eudemonic as  being.  But we're sociologists so we  like that people interact with  each other.  So having and being is kind of  about you.  It's all about the individual.  So we felt like we were hearing  about relationships and people  were getting satisfaction from  their relationship with their  family, with their community,  with their cows, with the  environment. 

 And so I have some quotes of  people just to give you a sense  of how the differences in these  things.  So having satisfaction people  talked about I'm satisfied with  my financial profitability, my  income, owning my own assets,  having a lot of land that I can  call my own.  And these are direct quotes  actually from some open-ended  survey questions when we just  said tell us two things that you  like about farming.  And this is what came up.  Now being satisfaction, having  my wife and best friend to work  with and share daily life.  The daily challenge of working  with a dairy herd.  This is a nice one, cold crisp  clear night looking up and  seeing all the stars and moon,  then watching the cows travel in  moonlight to a new round bale I  just put out.  So someone wrote that in their  survey about what they like  about farming.  And then serving, people wrote  things like I love the earth and  I think it is my responsibility  to take care of it the best that  I can.  I like to take care of animals  and the land. 

 I like being a steward of the  land.  I like producing food and  providing positive economic  benefit to our community.  So we felt like those were kind  of outside looking things in  satisfaction.  So we conceptualized of this  three main dimensions of having,  being and serving, and actually  to add complexity we sense that  there actually was kind of  serving having and serving  being.  So there's sort of four  dimensions but the main three  are having, being, and serving.  So how did we operationalize  that?  We did eight questions that we  asked in our three main, eight  questions about having, eight  questions about being, eight  questions about serving.  And for those you of who like  statistics we ran a bunch of  tests to see if they actually,  the eight questions kind of hung  together in our results.  And we did find that the  Cronbach's alpha scores were  . 77 or higher which in social  science statistics that's seen  as adequate for saying that you  have a consistent theme in those  eight questions.  And then basically the serving,  eight questions in the serving  scale were four serving-having  questions and four serving-being  questions.  And those four questions had  slightly lower alpha scores,  . 65 or higher, but that's still  seen as hanging together. 

 And we also did some other  confirmatory tests that  indicated that we could use our  scales as a kind of single  concept.  Okay, so what did we find out?  Well, in having, the large  confinement operator scored  significantly higher than all  other farm systems on the having  scale.  And in fact, both confinement  systems, small and large, scored  significantly higher than both  the grass-based or grazing.  And that was kind of what we  thought we heard in the focus  groups.  And when we went into this we  said okay it's going to be  really easy.  Large confinement operators  having, grazers being.  Okay, let's go home.  But it didn't show up that way.  In fact, we saw in the being  results that the large modern  confinement operators and the  managed grazers had the highest  scores on the being scale and  they were significantly higher  than the small confinement and  the non-intensive pasture  system.  And they didn't, there wasn't a  significant difference between  the managed grazers and the  large confinement. 

 And then when it came to  serving, we saw that actually  large modern confinement  operators scored significantly  higher than grazers and small  confinement operators on the  serving scale.  And so remember we had that  subset of serving which was  serving-having and  serving-being.  And actually when we look at  that we sort of see the same  results replicated from the  straight having and the straight  being scales.  So the orange results that are  on the right are the  serving-being.  So we see that they're pretty  consistent across the different  systems but we do see that the  large confinement and managed  grazers have sort of higher  being scores.  And then the green is the  serving-having and we see that  same trend that the large  confinement have the highest  scores in that.  So the serving results kind of  mirror the results that we have  in the eight question having and  the eight question being.  So really what we think is kind  of most important about this  research is that there's not one  quality of life and there's  actually some qualities of life  going on.  And that, in fact, the qualities  that people get satisfaction  from and think are important are  different depending on the farm  system.  And we think this has important  implications for when people are  thinking about going into  farming, people are thinking  about maybe taking the farm over  from their mom or dad. 

 Maybe they want to think about  like what they find satisfying  when thinking about their  system.  Because there does really seem  to be this kind of different  viewpoints on what is  satisfying.  And, in fact, I think this has  important implications for  policymakers and University  Wisconsin specialists to think  about that different people are  experiencing life differently  and people are doing things for  different reasons, and a lot of  what's happened in the dairy  industry is we've really moved  towards this economic efficiency  which people have said comes  with expanding your herd.  But what our research kind of  shows is that maybe not  everybody will be satisfied  getting big because that might  not just be what their kind of  true nature is or what they  think is important.  So if we want to have satisfied  farmers then we maybe need to  think about what's going on with  that.  So that's kind of the basics of  that little section.  I have a couple more slides that  might go into more detail on  some other measures that we took  of economic background of the  people and how that matched with  their scores.  But maybe I can take some  questions right now and then we  can have more of a discussion.  Folks have clarification  questions or comments right now?  Yeah?  >> Does this take into  consideration the people that  work on so-called factory farms?  >> Well, the large confinement  farms, the average, the question  was does this take into  consideration the sort of  large-scale or factory farms.  And the large confinement  operators, as defined in our  category, the average herd size  was 691. 

 So officially in Wisconsin once  you get over a thousand animal  units then you're considered a  CAFO, a confined animal feeding  operation, and then you actually  have to get extra Department of  Natural Resource water discharge  permits and you have more  rigorous regulations about your  manure management and things  like that.  So yes, those people would be in  the large confinement category.  Yeah?  >> In about'72 I went through  California and I was surprised  about the huge farms.  >> Yeah.  >> It's always been those huge  factory farms for a long time I  think, right?  In California?  >> Yeah, California has an  interesting dairy history.  I don't know when the biggest  farms, but we talk about, you  may have heard there's an  8,000-cow dairy being proposed  in Wisconsin up by Fond du Lac.  And that's huge for Wisconsin.  But I was reading in the farm  paper the other day that like  southern Idaho they're talking  about 99,000 cows on three  operations that are kind of  right by each other.  So it's interesting when you  think about scale that for us  our average herd size is still  under a hundred and that's  really different than these  5,000-, 10,000-, 30,000-cow  dairies and has some really  different implications for milk  supply but also just what it  means for the landscape and  things like that.  So I don't know the exact  history of when the big farms  starting coming in California. 

 But actually the California  dairy farms are actually  starting to drop off.  Their milk production in  California has actually started  to decline recently.  And part of it, and this is an  issue in Wisconsin, is that most  farmers in Wisconsin grow their  own feed or buy it from  relatively close by.  Not everyone, people have to  supplement or maybe they buy  stuff from Minnesota sometimes.  But generally that's a big  difference.  A lot of the larger farms in the  west, they may have their 20,000  cows on ten acres and that's all  they have.  Whereas, in Wisconsin we have  much more of a tradition in the  industry of people growing their  own feed.  Like our farm we basically grow  everything we feed to the cows.  We don't sell things into the  market that much.  I mean, sure if we could sell  some corn when it's real high  that would be great, but we  actually had to buy some corn  when it was at $7 and that was  horrible. 

 But that's, I think, something  that people sometimes don't take  into consideration is when the  commodity prices get real high  for dairy farmers in Wisconsin  they may not be selling much  into the market so that might  actually not help them very  much.  >> You said you had some labor  efficiency measurements, and if  you do, does that show, quantify  how much altruism the farmers  have to overcome their lower  productivity?  >> He asked about if I had labor  efficiency measures and if it  took into account altruism.  So what was the connection, that  altruism would overcome...?  >> The grazing farmers are  altruistic, they've been doing  something good for society and  is that in overcoming their  lower income?  >> Okay, so he said grazers are  doing something good to society  and how does that overcome  perhaps their reduced production  and potential reduced income.  So to that, you may know that if  you switch your cows from this  kind of scientific total mixed  ration, which is what this  confinement operators, both  small and large, would tend to  feed, if you switch to a  grass-based system you're going  to get a reduced production,  milk production.  And so then you're not going to  get as much money.  Now one thing that the grazers  have been able to do, and I  didn't bring a copy of that  report, there's a report called  "Pastures of Plenty" that Tom  Kriegl and the Center for Dairy  Profitability put together, and  he actually shows that over, I  think it's an eight-year period  in that report, that the  grass-based farmers are making  more money per cow and per  hundredweight of milk than the  confinement operators because  they reduced their input cost so  much.  Because they don't have as much  of the seed cost.  I mean, they may still grow some  corn and some beans.  They don't have as much of the  fossil fuel based cost, the  input cost, because the cows are  walking around and pooping and  then they're eating, not at the  same time, yeah at the same  time, but they have actually, if  you measure by per hundredweight  or hundred pounds of milk and  per cow, the grazers are getting  a better return.  So are they altruistic or are  they just choosing a different  strategy to succeed in the  economics of it. 

 I don't know.  I don't have measures in labor  efficiency actually so I'm sorry  if I misled you in saying that.  I have some stuff about the  economics and income and things  like that.  Yeah?  >> In your survey, did you  actually survey in the large  confinement situation, the  employees as well as the owners?  >> No, we did not.  >> And secondly, did you factor  in the amount of support that  goes to the large confinement by  government in other ways  compared to the small farmers?  >> Right.  >> Did you factor that in?  The government actually supports  large confinements.  >> He asked first did we survey  the workers as well as the  farmer owners?  And the answer is no, we did  not.  And the second question was did  we factor in at all the  government supports or subsidies  that maybe tended more towards  the large confinement operators?  And we didn't.  One thing that we did sort of  look at and maybe I can just,  there's my husband.  (laughter)  Looking like a farmer. 

 So one thing is someone said  grazers are making more money so  that's why they're satisfied  equally as the large confinement  people because it's just really  in the end just about money.  But actually we did see that in  a just reported family income  that the large confinement  operators did report having  larger incomes.  Now obviously farm income is  very complicated and it's hard  in a survey to know if everybody  is counting their income the  same way, but as a general  measure, if it was just about  money then we would expect that  the managed grazers would not  have as high general  satisfaction as the large  confinement.  If it was really just about  money.  Now another thing that was  interesting, and I actually  don't have a slide on this, but  in the published version of this  report that's available out on  the table we do have a couple  measures that we did, and this I  think is kind of interesting, is  that we had large confinement  operators indicating high levels  of satisfaction yet they have  really astronomical debt/asset  ratios that if you compare.  So we did ask them about their  debt/asset ratio and the large  confinement operators had a  debt/asset ratio of . 4139 and  all the others had under . 2.  So really huge.  So then you say if you're really  in debt then you must be, that  must be really stressful and  unsatisfying.  Well, no.  Or not in these cases. 

 Obviously if you owe the bank a  hundred thousand dollars it's  your problem.  If you owe the bank a hundred  million dollars it's their  problem.  They don't owe them that much  money.  Maybe they owe them a million  dollars.  >> (inaudible)  >> I guess it  could be something like that.  Did you have a question?  >> Are there any farms here like  the one I saw in Iceland where  the cows are free in the barn,  they walk to a place where  they're milked mechanically  whenever they want to so milk  production is much higher.  Is there anything like that?  >> Yeah, she asked, she said  she'd seen a farm in Iceland  where the cows just kind of walk  in and get milked when they feel  like it and walk out and that's  a robotic milking machine.  And there are some farms, I  don't actually know how many in  Wisconsin are doing that.  I know somebody up in Columbia  county that got the robotic  milkers when they first came out  and found when the teats of the  udders are irregular the older  version of the robotic milkers  couldn't find them.  So you ended up having to milk a  lot of them by in the old way  anyway. 

 So it got to be a problem.  (laughter)  But I think they've  improved that technology  greatly.  At least when you go to the farm  shows they're always bragging  about it.  Because some cows would then  walk in four or five times a day  and that does increase  production of milk because the  more you kind of demand milk of  the mammary system the more it  will give it.  We milk three times a day and  that is something that, we don't  have really good figures on what  percentage of Wisconsin farmers  milk two times versus three  times.  Obviously two times is the more  traditional standard practice.  But you do get higher production  with three times a day.  But that has labor impacts.  Because obviously if you're  milking three times a day you  need more labor on your farm.  So that's something, when we get  calls at midnight that some cow  has slipped in the parlor my  husband says why do we milk  three times a day?  So those are things to consider  when we're putting together  these systems for farmers. 

 Yeah?  >> I can think of some more  parameters that might be  interesting to add to the study.  One would be organic versus  nonorganic farms and the other  would be farms that are involved  in CSA because I think in those  you would find a significantly  higher proportion of people that  are in it for the satisfaction  and the service.  >> So he asked about if you put  some different parameters or  variables, if you put organic  farms, if you put farms that  were active in community  supported agriculture, direct  marketing.  We did ask people about their  organic status, if they had any  organic, certified organic or  they planned to be certified  organic, and we did not see any  significant difference in their  organic farms in their  satisfaction levels.  Most organic farms that ended up  in our survey, well actually I  think all of the organic farms  ended up in the managed grazing  because that was the system they  were using a grass-based system  very heavily.  Yeah?  >> Concerning things like  vacation, is it generally things  with different family members so  part of the family can take off  and the cows could still be  taken care of.  >> That's a huge issue.  He asked about vacation.  And indeed we did ask, and this  is kind of a standard question,  how many times have you been off  the farm for more than 24 hours  or 48 hours in the last year?  And it's pretty bad.  People are not getting off the  farm and we did see, I don't  have the slide for this, that in  fact the large confinement  operators are getting off the  farm for longer periods of time. 

 And that is a benefit of having  the hired labor in a sense that  you can leave the farm.  We asked for spouses and, let's  see, oh, so kind of related to  this, obviously you know a lot  of farmers have moved in to  having someone on the farm has  an off-farm job in order to get  the health insurance or bring in  extra income and certainly also  to work in their own interests  and their career aspirations and  things.  But this shows 2000 and 2005  just for comparison.  So interestingly the grazers  report a lot more, a higher  percentage of income from  non-farm sources.  So in 2005 the managed grazers  were over 25% of their income  was coming from a nonfarm source  so an off-farm job, nonfarm job.  Whereas the confinement  operators had consistently  lower.  Now, again, if you say farming  is satisfying and grazers are  satisfied because of the way  they're farming and large  confinement operators are  satisfied because their farming,  well managed grazers are  indicating satisfaction but they  actually are doing other things,  they have more likely to have  off-farm jobs.  So we see this sort of different  constellation of how people are  setting up not just their farm  system but how their family is  surviving in the economy and in  the community.  And so we again see there's sort  of a different profile of the  farmers.  So non-farm income, I was  interested by the fact that the  managed grazers were reporting  reduced non-farm, their  percentage went down from 2000  to 2005 where the confinement  operators went up. 

 But the differences weren't that  big but I was interested if I  ever did some more research on  it I might be interested to look  at that a little bit more, if as  people move towards non-farm if  that is good or not.  One interesting finding that we  had from our focus groups was  that I was doing a focus group  at a grazing workshop and the  women, I had separated the women  and the men so they could talk  among themselves about what they  liked about farming.  And the women were laughing and  laughing and I went over there  and I said what are you talking  about and they said we said the  best thing about farming is our  sex life.  And I went oh.  And they said since we switched  to grazing our sex life has  gotten a lot better because  we're not on the machines as  much and a lot of the work is  out in the pastures, we spend  more time standing next to each  other, and one woman talked  about how I quit my job in town  because we were making more  money per cow or per  hundredweight and I was able to  quit my job in town.  And so sex life, and they all  agreed.  And actually the men said we  were talking about that too but  we didn't want to say it.  So in fact, the grazers were  very excited about that and it  went through the grazing  community very quickly.  So whenever we would go to other  meetings they would say are you  here to talk about our sex life?  If you want to talk about that,  that's fine.  But we did ask those questions  in our survey. 

 We asked a standard three  question how often do you have  sex, how are you physically  satisfied, are you emotionally  satisfied.  And sadly we had to report to  the grazers that they weren't  having better sex than the large  confinement operators and they  were very disappointed.  Because we didn't find any  actually significant difference  in the farm systems.  But we did see that if you  compare the farmers frequency of  sex with the general population,  farmers are having a lot more  sex.  (laughter)  But there really  isn't any statistical difference  in the different things.  But people, a lot of people that  got the survey I think got a  little mad that we asked them  about their sex life.  But most people answered.  That may have reduced our  response rate a little bit.  We put those questions at the  end hoping they'd get through  the whole thing.  So obviously something to think  about and not something that we  thought about in advance. 

 It just came up in our focus  groups and so we chose to put  some questions in.  But another thing that was sort  of interesting, we asked people  about their marital status and  divorce rates, and the blue bar  on the left is the 2001 US  census, so like the general  population, and then the  purply-red is our survey, 2006  life satisfaction, and we saw  really drastically lower divorce  rates in the farm population.  And that's one thing that we'd  be really interested to kind of  look at more clearly because  it's quite interesting.  We wonder there might be some  self-selection in a way that if  you're still farming now maybe  you kept your family together  and that's part of why you're  still farming especially if  family labor is important.  That might be part of it.  We don't know at this point.  We haven't done more research.  But it is indeed interesting to  see.  And this was, these percentages  I use, because obviously the  different age groups and  different generations may have  different divorce rates.  So these results were that I  kind of melded those together so  that's taken into account, the  different kind of cohorts. 

 But this is a really intriguing  finding that we had and we  haven't figured out how to  follow up on it.  Do healthy families lead to  healthy farms?  Do healthy farms lead to healthy  families?  And obviously it's probably some  combination of those two things.  >> I'm sure part of it is that  farming is a lifestyle, it's not  just a job.  >> Yeah, he said that farming is  a lifestyle not just a job.  And that's certainly what we got  a lot of in some of the  open-ended questions in our  survey and our focus groups from  all the farm systems.  Obviously if you think about how  hard it is, farming, obviously  people aren't doing it just for  the money because they would  have got out a long time ago if  that's what they're doing.  Yeah?  >> This is about the sex life  but what about the cow's  satisfaction?  (laughter)  They're in their  stalls all day and then the ones  in the field?  >> So she asked about cow  satisfaction and is there a  difference between the  confinement animals and the  grazing animals.  We didn't ask the cows, but we  did ask one of the questions in  the kind of general satisfaction  with farm was about your herd  health.  So how satisfied are you with  your herd health?  And the grazers had  significantly higher scores in  satisfaction with herd health.  And I don't know if there's  research coming out of like  animal science or dairy science  about this but there is  generally people do report that  when their animals are on grass  they tend to have less problems  with their feet. 

 Holsteins, we have all these  black and white cows and their  kind of notoriously bad feet.  You actually end up having to  cull or ship animals to be  butchered because their feet are  so bad.  They're actually probably  producing a lot of milk but they  can't walk around.  And so the grass-based animals  tend to have better feet, and  the other thing is sometimes  after cows calf their stomachs  can twist and you can, the vet  actually comes, it's amazing,  and just cuts a hole in the side  and untwists it.  But a lot of grazers that I talk  to report that the incidence of  that twisting of the stomach  goes way down in the grass-based  animals.  And part of that is that their  rumen is filled with grass all  the time, whereas when their  eating more grain it's not the  same situation.  But these are anecdotal.  I don't know what's coming out  of dairy science and the animal  science on that.  But that's definitely a factor.  >> Are they kept in stalls 24  hours a day?  >> Yeah, the confinement  animals. 

 >> And we think an animal is  happy?  >> Well, they're not standing  up.  Most often they're in loafing  sheds so they can sit down and  they chew their cud.  And yeah, I don't know.  We have a confinement system.  I worry about the cows.  But they produce a lot of milk  and they life for four, five,  six, seven years.  But yeah, I think that's a valid  point.  She asked about is that a good  life for a cow to be in a  confinement situation all day.  And that's something we can talk  about.  The cows produce milk and seem  to be content to sit there. 

 If I were a cow I might choose  to be on grass if I could  choose.  Yeah?  >> Do you know if California has  done any kind of a survey on  some of the points, at least,  that you have taken into  consideration?  >> She asked if there's been any  similar studies in California on  these issues.  And I don't know that there has.  There may have been.  I don't know.  Again, they have such a  different spectrum.  In one way you might be able,  because they've got more of  these larger farms you might be  able to do some more specific  analysis of what's going on in  the larger farms because they've  got more of them.  >> They're all congregated  together so it wouldn't be too  difficult.  >> I think they do have some  distribution across the state,  but you're right, there's a big  concentration.  In which valley, is that?  >> (inaudible)  Down near Ontario. 

 >> So, did you have another  question?  >> When I lived in Arizona back  in the '80s we had this resource  management that went onto farms  and they, I don't know diddly  about it but I don't know I  just, they're kind of out, the  cows were spread all over the  place and there's just little  bushes and they put down a  little block of salt and knock  down the bushes and they're  trying to bring back the  grasslands that got wiped out in  the 1880s or something.  >> Right.  >> Do they have more paddocks?  Is that becoming more popular in  Wisconsin?  >> Well, the latest figures, I  haven't seen numbers for a  couple years, but they estimate  that 20% of the Wisconsin dairy  herds are managed grazing herds,  so they're actively rotating  cows and using grass as a main  feed source.  And so 20% of the herds is  substantial amount.  And they've been trying to watch  and see if that number is  increasing or not.  And that's something, we have  this thing in the university and  other places where we're really  good at talking to the farmers  that are farming but we don't  ever talk to the farmers that  stopped farming.  So we don't really know like  what's going on with that.  And that would be really  interesting to do sort of exit  interviews with farmers that are  leaving the occupation or the  lifestyle to sort of figure out  what are some of the things that  pushed or pulled them in and out  of farming.  My dissertation research is  looking at that historically but  not sort of right now.  >> Do cows ever get a vacation?  Two weeks off?  >> Do the cows get a vacation?  Yeah. 

 >> (inaudible)  >> They do.  You do dry cows up.  They don't usually milk 365 days  a year.  I think, maybe somebody has a  better, is it 260 days or so  that you would maybe get milk  out of a cow, and then you dry  her up and she's ready to give  birth again and then she'll  start giving milk but there may  be a 30 to 60 day period when  she's dry.  So like where I live we have the  dry cows on my farm, and they're  just hanging out eating.  Not doing anything.  So that's their vacation.  >> In California, where you have  them all congregated, a lot of  those farms have another ranch  further north.  My friends have one on the  Salinas River, and they have  various paddocks up there and  they ship the animals up there.  >> So she said that in  California she knows that some  of these confinement operations  they may send their dry cows up  to greener pastures for their  time off. 

 And there has been some  conversation, especially in the  grazing community, about drying  up your cows.  I think they were going to do it  in the winter.  So actually you would sort of  time it all so that may be your  whole herd or most of your herd  would be dry during the winter  or during some period of time  and then they would all calf and  come back in and that would be  give you a break, that would  give your cows a break.  People have, I know people have  tried that.  I've talked to farmers that have  tried that.  They talk about different levels  of success and sort of timing  the drying up and then getting  it back going again.  So I'm not sure that's been  perfected and that is a more  traditional, it might be going  on a little bit more in Europe  and some of the grass-based  systems over there with the  smaller herds but that is  something.  And you got to deal, it's nice  to have a milk check that comes  to the farmer.  When people are crop farmers  they've got to wait for the  harvest all the time to really  get paid.  Obviously they're buying and  selling grain maybe over time. 

 But for dairy farmers if you're  milking cows you're going to get  a milk check.  So that's kind of a nice thing  to have.  If you dry up your cows you're  not going to have a milk check.  Yeah?  >> Did you attempt to do any  kind of looking over the  shoulder of any of these people  when they were filling this,  either your staff or some of the  local agriculture experts, did  you do anything on those lines  or not?  >> So he asked did we do any  kind of like, while people were  taking the survey did we kind of  look over their shoulder, did we  watch how they filled it in.  No.  But we pretested the survey on  several people.  So I did watch people take the  survey in a draft form and  actually got feedback from them  about questions that were  strange or odd and we did end up  cutting things out based on what  some of those people gave as  feedback.  But no.  And that's obviously the risk of  survey data.  You don't know what's going on  and you don't know if someone's  playing some tic-tac-toe game  with where they're putting their  circles. 

 And obviously there are ways, we  did not do this, but I know that  in survey data analysis,  especially if you have a large  sample you can do  things mathematically to try to  understand if people, if there's  some consistency.  Like if you have a 7 point scale  and people just go 6, 6, 6, 6,  6, 6, 6, 6.  That's not good for statistics  because then you don't have any  variance so you can't see any  difference.  We did not do that, but I do  know that the more advanced  statisticians can look at it and  try to see that, but to answer  your question no we didn't  really look over their shoulder.  But it is something to always  keep in mind with survey  research.  We felt really good in the sense  that because we did these focus  groups before that really helped  us ground the questions.  We got a 44% response rate.  Obviously you worry because then  you're only getting maybe people  of a certain ilk or something  that like to take surveys or  gluttons for punishment or  something like that.  So that's definitely something  to keep in mind when you're  doing surveys.  >> I'd like to comment on the  divorce rate. 

 I don't think that farming  marriages are any happier than  any others, but if you're  thinking about divorce you  become so pressured by family  members, parents, young sons,  etc, everybody, to keep the  business together it's really  difficult to separate a farm.  >> Yeah.  >> And I think as a result more  people just live separate lives,  and I know of marriages where  actually the two partners live  on totally different farms.  >> So her comment was back to  the divorce rate issue is there  something going on with the  divorce rate that we see lower  on farms that not necessarily  means a quality relationship but  means that the complexities of  the business or the family  constraints or the social  constraints are force holding  people into relationships and  marriages that in other  circumstances maybe they would  actually divorce.  And I think that yeah, that's a  really good hypothesis too.  And we did, when we were  presenting the research to some  different farm groups we did  kind of ask do you know when  divorce happens, do farms end?  I mean, is there any correlation  between a divorce and the end of  that business?  And people that didn't come up,  we didn't do it in a scientific  way, and again this is a really  interesting finding and that  would be a good hypothesis to  follow I think too with that.  So either happy farms or not  very happy farms but they're  keeping the people in these  marriages.  Yeah?  >> Do people on farms experiment  around with making their own  cheese and yogurt and stuff?  >> He asked do people on farms  experiment with making their own  cheese and yogurt.  Yeah, I think so.  I mean whether or not people do  it as an economic activity,  that's a different thing. 

 We do have a lot of artisan  cheeses going on in Wisconsin  and that's a big booming  industry for us.  It's obviously a small part of  the cheese production in the  state when you compare it to all  the mozzarella cheese for  Tombstone Pizza that gets made  in this state, which is another  big part of the industry.  But certainly, I think there's a  lot of people working on trying  to create those opportunities  that people might be able to get  a little bit more money by doing  specialty products rather than  just selling commodity milk into  the general market.  She had a question then I'll go  back to you.  >> I worked on a dairy farm for  a lot of the 1940s.  We were in terror of the milk  inspectors because the -- of the  milk would be filled with flies,  I just wonder what goes on now?  >> She said that when she had  worked on a farm in the past  they were terrorized by the milk  inspectors because they needed  to put up a good front.  They had flies in their  strainers and things and  wondering now.  Certainly, I think we have a lot  of inspections that go on to  keep quality milk and low  somatic cell counts and things.  I think the testing of milk  quality is so rigorous now.  They test every, when you pump  your milk into the truck they're  testing that. 

 And if you have, they'll tell  you your cell count and if you  have anything in there that  can't be in there you're going  to have to pay for that load of  milk.  I think people, because of the  inspections, I know there are  some difference between if  you're producing grade A and  grade B.  Now there are very few grade B  farms but there still are.  And that has to do with what  that milk can be used for and  classified as.  And it's very complicated but I  think it's something to think  about how it structures the way  that people do their milking and  their business.  Because certainly by classifying  and grading milk in these  different ways we kind of move  people into different  opportunities.  But I haven't experienced the  inspectors that much.  Let's see.  >> So do you have a preference  raw milk direct from the cow  versus stuff...?  >> Do I have a preference for  raw milk or direct from the cow.  We drink the milk from our farm  but we do pasteurize it just in  a pasteurizer on the countertop. 

 My husband grew up drinking raw  milk but the veterinarian scared  them about ten years ago I guess  about what could possibly be in  there, and actually on this  survey we asked people about if  they drank raw milk.  You may hear that there are  people in Wisconsin, it is  illegal to sell raw milk in  Wisconsin.  It's a state-by-state thing.  It's not illegal to sell raw  milk in California, for example.  And people are interested in raw  milk for the health benefits  that they think that it's giving  them or the taste or whatever  different reasons and right now  people do things to get around  the rules.  You can kind of own part of a  cow, own a cow and then you get  the milk from your cow so you're  not really buying it.  Different things like that.  The university is actually  looking at that.  I know in the Center for Dairy  Research they look at these  issues of cell counts and  Listeria and all these different  things and I remember before we  did the survey they said nobody  drinks raw milk.  Well 75% of our small  confinement grazers and the  non-intensive pastures, 75% of  them reported drinking their own  raw milk and even with the large  confinement it was like 50% I  think or 48%, I can't remember  the exact number. 

 So farmers are drinking their  milk.  And there is some discussion  about is it better to allow it  and regulate it rather than  create this black market for raw  milk which is kind of what we  have.  It's not rampant, I don't think.  I've never been approached by  someone selling raw milk.  But something to think about.  Could it be, I went to a  presentation once by a man from  California who was selling raw  milk into the Los Angeles  market.  He was able to sell, basically  his milk was a gallon was $60, I  think, because people were  willing to pay that much in Los  Angeles.  And he was selling colostrum,  which is the first milk when the  calves are born which is  supposed to be especially  nutritious or immune boosting,  I'm not sure.  And he was getting paid $160 for  a hundred pounds of milk.  Where right now we're getting  paid like $11 for a hundred  pounds of milk. 

 So people want to buy it.  He, I heard afterwards, has run  into a lot of problems.  There was some Listeria scare or  something.  But so that's definitely an  issue about what people are  willing to see as risks.  Some people think that drinking  raw milk is risky and some  people think that drinking  conventional milk is risky and  that's why they want the raw  milk.  So it has to do with what you  think is risky.  >> It's used as an aphrodisiac.  (laughter)  >> He's suggested,  it's a good hypothesis, that the  raw milk is an aphrodisiac and  therefore your sex life gets  better.  I don't know.  (laughter)  Well, any more questions?  I really appreciate the  opportunity to talk about this. 

 Really fun for me and quite  interesting to think about.  And I'm interested in the  continuation of dairy in  Wisconsin as a really robust  industry.  So if I can help figure out what  floats people's boat then that's  good.  So thank you, very much.  (applause)