Farming is all in the family

Farming itself is huge in the Show-Me State; Missouri’s 105,000 farm operations make it the second-largest farming state. The Missouri Agricultural Statistics Service says that about 90 percent of the state’s farms are family businesses.

Vickie Kensinger and her husband, David, have been dairy farmers in Fordland for 29 years. But when the couple decided to take control of their own milk bottling operation, Memory Lane Dairy in 1999, the Kensingers recruited their three children and their families.

Many families, including the Kensingers, are forced to choose between corporate jobs and the family farm.

“They all took huge cuts of pay,” Kensinger said of her three children, who all left other jobs to help the bottling operation. “They all know they could go to another job and probably make more money. They could have vacations – they don’t get those here.”

But with the sacrifices also come advantages.

“My son-in-law has an 18-month-old son, and he gets to go with him when it’s suitable, to grain cattle or run errands,” Kensinger said. “You don’t have to take the kids to the babysitter.”

Modern trends

The American farming industry has undergone drastic changes in recent years, most notably a move away from small independent operations and a move toward specializing in one product or commodity.

The mom-and-pop days of farming – selling here and there and going to the farmers’ market – are no more, according to Eldon Cole, regional livestock specialist with the University of Missouri Extension office in Lawrence County.

“The trend is specialization,” Cole said. “As you look at productivity in the (United States), we wouldn’t be able to produce the food and fiber for the large number of people that we do if we still had a mixed agriculture.”

Amy Meyer, communications and outreach coordinator for the Missouri Farmers Union, said her organization has encouraged farmers to add value to their products. Meyer was raised on a family farm in Bowling Green and currently operates a commercial cattle operation there with her brother.

She says local farmers are more able to adapt and add value to their products, “whether it’s forming a cooperative that processes and sells your products or running a small kitchen that makes jams and jellies.”

Specialization was part of the impetus behind Memory Lane’s bottling operations. The company’s milk is now sold from its own store as well as in retail supermarkets across the area.

And without the help from the family, Kensinger said, it would be impossible.

“The three kids, that’s what they do,” she said. “They bottle the milk, distribute it and watch the store. If we didn’t have the kids, we wouldn’t have this operation.”

Farms continue struggling with drought conditions

Just when farmers thought it couldn’t get any worse than the drought of 2005, drought conditions have taken hold again this year in southwest Missouri.

Some areas in the Missouri Ozarks are more than 12 inches behind normal levels for the year, according to the National Weather Service. Add to that the drier-than-average conditions last year and it’s a recipe for disaster – especially in an area dominated by beef and dairy cattle operations.

“(The animals) don’t want to eat. If they can’t get cool during the night, they won’t be able to produce. They’re just working to try to stay cool, and they can’t do it,” said Vickie Kensinger, co-owner of Memory Lane Dairy in Fordland.

Even if cattle did want to eat, there’s not an abundance of food available for them.

Pasture conditions were rated as poor or very poor in 78 percent of southwest Missouri, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service’s Missouri Field Office, and supplies of hay and other roughage were inadequate in nearly two thirds of the area.

The NWS Climate Prediction Center doesn’t hold much hope for the immediate future, either – precipitation is expected to be below normal over the next month, and the three-month forecast predicts only average precipitation levels.

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