Iowa Farmer Today
10-14-06
Dutch dairy farmers find land of opportunity
By Tim Hoskins, Iowa Farmer Today
CLARKSVILLE -- A Welkom sign stands at the end of the lane near a gravel road
to greet visitors to the Snow Rock Dairy in Butler County.
However, Eduard Rueling says it is Iowa that has laid out a welcome mat for his
family and dairy.
The Ruelings have relocated their dairy operation from the Netherlands to rural
Butler County.
The family started operating their dairy last November after planning for nearly
two years to move to Iowa. They milk 315 head out of their 350-cow herd.
“We feel wanted over here,” says Rueling.
Dairy farmers are faced with many pressures in the Netherlands, he explains.
The country is roughly one-fourth the size of Iowa with 16 million residents and
more than 60,000 dairies.
Only about 500,000 people live in the Northeast quarter of Iowa. The USDA says
there are 2,500 dairies in Iowa.
The situation has led to milk quotas in the Netherlands. Due to the quotas and
price of land, it costs at least $40,000 to add a cow to a dairy operation.
Under that pressure, many Dutch dairy farmers either leave the country or quit
farming.
Gerber ten Hoeve, another Dutch farmer who is planning to start a dairy in the
area, says about 300 Dutch farmers per year leave the country and another
2,000 quit farming.
“We have the feeling we are not wanted anymore,” Eduard says about dairying in
his native country.
The United States offers more access to land than there is in Europe, notes
Debbie Perkins, head of food and agribusiness research group for Rabobank, an
international co-op bank based in the Netherlands.
As a result, costs tend to be lower which give U.S. farmers a comparative
advantage.
Perkins says the high population density in Europe contributes to less land being
available. Also increasingly stringent environmental regulations are being
implemented.
Europeans look to the United States for farming opportunities to avoid these
regulations.
Hearing about the situation, some in the Iowa agricultural community worked to
bring Dutch dairy farmers to Iowa.
Pat Derdzinski, Butler County Extension director, was part of the program
that recruited Dutch dairy farmers to Iowa.
He says the reason to recruit the farmers here was to add value to crops, keep
the milk processors in the area and to help rural areas stay viable.
For example, the Rueling family does not crop farm. Therefore, they contract with
a neighbor to raise their feed. The same neighbor also takes their dairy manure
for fertilizer.
Derdzinski says this option also gives area crop farmers a viable market for
forages, such as alfalfa, that could help break any disease or insect cycle in a
corn-soybean rotation.
He says recruiting dairies to Iowa will help support milk processors.
“You still have a fair amount of buyers,” Derdzinski says.
However, if there are not enough producers in a region, it is likely the milk
processor will close its doors, leaving one less buyer for other dairies.
For example, in North Dakota there is one milk buyer for the state, he notes.
The markets are one of the selling points that are bringing farmers to Iowa.
Perkins says farmers from other countries are looking for access to new markets.
The United States is a very attractive domestic market, but it may also have
established export markets as well.
Another benefit to adding dairy farmers to rural areas is they will keep
communities viable, Derdzinski says. They are recruiting young families that
have or plan to have children.
Eduard and his wife, Resy, have three children: two daughters, Jenny and
Ryanne, and son Nick, who is a U.S. citizen.
So far in the five years of the recruitment program, the Ruelings are the first
family to relocate to Iowa to operate a dairy, Derdzinski says. However, there are
a few others, including Gerber and Julie ten Hoeve who plan to operate a dairy in
Northeast Iowa.
Two other couples are nearing agreements in Primghar and in Brooklyn. Those
300-head facilities are scheduled for completion within the year.
Those involved with the recruitment program have seen an indirect benefit from
going to immigration fairs in Europe, where Iowa would have a booth along with
countries, such as Romania, Ukraine and Germany.
“It has raised the status of Iowa on the national and international scene as a
place for dairy. There is nothing wrong with raising the status of Iowa as an
agricultural place,” Derdzinski says.
The main selling points used to convince dairy farmers to immigrate to Iowa are:
relatively cheap feed, markets for their products, transportation to move products,
several buyers and communities with good schools.
Good schools are one of the reasons the Rueling family decided to move to
Iowa.
Rueling says language is not a problem since English is spoken around the
world.
One of the major adjustments is writing checks.
He says most banking in his home country is done over the computer and he
never wrote or signed a check. On the day of the interview, he signed 17 checks.
“Writing checks is a waste of time and money,” says Rueling.
“I never wrote a check until I came to the U.S.,” says Gerber ten Hoeve.
The Rueling family keeps up-to-date with family members and Dutch news via
computer with Internet and satellite television.
They use a Webcam to see and talk to family members back in the Netherlands.
“It is almost daily that we check to see each other,” he says. There is a sevenhour time difference between Iowa and the Netherlands.
They recently hooked up their television to a satellite, which has a channel that
takes programming from Dutch television stations and sends them around the
world.
That means at 8 p.m. Iowa time, they can watch Dutch news and at other times
their kids can watch Sesame Street in Dutch.