‘Back to the Land’: In historically hard times, legacies go forward
Dairy farms, the next generation
SOMERSET — With the dairy industry suffering through one of its toughest economic times in history, two brothers are bravely forging ahead with expansion of their historic family farm, putting the final touches on a new $1.1 million barn and planning to nearly double their herd.
“Our farm has to become more efficient. We have to better use our assets in order to become more profitable and be better able to compete in tighter margins,” explained Ben Atwater, who, along with younger brother Seth, owns and operates Atwater Farms on Lower Lake Road.
“You either have to be small enough to provide the labor yourself or big enough to afford to hire labor and milk more cows,” he said. “The profit per cow seems to be getting much smaller, and that’s why so many farms have been forced out of business or driven to expand.”
In taking over Atwater Farms, Ben, 32, and Seth, 26, have continued a family tradition dating from pre- Civil War days. Their ancestor, Levy Atwater, started the farm in 1852.
They are also bucking national and local trends that have seen the number of family farms significantly decrease in the last century.
“For example, the Niagara County Cornell Cooperative Extension had 2,000 farms [of all types] enrolled in the 1940s, and now we have around 200,” said Paul E. Lehman, an educator with the Cooperative Extension offices in Lockport.
Lehman estimates that about 35 of those are dairy farms.
It’s difficult to estimate how many of these farms are still in operation under direct descendants of the founders, he said, but the numbers are clearly dwindling.
Lehman himself grew up on a “modest dairy farm in Lewis County.” He left in 1968 to teach overseas before settling into his current career away from the family farm, which was eventually sold.
“But I still feel those ties to the farm—and I’m 62,” he said.
Ben and Seth Atwater have always felt those ties —through childhood, their years at Cornell University and into adulthood. The two had already begun the process of taking over the farm when their father, Richard, died unexpectedly two years ago at age 56. They also employ their brother, Adam, on the 1,700- acre farm.
“My husband and I always said we would not force the kids to come back to the farm, but we would provide the opportunity and make it appealing so that the next generation could continue it,” said their mother, Susan Atwater. “But we couldn’t choose for them. Farming isn’t for everybody. You have to be totally committed or you’re not going to be happy there. They made their own decision when they got to be that age, but I never dreamed all three would end up there.”
Striving to expand
The Atwaters tend about 500 milking cows and a couple of hundred young, with a goal of increasing the total number to about 1,300 to 1,400, Ben Atwater said.
They’re expanding at a time when the dairy industry is at a historic low.
“It’s a real challenge, and it’s industrywide,” Ben Atwater said. “This is one of the toughest times in history for the dairy industry. No one is making any money, but this can’t go on forever. It’s got to correct itself. We had record high prices for milk last year, but it was probably the combination of the rise in supply, the China melamine scare, the economy struggling — when people stop going out to eat cheeseburgers and pizzas, they don’t realize the effect on the dairy farmer. The export market [also] dropped, and it all contributed to the downturn, and it’s forced a lot of farms out of business.”
If Ben sounds more like the owner of an MBA than a tractor, it’s because today’s farmer, to survive, has to have a boot in both worlds more than ever.
While he and Seth both earned bachelor’s degrees in animal science from Cornell, Ben generally handles the business end of the farm and the crops, while Seth oversees the milking operations, but their work overlaps.
Adam Atwater, 30, graduated from the John Deere Technology program at Cobleskill State College and is employed as the main shop mechanic. Ben and Seth also employ a staff of 10 others and often rely on their sister, Alicia, and her husband, Bob, who are not employed by the farm but provide help when needed.
For Seth, who graduated from Cornell in 2005, there was never any question that he would return to the Barker farm.
“I love being outdoors, the flexibility of the schedule, and being self-employed and my own boss,” he said. “It’s enjoyable work. It’s rewarding. You get out of it what you put in.”
Seth said that both of his brothers worked on other farms during college internships. In fact, his internships took him to Idaho, where he earned experience on two large farms that each milked a few thousand cows. He also studied at an agricultural school in New Zealand in his sophomore year and toured the country’s dairy farms, giving him insight into that country’s dairy industry.
Ben said their late father taught his children that farming “can be very rewarding. You get out of it what you put into it, and it’s not something you do for the money—you’ll never get rich doing it, but you have to have a passion for it. You do it for the enjoyment of it.”
‘It’s a tough lifestyle’
Fellow dairy farmer and former Somerset Supervisor John
E. Sweeney Jr. couldn’t agree more.
He is the fourth generation working on his family’s Appleton dairy farm, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary next March. He has two sons who hope to become involved in agriculture someday — one of whom, at the tender age of 12, has already set his sights on taking over the family farm on West Somerset Road.
“It’s a lifestyle where you’re right back to the earth,” said Sweeney, 49, who milks about 100 cows on a 250-acre spread with his 47-year-old brother, Arthur. “You have to be a good steward of the land and take care of your animals in order for them to produce. We think it’s an honest living.”
Sweeney and his wife, Debi, have two sons and a daughter.
“It’s a tough lifestyle, but very rewarding,“ Sweeney said. “These kids don’t get anything for free — they have to work for it. The opportunity is here, especially with the dairy and farming the land. We support our kids in their 4-H programs, but they have to do the work, and it’s their responsibility. And they can take that responsibility and do with it what they choose, and I know they’ll do a great job. They certainly do other things, but I think the farm comes first to them. But it’s their choice.”
Matthew Sweeney, 17, is a senior at Barker High School, where he captains the cross country, track and basketball teams, and manages to carry an academic average of 100.
“I like living on a farm—the lifestyle,” Matthew said. “All of our cousins are involved. We all live in a row—my uncle and his family, my grandmother, my aunt and her family, then us, and then my other aunt and cousins live nearby in Newfane. I like helping my dad and uncle after school. I do everything from milking to driving tractors to feeding the animals.
“I’ve been thinking of pursuing an agriculture-related degree in college, possibly at Cornell, maybe in agricultural education,” Matthew said.
This would combine both parents’ occupations, as his mother is a teacher in the Wilson Central School District.
“I’d like to keep a hand in the family farm, but my brother, Christopher, who’s 12, will someday take it over,” he said. “That’s his main goal. He wants to take over the farm and become a farmer. Melanie is 11, and she loves all of the animals, but Chris is the one who will take it over.”
Christopher is a seventh-grader at Barker Middle School.
“I’ve thought about [running the family farm] pretty much my whole life,” he said. “It’s been in our family for so long. I do field work, clean out the barn, milk every day, help out every day. I like being around the cows and working in the barn.”
“Christopher likes to do it all,” said his father. “He’s even started operating some of the equipment in the past couple of years. He’s level-headed and quite knowledgeable. Of the two of them, Chris seems to be the one who wants to do the day-to-day things here, but I don’t know, maybe they’ll surprise me.”
While the future is a bit cloudy, the Sweeneys feel good that a legacy appears safe, considering that many farm families send children off to college, then watch them launch careers away from the land.
“Matthew likes his cows and pigs, but he probably won’t be the guy to come back and milk the cows and grow the corn,” John Sweeney said. “He’d still like to show cows, and he’ll definitely still be involved in the farm. I know he’ll be successful in the career path he chooses, and it will have something to do with agriculture in some way.”
John Sweeney said he knew from a young age that he wanted to work back home, “and I went to college with the idea that I’d be coming back to the farm. It’s been a dream come true, and hopefully, we’ll keep it going in the next generation, and maybe more.”
This is the last installment of the occasional series “Back to the Land.” niagaranews@buffnews.com
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