Raising and Researching Dairy Cows

Dr. James Farmer wakes up early in the morning and starts the day by milking the cows at his dairy farm in Bloomington, Indiana. Then he transitions into his role as an associate professor at the Indiana University’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. In between, he finds himself at the campus farm, where he oversees educational regenerative agriculture with students.

He conducts applied research on livestock farmers, especially those raising dairy cows, focusing on how they are dealing with economic and environmental changes. Bluedot contributor Tanka Dhakal spoke with him to find out more about his research and his life as a dairy farmer. 

Tanka Dhakal: Can you tell us a bit more about your research and how it is connected with your interest in dairy farming?

James Farmer: My research started out when I was first out of grad school. I was focused on private land conservation, and then it was pivoting toward local food systems. I’ve done quite a bit of work looking at local and regional food system development and farmers markets, looking at farmer transition and organic production systems. In the last couple of years, it’s pivoted toward my interest in dairy use, with dairy farmers — something I’ve always been interested in, even since I was a kid, but had just started doing the research. Most of it is social-cultural research.

In the summer, we started a project [on my farm] with a group of interested community partners on grazing and looking at a specific type of intensive rotational grazing. We’re actually able to use some animals on [my] farm and adapt our grazing system to do a long-term project looking at how shifting to this grazing model may or may not impact soil systems and plant systems.

TD: You have two different sides of you — academic researcher and a farmer who has a deep interest in dairy — which side influences you more, and how?

JF: I think both; it comes and goes both ways. The academic side of me is inquisitive, and I’ve got these questions that then make me feel like bringing a scholarly lens to the agricultural sector, where I’m a practitioner. We’re the only dairy farm in the county that’s left. There is another one, but it’s a very different style of farm. There’s not a lot of dairies in the area to begin with, and there’s even fewer that are grazing. 

I have been fortunate to be able to have this opportunity to adapt on our own farm in a manner that has this very practical research project that we then can share with other people. It’s a lot of fun to be able to do this and explain it and try to take your very academic target and translate it into a practical discourse.

TD: It is so fascinating to me that your research interest and your personal interest in dairy found a way to influence each other.

JF: Yeah, I guess for a long time we’ve had these questions that I see in the world. [I] wrestle with them academically and find these topics that are understudied. 

It was the same with my research. The beauty of academic freedom is you get a lot of opportunity to dig into these questions and immerse yourself in scholarship that’s been done and figure out what’s not been done. And: Is there something that we should be pursuing and trying to better understand?

TD: You have that luxury just to do your academic research, but you choose to be a dairy farmer at the same time. As you mentioned it connects you with your scholarship. Is it important to connect whatever we do with nature?  

JF: I think it’s important. In certain disciplines and fields, I think it is important to have practical real-world experience. When you study farming, or you’re studying something in the natural resources, there’s a high expectation that you’ll engage with people, with practitioners in those fields. You’re obviously going to study and read about it, you want to interview people and do research. Yet, [with] practical experience [you can] really understand and put yourself in their shoes. 

I don’t have to walk off a cliff to feel it’s going to hurt when [I] hit the ground. But I think it’s like, how could I possibly ever give recommendations without fully grasping what it is that somebody goes through? 

I’m doing this very niche sector of dairy, personally. I don’t know what it’s like to milk 80 cows a day, twice a day. I don’t know what it’s like to work on a dairy farm where they’re milking 800 to 8,000 cows. But I do know what it’s like to milk a cow. I do know what it’s like to work with a cow whose calf is breached. I think it’s important for me as a scholar to understand the vocabulary and to be able to discuss these real-world experiences. 

TD: Can you tell me more about your observations as a dairy farmer and a researcher who focuses on small-scale farms in the context of a changing climate and dying small dairy farms? 

JF: If we think about the changing environment from a climate perspective, we had 38 days where the heat index was over 90 degrees in a row this summer. So how does that impact dairy? It impacts our pastures. It impacts the cows. It impacts their estrus cycles. It impacts our ability to get them to breed. And for dairy cows to produce milk, they have to give birth. It took three times for them to settle and be pregnant. It didn’t used to be that difficult for them to become pregnant, but the heat causes stress. 

It hasn’t rained measurably in almost six weeks. And so, our pastures, I mean, they still look green, but the moisture content of the plants — we really thought we’d be able to pasture longer into this year. We’re not going to be able to. I’ve already started sticking some hay out with the cows. 

TD: Is there anything you want to add? 

JF: This whole thing started when I was a kid, and the first farm I ever went on was a dairy farm. I remember the smell. I remember it’s a very sensory experience — the sounds of the cows. 

I still know where the location is. It’s not a dairy farm anymore, but that was a very significant life experience. I believe that fostered this interest. When I was a grad student, I had a couple of dairy cows and would milk one. Now we’ve probably got close to 20. And we’re milking 13 cows at the moment. It’s a pretty good place.