YORK, Pa. — As noted in part one in the Jan. 9 edition of Farmshine, organic dairying continues to draw questions and interest in Pennsylvania, including the even higher premium market for grass-based organic dairying with even higher grazing requirements. During a farmer panel at the Keystone Farm Show on Jan. 7, the message was consistent: these markets are seeing increased demand and stronger prices, but the transition is not for everyone.

It requires planning and preparation for a whole management system that looks different, with more record-keeping, less emphasis on pounds of production, and a keen focus on grazing and knowing your costs.

At the Organic Dairy Lunch and Learn, a panel of Pennsylvania organic dairy farmers outlined the fundamentals. Amos Beiler has a recently transitioned dairy, while Todd Frescura has been organic for 10 years and Roman Stoltzfoos for 30. They agreed organic dairying shifts uncertainty away from daily market swings and toward factors farmers can control. They said they know their minimum price ahead of time based on their own variables of volume, components, and quality; and when prices change, they get advance notice.

That structure allows organic producers to plan more deliberately and manage risk differently than in conventional milk markets. However ….

Their sage advice for anyone thinking about transitioning to organic is to get ready for the learning curve, start focusing on grazing education first, line up certification support well in advance, build record-keeping into daily routines, learn from others, and focus relentlessly on forage and costs.

“It is a whole program transition in management,” said Frescura, who ships milk to Horizon from his herd of purebred Ayrshires and Milking Shorthorns at Sunrise Ridge Farm near Latrobe in Westmoreland County, Pa. “You will lose production from your transition, but for us, the transition at the end was absolutely worth it.”

In some cases, he added, processors seeking more organic milk will help offset the last year of transition by paying the difference between conventional and organic prices a year before picking up the certified organic milk.

Grazing is the foundation

Grazing competence underpins both traditional organic and 100% grass-based organic systems.

“Even if you’re going to be a conventional organic producer, you still have to have 30% dry matter from grass,” said Stoltzfoos, who operates Springwood Organic Farm near Kinzers in Lancaster County, Pa. The farm has been organic since 1995, and today runs a 100% grass-based system, shipping milk through Maple Hill Creamery.

Stoltzfoos said grass supplies over 60% of the dry matter for his herd of 240 head, and can reach 85 to 90% during peak grazing.

“When you first go to 100% grass, your cows are probably going to lose weight unless you know what you’re doing,” Stoltzfoos said. “Grain calories are more dense. You have to know how to manage grass. That’s what’s going to make you money.”

He believes this is a market where Pennsylvania farms can have an edge over large western dairies that struggle to operate fully grass-based systems at scale.

Panelists stressed grazing and organic management rely heavily on peer learning.

“You have to get yourself around people that are doing it,” Stoltzfoos said. “Go to pasture walks. Go to meetings. Keep learning.”

Beiler, newly transitioned and shipping with Organic Valley from his 50-cow family dairy farm near Quarryville, Lancaster County, said conversations with neighbors and other organic farmers helped him understand what the transition actually looks like day to day.

Start early, stay organized

“Pick out a certifier you’re going to work with and start with them early,” Frescura stressed. “Each certifier has their own paperwork. Don’t wait until you want to be certified.”

Record-keeping came up repeatedly as one of the biggest adjustments and ongoing challenges of organic dairying.

“It’s way too much paperwork to just have a ‘one-pile,’” Beiler said. “You need an office where you can keep things filed and go in daily and make a couple marks on a calendar. Then when you go back to fill out your paperwork, you just roll through the calendar and write everything down. When the inspector comes, he wants certain papers, and you don’t want to be searching for them.”

Even after a decade in organic production, Frescura said record-keeping requires constant discipline.

“Every year you’re inspected, and everything has to match — crop yields, feed records, dry matter intake, cow numbers,” he said. “All of it has to mesh together. If it doesn’t, you’re going to have problems. You need a system or you will be overwhelmed.”

Farmers described simple tools to document compliance. Frescura uses his cell phone to photograph round bales to record location, date, and quantity and uses a paddock-tracking app through the Grazing Alliance to measure grass height before and after grazing.

“This gives me a real, defensible number for dry matter,” he said.

Rethink production and profitability

Panelists agreed that organic dairying changes how farms measure success. While Beiler and Frescura run traditional organic dairies with herd averages above 20,000 pounds, Stoltzfoos has a 100% grass-based organic herd reaching 10,000 pounds in strong forage years.

“We can be very profitable at 9000 or 10,000 pounds,” Stoltzfoos said, pointing to premium prices, lower cow stress, and longer productive life.

“It’s not pounds of milk, but profitability that counts,” he observed, noting his farm works with a business coach through Good Roots. “Every fall we set a budget. Last year we were within $100 of it.”

Frescura pointed to savings from eliminating equipment ownership. “Everything’s custom hired,” he said. “No fuel, no repairs. It simplified my business.”

“The biggest profitable thing you can do on your farm is grow quality forage,” Beiler added. “Then pay attention to the little things — quality premiums, somatic cell count, keeping cows healthy.”

Forage, land and demand

“There’s a big demand for organic hay,” Stoltzfoos emphasized. “There’s more money to be made in organic forage production than organic row crops, and it’s a lot easier to manage.”

He described transitioning newly rented conventional ground by first rebuilding the soil with a diverse “succotash” mix that includes small grains, followed by no-till seeding of a 15-way annual grazing mix. Conventional (non-organic-certified) cattle were brought in to graze the fields as they went through the preparation and transition to permanent organic pasture.

“No-till depends on moisture and competition,” Stoltzfoos cautioned. “You have to be able to adapt to location and weather.”

 For young and beginning farmers, Hayley Painter of Painterland Sisters yogurt emphasized the opportunity she sees “to bring small and medium scale dairy farmers back, and to work with young people who want to get into dairy, to form the types of connections with farm owners, landowners, joint ventures, these kind of things. The demand is here, like never before,” she said. “The challenge is helping people connect and find pathways.”

Infrastructure is also expanding. Frescura said his farm’s location allows his milk to move north or west to multiple processors, helping build regional supply opportunities in western Pennsylvania.

 Emily Fread, a Penn State Extension dairy educator in Union County, noted resources through Extension, including free milk quality evaluations and feeding assessments, are available to all dairy farmers.

 Zach Myers, a dairy development specialist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s Ag Business Development Center said state and federal resources are also available. He said repeat events like this may be held in the future “to bring farmers, resources, and markets into the same room to ask the questions, get the answers, and see what can be learned.”