While California dairy farms cope with a three-year drought, “states like Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa are pitching themselves as a dairy heaven,” says Harvest Public Media. “For the Midwest, an influx of dairies isn’t just about milk. It’s about pumping dollars into the rural economy.” HPM interviews a dairy-farm recruiter who works in Nebraska and visits big farm show in the West. She extols ample water and feed supplies and plenty of room for farming, all advantages for California farmers who are squeezed by population growth as well as the pressures of drought.
One transplanted dairy farmer, who moved to Nebraska from the Chino Valley east of Los Angeles, says feed was expensive in California because of shipping costs and that manure had to shipped away from the farm. The payoff for Midwestern states is the investment for setting up a dairy farm, which one expert says could be $15 million, plus creation of more than a dozen jobs to run the farm. A dairy farm could be a bigger employer than a store on Main Street.