Article published July 02, 2008
Latta's political 'pork,' dairy tour makes hay
Livestock farmers beef over fuel, feed costs
U.S. Rep. Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green) spreads straw for bedding cattle with Jonathan 'Jody' Haines, executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency office in Wood County, at the Haines farm near Cygnet in southern Wood County. It was one of three farms that Mr. Latta visited yesterday.
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By TOM TROY
BLADE POLITICS WRITER
WEST MILLGROVE, Ohio - U.S. Rep. Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green) milked a couple of dozen cows and went ankle-deep in manure yesterday in southern Wood County to bond with the farmers in his sprawling 16-county district.
Mr. Latta, still in his first year representing Ohio's 5th Congressional District, spent a good hour attaching the rubber fingers of an automatic milking machine to cows at the farm of brothers Mark and Phil Cline near West Millgrove.
Near Cygnet, he sprinkled bedding straw over the manure in the barn of beef farmer Jonathan "Jody" Haines, and then fed hay to the cattle.
After that, he petted and admired the pigs being raised by two of Mr. Haines' children, Sa-mantha, 17, and Sawyer, 13, for competition in the Wood County Fair, giving new meaning to the term political pork.
Mr. Latta also visited the Seedorf cattle farm near Cygnet.
He said he wanted to bring attention to the people who feed America and make himself a better-informed member of the House Agriculture Committee.
U.S. Rep. Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green) cleans teats at the Cline Dairy Farm, operated by brothers Mark and Phil Cline, near West Millgrove in southeastern Wood County. It was one of three farms that Mr. Latta, a House Agriculture Committee member, visited yesterday during the Congressional Independence Day break.
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"It's very important that we thank farmers in this district and in this state," Mr. Latta said.
He noted that fewer than 1 percent of Ohioans live on farms.
"We never want to lose that farm independence. Not only do we feed our population, but we export food around the world. We've got a group of a very few individuals out there making sure the rest of us eat," he said.
Owners and managers of all three operations said that while the cost of food in the supermarket is increasing, higher still are the costs of "inputs" - oil for fuel and fertilizer, hay and other feed, and propane.
Mr. Haines, whose full-time job is as executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency office in Wood County, said this year it's costing him more to care for his approximately 70 beef cattle than he'll make from selling them for slaughter.
"This year's kind of a challenge with the input costs as they are," Mr. Haines said, adding that the abundant manure helps stem the cost of fertilizer for cropland. "We're not getting enough out of the steaks to justify feeding them. I'm not sure we're going to have cattle next year."
At the Cline farm, Mark Cline, 43, his wife, Amy, and their three children live in one house. His brother, Phil, 48, lives in the other house on a farm that was established by their great-great-grandfather in the 1870s.
Their cows each produce about eight gallons of milk a day, which is trucked to a dairy processor in Cleveland.
Phil Cline said the price of oil "keeps jumping up."
"You have to have your spouse to be working," said Mark, whose wife is a nurse at Fostoria Community Hospital. "That's where we get our good benefits."
Mr. Latta expressed admiration for what farmers do.
"You can actually see what you accomplish here. Sometimes you walk off the floor [in Congress] and you wonder, 'What the heck did we just do?'•" he said.
The road between the Seedorf and Haines farms was lined with signs attesting to the tension between neighbors and some of the largest area farms, many of them far bigger than those Mr. Latta toured yesterday: "Family Farms Not Factory Farms," one sign said. "Please No More Welfare for Mega Farms," said another.
The Seedorf farm has about 130 cattle, mostly cows and calves raised for beef or to be sold to other beef farms, such as the Haines' farm, for "finishing."
"Cows are still profitable, but it's getting hard to make them viable. Costs have doubled in the last three years," herdsman Tim Seedorf said.
The farm buys cattle from Iowa and other distant states, running up costly diesel fuel bills in transportation, he said. He asked Mr. Latta if he thought gasoline speculators were the reason for the price hikes.
"I think a lot of it [speculating] will end if we start exploring and drilling," Mr. Latta said. He has called for drilling for oil off-shore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, along with investing in nuclear power and clean coal.
"We've got all this oil out there we can't get. We've just got to start producing," Mr. Latta said.
Mr. Latta is up for re-election in November. His Democratic opponent, George Mays of Norwalk, said the farmers of Ohio "deserve our thanks for their dedication to the land and our well-being. However, they deserve more than that."
He said 80 percent of federal agricultural aid goes to the largest 10 percent of farms, and Ohio farmers need protection from an invasion of large foreign-owned farms.
"I believe we would all best be served by healthy and thriving family farms," Mr. Mays said. "Farmers know when manure is being spread by politicians."
Contact Tom Troy at:
tomtroy@theblade.com
or 419-724-6058.
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