Study: Recession less severe in dairy areas
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 10:07 AM PDT
TWIN FALLS (AP) — The communities found in the heart of the Idaho dairy industry are, amid falling milk prices, weathering the recession better than other rural regions of the state, a new University of Idaho study says.
The university released the findings of a two-year study, ‘‘Community Level Impacts of Idaho’s Changing Dairy Industry,’’ on Monday. The report shows jobless rates in Twin Falls, Jerome and Gooding counties ranged from 6.4 percent to 7.2 percent in August, compared with 8.9 percent statewide.
Idaho’s unemployment rate dropped slightly, to 8.8 percent, in September.
The dairy industry also appears to be fueling a dramatic increase in the region’s Hispanic population. In south-central Idaho, where the industry is concentrated, the Hispanic population increased 87 percent between 1997 and 2008.
‘‘The dairy industry is really driving population growth and diversification,’’ said Priscilla Salant, an agricultural economist and outreach coordinator for the University of Idaho.
The research was funded by a $60,288 grant from the Idaho Dairymen’s Association and looked at the impact of the dairy industry on schools, churches, hospitals and legal systems in southern Idaho.
The study was conducted through public surveys, interviews and other data.
Salant called it the first comprehensive study of the social impacts of the dairy industry in Idaho, which is fourth in the country for milk production, after California, Wisconsin, and New York.
The study found that while the number of dairy farms has declined — from 1,404 in 1997 to 811 in 2007 — those that remain are bigger operations. At the same time, the average number of cows per farm increased from 189 to 661.
The dairy farms that, a decade ago, operated with about 2,100 workers employed about 6,100 last year. The workers tend to be young, Hispanic men who are both single and have families, spurring demographic changes in local schools from predominantly non-Hispanic to Hispanic, Salant said.
In Jerome, there has been an 80 percent increase in the enrollment of Hispanic students since 2000. In nearby Wendell, the increase is 70 percent and 40 percent in the tiny dairy town of Gooding.
‘‘That means schools need more staff to work with students who are English language learners,’’ Salant said.
There is also a need for an interpreter in the court systems, said J.D. Wulfhorst, a rural sociologist and director of the Social Science Research Unit at the University of Idaho.
‘‘Right now those municipalities are bearing that cost,’’ Wolfhurst said.
The study found no evidence migrant dairy workers are overburdening local hospitals and jails, Wolfhurst said.
‘‘Based on what we saw, the number of felonies among Hispanics is declining and it’s low enough not to be a substantial drain on the system,’’ Wolfhurst said. ‘‘Hospitals also said that Hispanics were not overburdening the system.’’
Researchers urged state, federal and dairy industry stakeholders to work toward immigration policy that gives employers and workers more security, encouraging this largely Hispanic work force to better integrate into their communities.
The industry should support a study to learn more about the workers; encourage dairy workers to claim the federal earned income tax credit; sponsor public forums for community discussions about immigration and the impacts associated with the dairy industry; and work with the university to hire a native Spanish speaker to serve as a liaison for community and labor outreach, the report says.
