A trailblazer of his time, the name Red Larson is well-known and well respected. The Florida producer’s entry into the dairy industry stemmed from looking for a job in the summer of 1942 when he hand-milked cows for $2 a day.
Red certainly came a long way and through hard work, integrity and dedication, helped build the Larson name to not only be well known throughout Florida, but the entire U.S. Now, more than eight decades later, Red’s son, Woody Larson, and grandsons, Travis and Jacob, milk 5,500 cows on two different dairies located in Okeechobee County, Florida. Red’s son, John, also milks thousands of cows nearby, making the Larsons the largest family dairy in Florida.
Challenges Galore
Jacob Larson openly admits the challenges facing the dairy industry are extensive—from labor, to rising costs of doing business and more, but shares that heat, humidity and 50 inches of annual precipitation make environment challenges the biggest obstacle when it comes to dairying in the southeast.
“We try our best to mitigate the environment,” he says, stating that the southeast has come a long way in terms of milk quality, genetics and leveling the seasonal production swings.
According to Jacob, making quality forage is another challenge, but he feels that most progressive dairies have done a good job securing land to grow corn silage and enough grass haylage to feed their cows. Larsons feed a TMR, utilizing homegrown corn silage and haylage from a Bermuda hybrid grass that thrives in tropical environments.
“Most all of our best grass is grown under center pivot irrigation which we irrigate with lagoon water,” he shares, noting that they will get 7-9 cuttings that is used for silage.
Southeast Milk Market
Jacob serves as the board president of Southeast Milk, a full service dairy cooperative operating across six states in the southeastern U.S., marketing more than 1.6 billion lbs. of milk annually. He shares another big challenge that his farm and others face is the fact the southeast is a high fluid milk market. Larson says that as a cooperative, balancing those fluid milk plant needs is easier said than done.
“When we’re dealing with customers that have cuts and adds every week, it’s a lot of balancing for the cooperative to go out and buy milk,” he explains, noting that dealing with a surplus of milk becomes an expensive situation to figure out.
Jacob states the USDA ruling on the Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) hearings can’t come fast enough. He explains that for the southeast, the three big things they hope to achieve are:
- Going back to the higher of Class III and Class IV to determine Class I price mover.
- Increasing the surface price differentials
- Adjusting component formulas
Jacob believes that if these proposals are implemented by USDA, it will result in higher mailbox prices for southeast producers.
“There’s a lot of farms that have gone out of business in the southeast and in Florida especially,” he explains, sharing that his dairies are part of the 46 farms left in the Gator State.
God’s Calling
The well-known Larson name is one made up of strong morals and integrity, and when Jacob was 16, he shares he felt a calling from God to be a farmer.
“I always felt that I was a hard worker who was just trying to fill my dad’s shoes, which is probably impossible, and I think he was always trying to fill my grandfather’s shoes,” he says.
After college, Travis went to work for at a very large dairy for a couple of years to gain experience, while Jacob came straight home after graduating from college. Both brothers came back to the farm at the same time, as there were two of their dairies that needed management.
At the time the brothers returned home to the farm in 2003. Jacob shares the journey over the last two decades has been a lot of work to successfully, internally grow the dairies to an efficient size, rebuild teams and get cows up to their standards in terms of reproduction and production. At one time, the makeup of Larson Dairy was complex with a total of eight dairies owned by the family, but today the threesome own two dairies.
While it might appear that Larson Dairy went backwards in terms of herd size, they in fact have grown in overall efficiencies.
“My grandfather hit his peak in the late 1980s when we had eight dairy farms, and we milk 13,000 cows,” Jacob explains. “It was a big deal when they hit 60,000 gallons. Today we can produce that with 5,500 cows.”
As they look to the future, the Larsons share that they are looking to the next avenue to hit the next level of productivity. With ten loads of milk leaving the farm a day, processing their own milk, at least at their current size, isn’t something they are considering.
“I don’t think we have the ambition to go into processing and try to find a home for all that milk. That’s enough milk to feed half a million people a day,” he shares, but says as they look to the next generation, that being his and Travis’s children, they are keeping an open eye to opportunities.
One opportunity that the Larsons have dove into recently is technology, despite living in the lightning capital of the world that makes incorporating technology that requires internet service a challenge. The family is incorporating an activity system on one of their dairies to dial in on health and fertility, as well as incorporating genomics to help make management decisions.
Handshake Contract
When Jacob thinks back to his childhood, he says he thinks of the many lessons he learned and the one that sticks out the most is the importance of being honest.
“When people trust you, it means a lot and I came from that era that when you look a guy in the eye and shake his hand, that was a contract and that’s the way we do business,” he says, although noting that a lot has changed, and contracts are important in today’s day and age.
While Jacob also learned a lot about cash flow, depreciation schedules and capital investment, his father and grandfather deeply plotted the importance of being a leader with integrity.
“People have to believe in you and believe in your purpose,” he shares. “I think all the Larsons are a believer in leading by example. I think that’s a great way for people to be motivated when they know the boss is willing to do that job.”
Family values run deep at Larson Dairy. Woody says there are only two ways you become a legend.
“One is you live a long time or you do something really legendary,” he says. “In his case, dad did both.”
As they look to the next generation, a lot is still to be determined as both Jacob and Travis’ children are not quite the age to know what the next step is.
“They’re smart,” Jacob says, sharing that dairy life is a good life, but it is full of challenges. “The level of return on investment in this industry is tough. And, it really hasn’t made economic sense to be in this business for quite some time. The next generation is going to need some clues as to whether this is a good return for the investment or not. Once they go to college, they’ll have to evaluate that.”
