Meet Dairy Farmers

When Clifford Crawley planted an apple orchard on his Arkansas farm in partnership with his father 90 years ago, Crawley family farm debuted. The farm was diverse, consisting of a few milk cows, some chickens and hogs and 40 hives of honeybees. That soon would change.

Dairy farmers are business people through and through, and do things that make economic sense. Those same practices not only help the environment, but are also socially responsible for local communities and for our planet. This certainly is the case at Prairieland Dairy in Firth, Nebraska.

Much has changed for the McCarty family since their humble beginnings more than 90 years ago in northeast Pennsylvania. Then, they started and ended each day milking cows by hand in a small barn without electricity. Today, McCarty Family Farms calls western Kansas home, and the entire picture of how they provide care for their cows and their natural resources is a very different one.

Bettering themselves and their dairy cattle is something Kent and Jodi Pulfer of Wayne, Nebraska, in which they not only take great pride with, but in which they excel.

While the recent devastating drought forced the Sybesma family of Platte, South Dakota, to reduce their herd size; it certainly did not affect their ability to produce quality milk.

Caring for cows is an inherent gift that brothers Joe and Vern Becker were raised with on their family dairy farm in central Minnesota. The duo represents the third generation of dairy farming at Becker Dairy and took over the reins from their parents, Wilfred and Aurelia Becker, in 1987.